The Daily Novel

Trust in journalists has been declining for several years.  As evidenced, for an instance by an article last year in the British Journalism Review by Professor Steven Barnett of the University of Westminster last year. This is a review of surveys of journalists and others over several years by YouGov plc.  (Many other surveys before this one had revealed this decline and the growing lack of respect for the journalistic trade.  But, this one is particularly useful in explaining what has been happening in the last few weeks.)

The figures below from Barnett’s article show the percentage change between 2002 and 2008.

Labour ministers -5%

Leading Conservatives -7%

Leading Lib Dems -7%

BBC news journalists -20%

ITV news journalists -31%

Channel Four news journalists -29%

Journalists on up-market papers -22%

Journalists on mid-market papers -18%

Journalists on red top papers +1%

People who run large companies +4%

(The first of these surveys in 2002 showed the public trusted the broadcast media rather than the print media, and the red tops least of all the print media. Hence the small increase in trust of the red tops, who are still bottom of the league.)

The 2008 results show that that a majority do still trust broadcast news and and 44 per cent trust the upmarket newspapers (defined as papers like The Times, The Daily Telegraph and  The Guardian). But less than 20 per cent trust the mid-market papers (The Mail and The Express) and the red tops (The Sun and the Mirror). Details below.

BBC news journalists 61%

ITV news journalists 51%

Channel Four news journalists  52%

Journalists on up-market papers 44%

Journalists on mid-market papers  19%

Journalists on red top papers 15%

So on the basis of this survey, most of the public don’t trust most journalists.

Why?

See next blog.

The media was correct that in predicting that the public anger over MPs expenses would show itself in distrust of all three major parties resulting in a big gains from the fringe parties. They gave massive coverage to the BNP, and although the comment was nearly all negative they gave a national platform in print, on the radio and on television for  its leader, Nick Griffin, who insists his party is not at all extreme.  In the event the BNP got 6.3 per cent of the votes, compared with the Green’s 8.7 per cent, though they got very little media coverage, and most of what  they got dsmissed them as well-meaning idealists. UKIP got somewhat more coverage, quite a lot of it negative, including frequent mentions of their disgraced Euro MPs, who have been milking the Brussels expense system.

UKIP who was the big winner, pushing Labour into third place, with 17.4 per cent of the votes, but that was only up 1.2 points on last time.  That was only a fraction better than the 1 per cent improvement in the Conservative vote. This achieved in spite of the fact that the Conservatives had quite as much negative publicity about their expenses as Labour.  And the Lib Dems, who were much more parsimonious in supping on the Westminster gravy train, actually suffered a fall of 1.1 points in their vote.

So maybe MP’s expenses was not quite as big an influence as the media has been suggesting in Thursday’s votes.  The worst bombs were exploded nearly a month ago. And over the last two weeks the media coverage has been on the shattering effect on the party in charge.  And on the disunity of Labour. Though James Purnell did not resign until after the poll closed, other Labour ministers had resigned. And the disunity of the cabinet had been revealed to all the electorate and confirmed by the Prime Minister, who referred to his chancellor in the past tense, and, then two days later, had to keep him in post.

And, just maybe, the question we should be asking is:

But do the public trust the media?

A subject for another blog.

I have not changed my view that there is no scientific or academic analysis of  the result which can translate it into what would have happened had a British General Election last Thursday.  Because, the number who voted was half the number who vote in general elections.

There is no evidence yet available of what the stay at homes would have done.

But the result is so devastating for Labour that it demands a journalistic comment.

The mainstream media has focussed on the BNP who got 6 per cent of the votes and 2 seats.

Their headlines showed tha UKIP with 17 per cent (11 seats) had pushed Labour (16 per cent) into third place. Britain’s third established political party, the Lib Dems, was fourth  with 14 per cent.

These astonishing results cry out for explanation.

See next blog.

By asking ministers to demonstrate their loyalty.

Not directly. Only one minister stood out, and resigned yesterday, Jane Kennedy. But even she told the media that she had not been ‘directly’ asked by Brown for an oath of loyalty.

She told the media that she was resigning on a matter of conscience. But her resignation got scant media coverage.  What she got can be summed up in one sentence.

Doesn’t she not know that politics is a a dirty game governed by Machevelli, not Jesus Christ?

Gordon Brown triumphed at last night’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

How?

Although this meeting had been headlined in the press as the crucial test, the Government held it in the usual room, which is nowhere big enough for all the PLP even if they are all standing.

The Government whips told all the office holders amongst Labour MPs, numbering well over a hundred, who get extra money on top of their £64,000 salaries, and or/influence, that they should go.

Which they did, so that even some busy cabinet ministers who came at the last minute courld not get in.

So the meeting not only cheered. It drummed the table. Bolstering up their limping leader.

Contrary to my prediction of a few days ago,  Gordon Brown MAY  live on to lead Labour into an election as far ahead as May, 2010.  Why?

I will tell you by twittering.

Saying it all in written sound bites.

(P. S. I have not given up long blogs. This is a training exercise, during which I will try to adapt to the spirit of the times.)

After listening to the man himself on the Andrew Marr BBC television show I don’t want to make any corrections to what I said in my earlier blog today about Lord Mandelson’s role in Gordon Brown’s reshuffle. He dismissed everything as the tittle tattle that passes for journalism. He and Ed Balls had been laughing together about the press stories of a row between them. He continually blocked the gentle but presistent questions put by Marr. Despite what we have all been reading Hazel Blears was quite quite happy with the way Brown had dealt. He knew because he had talked. He managed to ignore totally Marr’s quiet assertion, that he also had talked to Blears and got the opposite impression.

The mask of the master of spin slipped only once. When he said, while defending Brown:

I can assure you that the cabinet are united against him.

Which, predictably is now a headline on the Daily Mail site.

I continue to believe those political reporters who have detailed Mandelson’s crucial role in gettting Brown to change key elements in his planned reshuffle.

And I continue to believe that the Daily Mail story that Tony Blair is encouraging the rebels is not true. The Independent in a long story an hour or so ago, reports that he has been shocked by the behaviour of his former aide, James Purnell. Which is entirely in character.

And I continue to believe that what we have been seeing in the last few days is not an orchestrated plot.

Mandelson insisted today the if Brown resigned the new leader would have to hold an immediate general election, which Labour would lose because it would lead to a battle for the leadership, which would expose the splits in the Labour Party.

This is a view that has been held by many ministers and MPs. But in the last few weeks in the last few weeks, an increasing number of ministers and MPs have warmed to the idea of the affable Alan Johnson, as an ideal caretaker PM, who can steer Labour who can unify the party and start to win back the trust of the voters.

Because make no mistake about it, the Labour Party is split and all the electorate know it. But no-one is quite sure how many now want Brown to go before the election. And, in this Mandelson is quite right.

If Brown does not resign voluntarily he will not be ousted by a letter from even one hundred MPs. He will not be ousted until a credible figure stands against him.

The two most credible potential candidates, Alan Johnson and David Milibrand, have not plotted against him. Both are capable of the job. But neither of them is hungry for supreme power. They are the kind of MPs who are absolutely not in politics priimarily to win glory and make money for themselves. They are not devious schemers.

To add to the current confusion, The Guardian today has reversed its bold editorial of a few days ago, condemned the rebellion as a shambles, and now states that Brown should hang on for a year.

I doubt whether that is possible. And I fear Brown may also live to regret, of all his recent decisions, his recall to the cabinet of Peter Mandelson.

He used to be called the Prince of Darkness, but I would like to re-christen him as the High Priest of Devious Scheming. Which is fine when you are working behind the scenes, but when you do it on television, it tends to show.

If other people get the impression that I have got from the events of the last few days, that Mandelson is now calling the shots, not Brown. He explained the leaked emails to Gordon Brown, as being helpful advice. He was telling his friend Gordon, to be true to himself. He was, in otherr words, behaving like a psycho-therapist, which happens to be the new profession Peter Draper, the ex-colleague to whom Mandelson sent these emails.

As it happens, I know a bit more about pscho-therapy than Mandelson, and my own view, is that a dignified resignation now, would be the best treatment for Gordon’s own personal mental health.

And I also think, contrary to the views of most political journalists, that a proper election for a new leader, would not lead to party members destroying each other. It would bring out into the open the widely differing political views in the present party. It would bring out into the open the battles that have been goinig on behind the scenes and involve the wider party membership in choosing between them.

That could be a healing process. Much bettter than the Star Chamber which is trying to single out the worst offenders on MPs expenses. Much better than behaving like Lord to be Sugar, and showing how tough he is by firing people every week with a smile on his face.

After listening to the man himself on Andrew Marr’s BBC television show I have to make a correction to my blog earlier today. Alan Sugar is not joining the government. His role as enterprise czar is merely that of an adviser, who will be doing what he has done for several years, going around the country encoraging enterprise. He is polically neutrel, although he has known Blair for several years. He would be perfectly happy to continue the role under a Conservative government but he does not know David Cameron, so cannot say anything about that possiblity.

He has talked with the BBC and wants to make it clear that he did not want to take on any job which would threaten the BBC’s huge investment in The Apprentice.

He did, however, express one political view. He thinks David Cameron must be in heaven because of the Telegraph revelations. He does not appear to have noticed that has struck down quite as many leading Tories as Labourites.

Labour has probably been more hurt, not because the revelations abour their MPs are any worse than the Consevatives, but because they are the party in power. They had the responsibility for managing the expenses. And, because they have a large majority, they must bear the bigger responsibity for dragging their feet on revealing the details and exempting MPs expenes from the Freedom of Information Act.

Gordon Brown, presently across the channel with Prince Charles, will be going to see the Queen in Buck House within days rather than weeks, to offer his resignation. This prediction is made before the results of Thursday’s European election have been announced. Because the Euro result will tell us nothing tangible. It will provoke a guessing game as to whether the result proves better or worse than expected for Labour. And an even bigger guessing game; trying to calculate how British voters would have voted on Thursday if they had been voting in a general election, instead of for European MPs and some local councillors.

As I realised yesterday, when doing my analysis of the council elections, the three elections are so different that that, however good the analysis, it is just not possible to predict the results of one of these elections from the behaviour of voters in the other two.

Even in normal times.

And we are not living in normal times.

So instead I have done an analysis of the Saturday newspapers, the Saturday television and radio programmes, and the Sunday newspapers, already available on the web, before breakfast.

The dominant message from the headlines, and from those ministers who are prepared to speak on radio and television or to be quoted in the newspapers, is that Brown’s the ministers have now decided that changing the leader before the election would be more damaging than damaging than sticking with Brown. And it is not only ministers who are peddling this line. Jon Cruddas, perhaps Brown’s fiercest critic on the back benches and the leading left wing potential candidate for the leadership, calls on the party to unite behind Brown in a signed article for the Mirror.

But all the newspapers are full of long stories about the events of the past few days, which provide lots of evidence about what ministers have been saying to the political journalists ‘off the record’. And who actually called the shots in last the re-shuffle.

It was none other than the Prince of Darkness himself. Peter Mandelson is now said to be deputy Prime Minister, though his offical title is First Secretary of State, and he is an un-elected peer, not even an MP. He is also Business Secretary and has been given responsibity for education as well. Which was part of the portfolio of Ed Balls, Brown’s closest friend and ally, who he was hoping to make Chancellor.

But forget titles and responsibilies. What nearly all the newspapers are agreed on is that Mandelson was the prime mover in last week’s events. It was Mandelson’s reshuffle.

You could say that he is Prime Minister in all but name. And understandably, Ed Balls, who is sometimes called the schools minister and sometimes called the childrens minister, is ‘furious’.

Both Guardian Unlimited and the Telegraph are now reporting that James Purnell did not act alone and that last week’s events were the work of several Blairites. The Mail, which pushed that view a couple of days ago, goes one better. They imply that the master mind who orchestrated the attempted coup was Tony Blair himself.

In a damning verdict on Mr Brown’s character, Mr Blair said of the Prime Minister recently: ‘The darkness in his heart and the lies will be his downfall.’

The source for this ‘quote’ is a ‘friend’ of Blair’s, who talked to him ‘recently’.

The Mail’s story today is remarkably similar to my spoof Daily Mail blog on Friday.

So I had better re-iterate that it was a spoof.

I do not believe that Blair is controlling his former colleagues like puppets on a string. I agree with today’s Independent, there was no plot in the accepted sense.

The reality is that the Blairites are now, and have been for some time, ex-Blairites. Including Lord Mandelson.

But all the newspapers carry reports of leaked emails written by Mandelson a year ago in which he makes a damning assessment of Brown’ character and political ability. Some of the newspapers suggest that these show how much Mandelson has changed his mind. Others imply that this is what he still feels.

In due course we shall discover the truth.

(Picture from The Guardian.)

Thursday’s  English local elections show there is no evidence that our democracy is in danger as a result of the month long exposure of MP’s expenses by the Daily Telegraph. This is the conclusion of my own analysis of the results. Before the voting started we all knew that the people were furious with what they had heard about the extravagant expense claims. The opinion polls showed it. As did the angry quotes from men and women in the streets and the re-actions of the audience on national programmes like BBC One Question Time and Radio Four Any Questions. But when the voters got to the polling booths they kept their cool.

The Tories won control of 30 councils, up seven. Labour lost control of four councils, leaving them none at all of those voting yesterday. The Lib Dems lost one council leaving them with one. The councils where no party has an overall majority fell by two to three. In terms of practical political power the results are a big success for David Cameron’s Conservatives. This is almost entirely due to our first past the post voting system.

The result in terms of seats won show a somewhat different picture. The Conservatives won 1476 seats, up 233 on last time. The Lib Dems won 473 down four. Labour won 176 seats, also down four. The others won 164 seats, up 37. (The differencces are again explained by first past the post, which favours the winning party, and the councils voting yesterday were mostly Conservative strongholds.)

The overwhelming majority of the others are the independents, who won 118 seats, up 21. The independents are the survivors of one of the best British political traditions. Local citizens, from all walks of life, who fight and win local elections. They belong to no party at all, because they are well known in their neighbourhoods. They included in the town of my youth, small shop keepers, bus drivers and our window cleaner.).

Next biggest in the Others main group are ‘other others’, too diverse to be categorised, 22 seats up six. They are followed by the Greens, who won 16 seats up six.

The scare about voters turning away to the fringe parties is fuelled by fears of the BNP, which often sounds fascist, and UKIP, a right-wing party united only by a hatred of all things European. Both were fighting these particular council elections for the first time. UKIP won 6 seats. The BNP won 3 seats.

Hence my headline.

 But a lot of people are worried, because the figures quoted most prominently by the mainstream national media are the percentage figures of what the local results would mean to the parties share of the national vote in a general election. They are nearly all based on a complex formula devised by a Scotttish academic.

 What they show is the Conservatives in the lead with 38 per cent, the Lib Dems second with 28 per cent, Labour at a new low of 23 per cent and the others at 11 per cent.

They are, as I hope I have demonstrated here, extremely misleading. No formula can satisfactorily deal with translating local results for the ‘others’, to a national election, where there is no equivalent to the local independents who have been active in their backyards for years.

A much better guide to what the voters are doing is look at the actual seat figures. The 164 ‘others’ vote on Thursday, amounts to 7 per cent of the people who voted. But the total for the BNP, UKIP and the Greens, comes to just 1 per cent. These are the only three fringe parties who also contest national elections.

To conclude, the fears of a take-over by the extreamists are much exaggerated. But there is no doubt that the electorate wants a change of some kind. So I think the next election provides an opportunity for a few independent MPs on the national scene. So long as they are as famous as Esther Rantzen, Martin Bell and Joanna Lumley, they are in with a chance.

And that would be a good thing for our democracy.