Sketch: Huhne and Warsi shoot fish in a barrel
In a demented PR extravaganza, Huhne and Warsi join forces to kick the Labour party while it’s down.
By Ian Dunt
As Keyser Söze might have said, the greatest PR trick the coalition ever pulled was convincing the world that Gordon Brown is responsible for the deficit.
It’s not as if the financial crisis was a minor news story buried in the back pages, where only London’s chattering classes noticed it. It was a pretty big deal, all things considered. Brown did many foolish and quite vacant things, but creating the financial crisis wasn’t one of them. You might even say (rightly) that he should have imposed far more regulation on the banking sector, but the Tories were hardly biting at the bit demanding it. They’re not even doing it now. The current government now like to remind us that Labour also grew the deficit in the ‘good times’, but those were the same good times when David Cameron was signed up to Labour spending plans.
It is, quite simply, one of the most impressive and startling PR victories in the history of British politics, to take the plain-as-day, you-can-see-it-right-in-front-of-you financial crisis and convince everyone it basically didn’t happen. Actually, it was all Gordon Brown going completely out of control. Like all great legends, there’s an element of truth in it, but the coalition is making a mansion from straw and glue.
Today’s press conference, just another chapter heading in the grand project of creating the ‘Labour cuts’ narrative, had the standard PR scheme all over it. ‘Labour’s Legacy’ was written in gritty, action-movie font on the lecterns in front of Lib Dem energy secretary Chris Huhne and Tory chairman Sayeeda Warsi. The media present were completely overexcited at having something to cover in the August desert, but the audience was beefed up with Tory party activists just in case (I recognised them from the party’s manifesto launch a few months back).
I rather enjoyed the fact that Warsi had been placed on a Sarkozy-style box so that she wasn’t dwarfed by Huhne. Their civil servants are obviously keenly aware of any symbolic gestures which might allude to a coalition power struggle. They emerged a little late, trying hard to smile at each other’s small talk. Huhne always exudes a sense of competence but never looks entirely sane. Warsi constantly looks like she’s about to do the washing up. She was dressed so abysmally today that I – probably the worst dressed man of anyone I know – felt the need to burn out my own eyes. Quite why it was these two being wheeled out was beyond me. The energy secretary and the Tory chairman. Maybe they picked names out of a pot.
For what seemed like hours, Huhne parroted on about what a mess Labour had made of the economy. He insisted on regularly branding the upcoming spending review ‘Labour cuts’, and churned out more rent-a-quote moments than I would have ever thought possible. “Labour’s big spender went on a hell of a bender,” he said, quite seriously, and for a moment I considered changing career. And then, without hesitation: “It was goodbye prudence and hello hangover.”
After several moments, we finally discovered why we were there. Warsi had written to the Labour leadership candidates (except Diane Abbott presumably) demanding they forsake their ministerial severance pay because of how they had mismanaged the economy. A press release later clarified that this would also apply to “other former Labour ministers supporting them”, whatever that means. Former minister supporting one candidate or other in the Labour leadership contest? Presumably that’s all of them.
The letter manoeuvre is a clever and meaningless piece of politics. It keeps Labour on the back foot, responding to a government action, rather than sniping away at the sidelines as growth forecasts are downgraded, long-term unemployment hits new highs and consumer confidence is dented by the scary horror-movie rhetoric of the emergency Budget. It’s good PR, and it is also completely devoid of any substantive or genuine political meaning.
What’s impressive is how well plotted this project is. It was noticeable in the days after the Clegg/Cameron rose garden press conference, with the news diary filled with appropriately spaced ‘events’ involving ministers emerging from Whitehall to tell us how it was all so much worse than expected. These led us inexorably to the emergency Budget, which scared the hell out of everyone. Today’s press conference, and everything you see in parliament’s two-week sitting next month, through to the party conferences and beyond, is about building up to the spending review in October. The new key phrase is ‘Labour cuts’. Expect to see more of that, but only take it half-seriously.
