Mandy Goes Bananas

Harriet Harman, leader of the Labour Party pro tempore (again) after the party suffered (another) heavy election defeat, has reassured the world that the post mortem of this election will be based on facts. Fear not, she says, for she has ‘commissioned work’ to look at how Labour lost so badly. Quite what kind of ‘work’ had been ‘commissioned’ we do not know, though her phraseology makes it sound like paintbrushes and chisels might be used. Perhaps we should all sit in anticipation of a painting or sculpture of some kind.

As various Labour people begin to assess various Labour losses, the reasons for which seem, for the most part, pretty obvious, somewhere in London, a huge and terrifying political behemoth awoke over the weekend and delivered his own take on the reasons for Labour’s latest drubbing. And this monster is one worth listening to.

New Labour: A Family Affair

If New Labour is a family, Peter Mandelson is the Grandfather. (To make sure we’re all on the same page, think ‘Mafia Boss and undisputed oracle’ rather than ‘Werther’s Original and slippers’ – perhaps Godfather would be a more appropriate phrase).  He built the empire, he ran the show. As communications director and campaign director in the 1980s and 1990s, he identified the minds most capable of modernising an aging and broken Labour Party, he schooled them, and in so doing, he masterminded a revolution politically, allowing the party a run of historically unparalleled success.

The minds he chose were Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; the two men who - save for Mandelson himself and perhaps the late Philip Gould - did more for New Labour than anyone else. And as a trio, Mandelson, Blair and Brown were a formidable force and a political dream team. Blair was very much the better politician, presenter and people-person; the public face of New Labour. Brown was every bit as sharp as Blair, and what he lacked in presentational proficiency, he more than made up for in the areas of policy and political architecture. His intellect, political savagery and sheer force of personality both laid the foundations on which New Labour policy would be built, and cleared plenty of (sometimes human) obstacles to its implementation. Meanwhile, Mandelson masterfully pulled the strategic, communications, and PR strings in the background.

(They say Mandelson is a Kingmaker, that he would never be a King. But they also say that true power is controlling events without ever showing the mechanisms of that power. If this is so, a photo of Mandelson should accompany the definition of ‘true power’ in the dictionary).

These two parents of the New Labour movement were capable, intelligent, and on occasion, as dysfunctional as the worst of marriages. On their own they may have been able to change Labour; Mandelson ensured it would an astonishing and lasting transformation.

Succession Planning

The logical succession plan, likely considered – if not wholly planned - by Mandelson, would have been for New Labour’s ‘Second Generation’ to seamlessly pick up where Blair (and to an extent, Brown) left off. Whether it was actually a Blairite faction or a Brownite faction didn’t really matter in the long run, the important thing was that it was New Labour 2.0; a slightly altered, slightly improved version to reflect the current political climate. And among the group of young New Labourlings, there were a handful who could have been top dog; Balls, Miliband, Miliband…

Mandelson had remained fairly tight-lipped throughout Ed Miliband’s leadership. In politics, silence is usually a sign of disagreement. Often, pre-configured lines are trotted out which, whilst not doing any damage, certainly don’t improve relationships or dispel rumours. Mandelson’s silence was tacit acknowledgment that he knew something was about to go wrong. And when it did we didn’t have to wait long for him to clear his throat and give us a rundown of the what, the why, and the how.

If anyone has earned the right to comment on Labour, it is Peter Mandelson, but it would also be true to say that nowhere in British politics, let alone within the Labour party, is there a more divisive figure than the Prince of Darkness himself.

But that doesn’t make him wrong. His point is essentially this: Labour lost in 2010 thanks to a diluted, half-hearted version of New Labour, and they lost in 2015 because they abandoned New Labour entirely instead of tweaking it and developing it in to something relevant to the British public. ‘Revitalising and reenergising’ Mandelson called it.

Lessons from Bill

Tony Blair echoed these thoughts. ‘The route to the summit lies through the centre ground’ he said. This was true long before even New Labour took power in 1997. Bill Clinton had provided a masterclass on how to decimate Right-wing Republicans with his fledgling ‘Third Way’ back in 1992, even if the ideology wouldn't be 'officially launched' until a conference with Blair in 1998. Clinton led the Democrats out of two dark and winless decades by making them less Left and more Centre. The route to the summit lies through the centre ground, said Blair. People want a government that leans heavily against inequality in society, but realises that people have aspirations, said Mandelson. In its simplest form, beginning in 1994 or 1995 Blair & Co. would ‘do a Clinton’ and take New Labour towards the centre; the traditional Labour folk from the left stayed with them, they picked up a bunch of other non-traditional folk from somewhere near the middle and made them ‘Labour folk’ too.

With Clinton’s ‘Third Way’ becoming the new norm for the Democrats, Obama tweaked the election strategy formula in 2008; he knew the perception of the Democrats was good enough, his concern was actually getting enough people off their sofas and in to polling stations to vote for it. Through an unprecedented grass roots network he expanded the electorate, increased turnout by several million, and brought his own landslide to the party. It was Clinton’s ‘Third Way’ with a sprinkling of Hope and a few more logistical bells and whistles.

Elections are, in theory, easy to win. You need more people to vote for you than the other guy. It is ‘simply’ a case of appealing to more people and enabling more people to vote for you, neither of which seemed to form part of the plan by Ed and Ed. As Mandelson asserted, it was a campaign of hating the rich, loving the poor and ignoring the vast number of people in the middle. Political philosophies aside, in pure mathematical terms this very obviously leaves you with a very small section of the population on which to pin your hopes.

New New Labour?

Labour 2015 was a Labour project run by the heirs to New Labour. It could have been a glorious coronation and a testament to the enduring architecture of the modernisation by Mandelson, Blair and Brown. Ed Miliband and Ed Balls had an outstanding foundation on which to build. But they jettisoned the formula, they thought people were utterly tired of New Labour when perhaps it was simply the case that New Labour itself was tired and needed a ‘remodernisation’, Mandelsonian or otherwise. Ed and Ed went out on their own, went back to the left, lost everyone Blair had picked up with New Labour, and paid the price. Perhaps it is unfair to lay this loss of the centre at the feet of Ed Miliband. Perhaps it started in Gordon Brown’s Premiership, or even earlier, under Blair. But the fact remains, Miliband did nothing to try to win those people back. That in itself is tantamount to failure.

Now that the dust has settled on 2015, the question is what kind of Labour do we get next? Do we see a New New Labour? A vibrant, energetic reworking of the party based on the Third Way 2.0? Or do we see something else? It surely has to be accepted now that Labour cannot win by being a left-wing party.

The shape of Labour to come largely depends on how close Peter Mandelson can get to the centre of power. If he’s running the show, we might just see a revitalised New Labour; older, wiser, complete with all the clever bits from before, but with all the right tweaks in all the right places.

History shows us that Peter Mandelson is good at placing himself close to the centre of power, and at the weekend he picked a new horse in (almost) endorsing Chuka Umunna for the Labour leadership (Umunna confirmed his candidacy at lunch time on Tuesday). In terms of style, intellect and potential, Chuka Umunna is as close to the next Tony Blair as anyone in the Labour Party ever has been. Young, energetic, intelligent. A little rough around the edges, perhaps, certainly not the finished article, but as Mandelson asserted ‘he’ll get there’. He certainly will get there if he has Mandelson sanding down the edges and presenting him to the world.

Chuka Umunna confirmed his Labour leadership bid yesterday.

When it comes to Mandelson, there will always be questions asked of his intentions. He will never escape his Machiavellian reputation, nor does he show any desire to do so. Is this Mandelson finding a winning way for Labour, or is it his last ditch grasp at power, and at saving his New Labour creation? Or, of course, to prove that the New Labour way was the right way all along? Whether he’s chosen his horse for the good of the Labour Party, or for his own ends doesn’t really matter. The last time Mandelson took the brightest young things in the party under his wing, the result was an unprecedented shift in the British political landscape. If he gets it right, Labour win the next election.

They say that continued and enduring success comes from the ability to constantly rebuild. This is spoken of often in football - people always talk about the three or four truly world-beating sides Sir Alex Ferguson built at Manchester United over a quarter of a century, how he built and rebuilt and changed and improved where necessary to ensure the club was always challenging. In politics this unceasing rejuvenation and success is unheard of, we might get Clinton’s Democrats, or New Labour shifting the landscape for about a decade, but no single group has really been able to make such game-changing shifts twice, and power invariably shifts to the other side of the aisle before too long.

Are we about to witness Peter Mandelson’s final amazing act? His transformation of the Labour Party first time round was astonishing. Can he really do the unthinkable; modernise the Labour party and take them from an unelectable disaster to obvious leaders in a brave new world for a second time? And in Chuka Umunna, has Mandelson chosen the subject of his next coronation?

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The Politics of Perception: Rob Wilson's Numbskull PR Gaffe

Thousands of people are calling for Reading East MP Rob Wilson to resign after an ill-advised response to a constituent on social media.

Within hours of being elected to represent the constituency for a third time, Conservative Wilson got himself in to a sticky situation when he called a concerned local resident a bad loser in reply to a question about homelessness in Reading.

The Twitter conversation in question appears to have been deleted from Wilson’s Twitter feed.

This is not the first time Mr. Wilson has been caught out on the social network. In April 2013 he posted to a link to x-rated porn site 'Sexydigg', a site where you can find 'sex partners near you'. Conservative HQ said the link had been sent to Wilson from the Conservative campaign office but 'denied their staff had been browsing porn sites', suggesting instead that a 'technical glitch' was responsible (that's right, perhaps the link really did just pluck itself from thin air without being copied or pasted by anyone from anywhere, links can do that you see...) It is believed he thought he was tweeting a link to an article about pensions. Retirement has never been so sexy.

For some reason, people (politicians, sportsmen, celebrities) say stupid things on social media, and a Twitter misstep will no doubt cause plenty more downfalls in the future; if not Rob Wilson now, then someone else very soon. I don't mean stupid things in the sense of deliberately provoking outcry or controversy for publicity purposes, I mean stupid things that get you fired.

Only last year, Emily Thornberry was forced to resign from Labour’s front bench after her tweets caused a ‘snobbery’ storm. It was generally accepted that her tweet had inferred something unfavourable about the kind of person who drives a white van and hangs the flags of St. George outside their home. Casting a cynical eye over the issue, we could conclude she was making a point along those lines. Perhaps though, her inference wasn’t “what’s the point of campaigning here, these are UKIP folk”. Maybe she meant it was great to see the people of Rochester supporting our national football team (who had played twice in the week preceding the by-election, and had beaten Scotland - their oldest sporting foe - just days before). Perhaps she was simply channelling her inner teenager and tweeting her every move as every teenager does when they go anywhere or do anything; “I’m in Rochester, here’s a picture to prove it!!!”

Wilson’s error was far worse than Thornberry’s. My suggestion here is that from Thornberry’s tweet you have to make that leap and guess at her inference, she doesn’t spell it out for us. We might add her two cents to our two cents and make four cents, or we might make nine dollars and forty cents. Not so with Rob Wilson. He didn’t leave us to make a connection or leave a cryptic half message from which we should deduce a full answer. Quite simply he called a constituent a bad loser, and that is a huge political, social media, and human misstep.

Not only that, but when the story began to gain traction on Twitter, in what can only have been a complete misjudgement of the backlash, or an overwhelming nonchalance about it, he made matters worse:

“I have emailed you the response to your question. 140 characters would not enable a full response”.

No apology, no explanation. Nothing. Cue the inevitable replies of how 140 characters is apparently plenty long enough to show yourself as an uncaring, pig-headed human, and that the word ‘sorry’ would only use five characters.

Forget the fact that it is a disgusting thing for anyone in public office to say, especially from someone who’s Twitter bio reads “An honour & a privilege to serve Reading East as MP for a 3^rd term”. (After this issue, we could be forgiven for thinking that it is a privilege to serve, but that there are some really annoying constituents who won't shut up when they’ve been beaten by a better candidate and a better party). Forget the fact that it paints him as the only thing worse than a bad loser – a horribly smug winner. In fact, let’s put to one side everything to do with manners, courtesy, and how wrong it is to respond like that when someone asks you a question, and focus on this from a PR standpoint.

As an MP, to initially call someone a bad loser on Twitter in this way demonstrates a huge lack of understanding of exactly what it is he was put there to do. He was elected to represent the people of Reading, not some of them, not the ones he likes, or the ones who voted for him, ALL of them. Even if privately you can’t stand your constituents, at least pretend to support all of them. Even if you think yourself better than them, because you have more money, or you won, or whatever, never ever ever say anything out loud in any form that reflects that thought process. And certainly never ever ever write anything like that down. Not only does that (literally) increase the paper trail, but it puts you at a severe disadvantage when dealing with human beings who, psychology tells us, rely as much (if not more) on the way things are said and the expressions people display when saying them. In the same way that your written words can’t physically put a firm hand on someone’s shoulder to reassure them everything will be alright, Twitter says not: '“Don’t be a bad loser” joked Rob Wilson playfully with a twinkle in his eye'. Nor does it say '"Don't be a bad loser" screamed Rob Wilson venomously at the stupid constituent who asked a stupid question'. There is far too much left unsaid, and far too few visual, audio or body language clues for the reader to build an accurate picture of the tone. My guess is that the majority of readers in this instance built up a negative picture whether that was Wilson's intention or not. Even if that lot weren't the majority, they were always going to be the more vocal segment. 

From a political and communications point of view, you are always far more in control of your message, and people’s reaction to it, if it’s spoken and you are in face to face contact with them.

Wilson later sought yet again to clarify the situation by suggesting that he had known the woman in question “for a number of years as an active journalist” and that she regularly “contributed her views on government policy”. That’s fine then. Because she has disagreed with you in the past and called you out on the issues, it must be OK to call her a bad loser.

This lack of awareness from Wilson of the importance of perception and communications is worrying. He seems to think that by explaining the background to the situation we will all sit back and judge him to be in the right. We won’t. At best it looks like someone has made a giant error and is now making excuses for himself. At worst, he looks uncaring, smug, and completely oblivious to these facts.

Even if the background to the story puts Wilson in the right (I’m not suggesting it does or does not), there is no way he can win a PR game on this issue. Quite simply, the story of an MP glibly insulting a constituent makes for a much better story regardless of background. The fact is people still don’t like politicians, and the horse bolted as soon as Mr. Wilson posted his first response. It doesn’t matter what the story is, or where it goes from there. It doesn’t matter whether Wilson is uncaring, smug, has a wholly poor attitude to constituents who disagree with him or anything else. That perception has been allowed to exist through a lack of understanding of social media communications.

Everyone likes being proved right, and everyone loves a good downfall even more. Wilson gave people enough fodder to confirm their existing suspicions. He should have known that from the moment he was elected first time, he has nothing to gain and everything to lose by engaging in this behaviour, and he should have been more careful.

What amazes me most, is how easy it is to get it right, and how often people get it wrong. A solid communications strategy, a basic understanding of message control and delivery, and a bit of common sense, would go a long way to ensuring this kind of thing doesn’t happen.

From a PR perspective, the easiest and most effective thing Wilson could have done would be to not have made such a stupid comment to begin with. Everything from that point on is damage control, and Wilson’s responses so far have not controlled much of the damage. All he can do now is hope it blows over, and hope there are more exciting things for the press to talk about in the next week or so. He also needs to hope he isn’t labelled by the Conservative Party as a PR liability going forward.


**UPDATE**
You can view the petition calling for the resignation of Rob Wilson MP HERE

Click on the links below to read previous content from Political Sticks:

GUN CONTROL

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

UKIP

NICK CLEGG

MARGARET THATCHER

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES 
A POLITICAL FIRING SQUAD 
THE POLITICS OF PERCEPTION 
MANDY GOES BANANAS - PETER MANDELSON