But does it really matter what Ed Miliband says? The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland doesn’t think so:

[I]n short, it is personality, not policy, that counts.

How else to explain today’s Comres poll, which had the Conservatives one point ahead of Labour. This despite rising unemployment, an enfeebled economy and a series of cock-ups and U-turns that should have the Tories gasping for air. Some of that can be explained by the Conservatives’ success in persuading voters that they are stoically engaged in the hard work of clearing up a mess not of their making. But polls show that the Tories’ numbers are boosted by the voters’ high regard for David Cameron, while Labour’s are dragged down by their lukewarm view of Ed Miliband. Comres found just 24% regard Miliband as a credible prime minister-in-waiting – compared to 57% who do not.

There was similarly depressing reading to be found in a voluminous survey commissioned, admittedly, by the former Tory party treasurer Lord Ashcroft… He found a Cameron premium, with the PM more popular than his party, as well as a Miliband deficit, with more than one in three voters less favourable to Miliband than they are to Labour. The words focus groups used to describe Cameron were “determined”, “competent” and “ruthless” – while the one volunteered for Miliband was “weird”.

It’s true that personality has probably never been more important in politics. Political apathy, the diversification of news sources and the rise of the soundbite all mean that, increasingly, modern voters are more interested in how politicians look and sound, and less interested in what they think and say.

For Ed Miliband this is clearly a problem. After all, he looks like an over-large schoolboy who still writes his name on his pencil case. And he sounds like… an over-large schoolboy who still writes his name on his pencil case.

But is it a bad thing in general? Well sometimes perhaps, but I think Freedland is overly negative about the idea that voters are swayed by personalities and appearances rather than arguments and ideas. Isn’t it only natural that we should find it easier to judge by appearances?

After all, in our day to day lives we tend not to come across people who stand before us and tell us exactly what they think about the issues of the day, why they think that and why people who don’t think that are wrong. Without this insight into their hearts and souls (or as politicians love to say, their “values”), we have to decide who we like or trust based on other factors; things like the way they present themselves, the way they talk etc.

Our normal lives condition us to judge people on these things and, to a greater or lesser extent, we rely on these judgements in nearly every walk of life; from job interviews to dinner party small talk.

And let’s be honest, the way someone presents him or herself is probably as good an indication of how honest or decisive or intelligent they are as what they have to say about Britain’s structural deficit*. And, at a time when the UK’s three main political parties are all fighting over a narrow patch of centre ground, it’s not surprising that the public are looking to other things to tell them apart.

*Especially when all they have to say is that it is a Bad Thing and the other guys are, you know, completely wrong about it and stuff.

However, having been thinking about it all this week there were one or two thoughts that I wanted to add to the ever growing heap of opinions.

Why it’s like the expenses scandal

When it first became clear exactly how huge this story was going to be, it was common to hear the NOTW phone hacking affair compared with the MPs expenses scandal. At first, I thought this was a little glib. Surely, the two stories are similar only in size?

However, on reflection I think there is a deeper similarity between them. They both, of course, really touched a nerve with the public and I think that it was for the same reason. Both scandals became the main topic of public conversation, not because the revelations themselves were surprising, but because they weren’t. They confirmed what we already thought.

Politicians these days talk about the expenses scandal as if it was the moment that people in this country lost faith in politics. But “pre-expenses” most people already thought that politicians were self-interested, untrustworthy and petty-minded. The Telegraph’s big reveal confirmed that to be the case and, collectively, we could not get enough of it. We loved having our long-held suspicions confirmed in the newspapers every day for a fortnight.

I think the same has happened over the last couple of weeks to tabloid journalism. No one was under the illusion that tabloid journalists were paragons of virtue. We knew it was a mucky and, at best, an amoral business. The NOTW phone hacking scandal simply confirmed what we already thought. And then some. That’s why it has, if you’ll forgive a horrible cliche, captured the public’s imagination to such an extent and it will be fascinating to see what the longer term impact on the tabloid press will be.

The role of social media

Personally, I’ve seen two dozen posts on this topic already. Half saying what a crucial role twitter, facebook etc played in the NOTW shutting down. And the other half saying the exact opposite.

So I’m not going to talk about that. What I will say is that, for me, this story really demonstrated just how fast stories move once they hit social networks. Social media means there is effectively no delay between event X happening and everyone finding out. Sitting at my desk at work, I was able to follow the breaking news over twitter and find out that the NOTW was being shut down or that Rebekah Brook had resigned literally within seconds of it happening.

But it’s not just about how quickly we get information. Because millions of people are able to follow the story as it is happening, everything happens so much quicker. The news that key advertisers were pulling out of the NOTW was broadcast over twitter as it happened, which put pressure on other advertisers and pretty soon the whole story snowballed very, very quickly.

All of this means that, for stories this big, the key players have very little time to think. If they had a bit more time, perhaps they wouldn’t, as a kneejerk reaction, have shut down the country’s oldest and best selling newspaper.

What this says about journalism

Finally, just a very quick one. At the heart of this story there is the contrast between two types of journalism. The NOTW’s phone hacking only came to light because of the many, many hours put in by The Guardian’s team, led by Nick Davies. They chased this story for months and did so without knowing if they’d ever get the missing pieces they needed to go to print.

The difference between that team and the NOTW hacks who broke the law and invaded people’s privacy just because it was a quicker and easier way to get small-minded exclusives is so great that it’s hard to believe they could ever claim to be doing the same job.

Essentially, Hari has admitted to inserting quotes from previous interviews into his own pieces, as if they are things that have been said to him directly. He claims this is not a big deal because he only does so “where the interviewee was making the same or very similar point to me in the interview that they had already made more clearly in print.”

The arguments for and against this practice have been going on on twitter all day so I won’t summarise all the pros and cons here but having been thinking about this on and off all day I wanted to have my say too. And, after all, isn’t that what these vanity project blogs are for anyway?

So, here are the two main problems that I have with Hari’s ‘methods’:

1) It misleads the reader

So Hari swaps in one quote from an interviewee for one which expresses a similar point but more articulately. So what? Well, if these articles were straight forward Q&A pieces that would be one thing (arguably still not OK, but less dodgy I think). However, Hari has a very particular style. He calls his pieces ‘intellectual portraits’ and the tone of them is not your typical interview. Often he describes the interview very vividly, setting the scene and telling the story as if it a short story; usually starring our intrepid reporter as a bold seeker of truth, someone not afraid to go toe-to-toe with his intelligent but controversial subjects.

For instance:

After saying this, he falls silent, and we stare at each other for a while. Then he says, in a quieter voice: “The facts are clear. Israel has no real intention of quitting the territories or allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their rights. No change will come to pass in the complacent, belligerent, and condescending Israel of today. This is the time to come up with a rehabilitation programme for Israel.”

Powerful stuff huh? You can read the full piece here.

The problem is that these words weren’t said to Hari in this interview. He may have said something similar but Hari’s pieces rely so much on the drama of the encounter, on the story-telling and the passionate argument and counter-argument that swapping in other words from an entirely separate conversation is surely misrepresentative.

After all, if things didn’t happen exactly like this then how do we know that what Hari is the same either? How do we know these conversations were like that at all?

Which, rather neatly I think, brings me on to my other point…

2) It relies too much on the writer’s judgement

If journalists don’t have to report exactly what an interviewee said to them but are allowed to swap their words in for other things that they have said previously, then we – the readers – have to place a huge amount of trust in the journalist.

In any article we have to trust the journalist to not correctly understand what the interviewee has said to them and record it accurately. But, if they can later decide the point has been expressed poorly or could be phrased better, we then have to trust them to replace these sections of the interview with other, older quotes that are not only pithier but exactly equivalent to the same point.

If the article deals with the complicated theories and concepts that Hari’s tend to then this is never going to be a simple task. After all, if I was a controversial and/or intellectual thinker (if only!) then I would probably want the right to choose my words very precisely. The ideas that Hari and his subjects deal with contain a certain level of nuance and, even if that weren’t the case, I’d be very wary of trusting anyone to interpret the exact thought behind a specific sentence and replace it without altering the meaning at all.

After all, this is why journalists like to quote people on the record in the first place, because otherwise we would all just have to rely on what they claim to have heard.

All in all, I don’t think Hari’s “crimes” are perhaps deserving of the outrage that has been heaped on him (but then again, that’s twitter for you and he’s hardly shy of an outrageous ad hominem headline himself). The best analogy for his crime/mistake/whatever I’ve seen is from the Media Blog, which suggests that what Hari has been doing is basically akin to lip-synching rather than singing live:

He’s been presenting performances ‘as live’ - giving the impression the words on the page happened in the moment and were captured by his pen and his line of questioning - when really they have been finessed and prepared by expert third party producers beforehand.

So… it’s not great. But it’s not the worst thing either. And it gave us #interviewsbyhari, and that’s much funnier than the truth anyway.

Then later at Prime Minister’s Questions, Ed Miliband called for him to resign. The next day the Sun called him ‘a danger to women’ on its front page.

Now, this is clearly a complicated and very emotive issue and Clarke didn’t explain his viewpoint very well at all. But if you listen to the interview and think for a second about what Clarke might be trying to say, it’s pretty clear that, while he is guilty of fluffing his lines, he is probably not a misogynistic dinosaur.

As Brian Barder at LabourList put it:

The charge against Clarke by such authorities on social policy as the Sun newspaper and the right-wing Tory cave-dwellers is that by acknowledging the obvious truth that some rape cases are more serious than others, he implied that some rapes are not serious at all.  In fact he implied nothing of the sort, and if he initially expressed himself clumsily, he made ample amends subsequently by stressing, as anyone of sound mind must, that rape is serious in any circumstances.  The proposition that all rapes are equally serious is however plainly ridiculous.

Barder thinks that Labour shouldn’t be calling for Clarke to resign because he would likely be replaced by someone much more right wing who would be less likely to make the changes that Labour feels are necessary. He is the lesser of two evils basically.

But Ed Miliband and Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan called for him to quit anyway. Why? To score political points.

And this is my problem with this whole story. The people causing trouble for Clarke, whether in the media or the Shadow Cabinet, KNEW that he wasn’t guilty of what they were accusing him. They must have done, they’re not idiots. They just think we are. And so when they saw an opportunity to take a couple of clumsy phrases on a very emotive topic, put a spin on them, and (fingers crossed!) end his career, they went for it.

And that is basically how our media and political parties operate. Don’t worry about whether something is a good idea or a bad idea. Forget what the actual impact of a policy might be. And, above all, don’t under any circumstances give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Just get them to make a mistake and say something that will end their career.

And the problem with that is not that some lovely politicians have to go and get a real job (you know like in the media or something). The problem is that it creates a situation where the people in government are actively discouraged from saying anything interesting at all. You can hear them going on Newsnight or Radio 4 or whatever it might be and all they want to do is get through it without any major gaffes while some Paxman wannabe tries to tear them to shreds.

And then people moan that there are no personalities in politics any more. It’s no coincidence that this happened to Ken Clarke, someone who is very much an old school politician with at least a glimmer of a personality. (For further evidence, see pretty much any Vince Cable interview.)

We have somehow created an environment where the benefits of expressing an original idea or opinion are far outweighed by the risks. And what do we get? Little more than soundbites and obfuscation. Survival of the blandest. Tony Blair. David Cameron. The Milibands.

Anyway, all this protest hoohah was bugging me yesterday and I was trying to figure out why. So far, I think there are a couple of reasons.

1) The “voice of the people”

Protesting is not really ‘democracy in action’ and yet people are constantly claiming that it is. Democracy means asking everyone what they think and then doing what is least unpopular.

I mean if you feel strongly enough to walk around central london all day shouting slogans then fine, you are free to do that. But the fact that thousands of people all feel strongly enough to do so doesn’t actually prove anything. It doesn’t show that the whole country has turned against something or even that whatever you’re marching about is generally unpopular.

There is always a silent majority that is a bit meh about everything. They almost certainly don’t like the idea of spending cuts (who would?) but they think that, on balance, a country with a MAHUSIVE budget deficit probably doesn’t have much choice.

All a march demonstrates is that some people are willing to march. They are no more the voice of the majority than the thousands of people who trudged around ikea yesterday.

2) Protestor chic

But by far the most annoying thing about yesterday’s protests was this; Ed Miliband comparing the ‘struggle’ of yesterday’s protestors to those of the Suffragettes, the American civil rights movement and anti-apartheid campaigners.Yes. He really did do that.

Now clearly this is ridiculous. So why did he do it? Either he’s an idiot with absolutely no sense of perspective. Or it’s because he wants to pander to the right-on, student masses who just want something to protest about. He wants to be a hero of student unions across the country and so he says that they’re following in a long tradition of noble causes.

And that’s the thing. People are protesting because it’s cool. It shows how sincere and passionate you are and is a great way to show off your ironic placard writing skills. And for many people it doesn’t really matter what there is to protest about. If it wasn’t this it would be something else.

Of course, you might disagree. But I bet you Ed Miliband doesn’t.

The cartoon is below and was reproduced on the telegraph’s blog pages with the headline “Newspaper runs ‘homo’ cartoon. Silence from Twitter because it’s the Guardian.”



Overlooking the fact that this cartoon really isn’t very funny, Telegraph blogger Damian Thompson seems to be upset about the lack of outrage it has caused. (So far at least, I mean there’s still time.)

The implication seems to be that the mass ‘lefty’ hordes of twitter only kick up a fuss when the Daily Mail and co make similar “jokes” because the mean old ‘lefty’ hordes of twitter just don’t like the Daily Mail and co.

The conclusion we are supposed to draw – one which the majority of telegraph commenters seem to have leapt to quite eagerly – is that the lack of outrage exposes some kind of hypocrisy deep within the psyche of your averaging twittering guardianista.

There seems to me, to be a couple of things wrong with this.

1) How offensive a joke is can depend on who is telling it

Context matters. You might laugh at a joke made at your expense by a close friend. However, if a stranger were to make the same kind of joke, you’d be much more likely to take it personally.

Equally, if an organisation/person/newspaper (delete as applicable) which has a reputation for homophobia/racism/xenophobia people tells a joke about gay people/ethnic minorities/foreigners people are more likely to find it offensive than if it comes from a source that is generally seen as being supportive of that group of people.

The Guardian has many prejudices but it isn’t homophobic. Therefore the public is less likely to take offence at the use of the word homo than it would be from other newspapers you can think of.

2) The twittersphere is unpredictable

There isn’t a group of full-time internet monitors reading everything and choosing what to cause a fuss about. Twitterstorms like the ones aimed at Jan Moir et al happen to a large extent by accident; certain things spread from person to person and before you note the whole world is talking about them (cf. Charlie Sheen).

There are undoubtedly thousands of offensive things being said all over the world everyday (some of them not even in the daily mail). The reason they don’t all trend on twitter isn’t because of some mass liberal conspiracy which chooses who gets ‘picked on’ and who doesn’t. It’s because a disorganised rabble of thousands of people are never going to be consistent in what becomes popular and what doesn’t.

The weirdly bitter tone of this telegraph post suggests that they do not get either of these things.

Now call me a spoilsport and an old fuddy duddy if you will, but this strikes me as a particularly stupid idea. Why so? Well, glad you asked, what with me having prepared these bullet-pointed responses and all…

1. It’s posturing

This is simply a cheap political tactic to show that the new government is “listening”. Why else choose Clegg the (supposed) pioneer of the new politics to front it up?

Are the government actually going to abolish the laws that are the least popular? No of course not. They are not about to legalise drugs or abolish road tax (although I’m sure both those ideas would go down pretty well with the masses). This is a stunt pure and simple.

2. It won’t work

Oh sure, the wisdom of the crowds and all that. Open up the process of governing to the general public and watch the brilliant ideas pour in. Its a lovely idea in theory but have you actually spoken to many members of the public? Particularly the opinionated ones who jump at the chance to tell people where you’ve been going wrong?

Well, just in case you’ve been lucky enough to avoid Joe and Joanna Bloggs lately. Here’s a summary of suggestions received on the BBC website earlier today.

“Prison meant to be for punishment, but the so called Human Rightists plead for mercy to those who already voileted [sic] others rights and social harmony by committing crime… I have heard by many that going to prison gives them some sort of peace of mind and better life.Is the government serious?”

“Make all goods sold by weight/qty use imperial standards.”

“How about get rid of all laws and let people use common sense instead.”

“I would make being nude in public legal.”

Even if there were any good suggestions amongst this lot, you’d be hard pressed to find them amongst the loonies, ranters and piss-takers. This initiative is not going to solve anything.

3. It’s a job for a professional

We have a representative democracy for a reason. Being in charge of something as huge and complicated as a country is a full time job. Every decision impacts on every other decision and you have to thoroughly research and consider as many of the consequences as possible before enacting (or abolishing) any laws. You cannot do this during your lunchbreak or while watching Jeremy Kyle.

Inviting anyone and everyone to “contribute” to the business of government, just reinforces the idea that anyone can run the country. Not everyone can and we should stop pretending otherwise.

4. You’re representatives, so represent.

Finally, is asking for suggestions like this really democratic? Shouldn’t it be a bit harder to change the laws of a nation than posting a suggestion on a website? This kind of thing will just attract suggestions from a certain type of people. You know who I mean. The busybodies, the activists, the people who call into phone-ins. The ranting and foaming members of the public who are opinionated but not necessarily informed.

Making any decision based on what these people have to say is not only INSANE, it ignores the huge and silent majority of people who voted for their MP and now expect them to get on and do their bloody job rather than having to step in every five minutes and have their say all over again. Most people are busy enough without having to clean up the statute books as well.

Griffin divides opinion. Not so much in terms of people agreeing with him (fortunately) but in regard to the best way to deal with him and his party. There is the view that, by allowing Griffin into the mainstream media, we are implicitly suggesting his agenda should be taken seriously and giving credence to his party’s views.

I disagree with this. The BNP thrives upon its ‘outsider’ status. Griffin loves to be able to paint himself as the voice of the people, shut out from the halls of power by the political elite who don’t care for the mythical ‘average Brit’ to whom the BNP condescendingly panders.

By inviting Griffin along to Question Time, interviewing him for reputable sites and so on, not only do we prevent the BNP from playing this particular card – we get to show him and his party for who, and what, they really are.

We need to defeat their ideas, not just repress them.

This has to be done properly however. Griffin is no PR genius but neither is he a total fool and he should not be taken lightly. It’s therefore fantastic to see Dale allow Griffin just enough rope to hang himself.

I love the way that Griffin’s constant defence is ‘we may be racist and hateful, but we used to be a lot worse.’

I recommend you read the whole interview, but here are my favourite bits of Griffin nonsense.

If your son brought home an Asian girlfriend, what would your reaction be?

Much the same reaction as I know many Sikhs and West Indians would give, which is: “I’m not comfortable with this and you need to both really think about it because you’ve both got two different bloodlines and two different cultures and when you mix them up you destroy both of them.”

…

What about national debt?

We would get it down. It’s safe to assume there’d be a great reluctance of the assorted financial institutions around the world to lend money to a BNP government, although generally they lend to everybody, don’t they?

They did Nick. And that caused a bit of a problem if you remember.

The first Internet election?

• This is being billed as the first internet election but, as the Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner pointed out, that makes it our ‘fourth first internet election so far’
• When asked what the impact of social media was likely to be on the election, the answer was basically ‘not a lot’
• Social networking is still ‘immature’ in the UK and, while huge numbers of people use Facebook, Twitter et al, they are not used to discuss politics
• Unless a game-changing social media campaign is launched in the next few weeks, this isn’t likely to change
• The biggest impact of social media is likely to be as a source of stories for the traditional press, which (surprise, surprise) the panel all agreed was going to play a big role

The pre-election Budget

• Alistair Darling’s Budget on 24^th March is going to be ‘hugely relevant and irrelevant at the same time’
• It will be have a big role to play in terms of giving Labour a chance to set out it’s stall for the election but, since everything is likely to change within a few months, it is unlikely to have a big impact on the market
• What is of interest, is what kind of Budget Darling will serve up. Will it be a Budget for the UK’s economic  recovery or one that will serve up more of Gordon Brown’s beloved dividing lines?

Political apathy? Who cares?

• When asked what role the media played in creating the huge levels of public apathy and cynicism towards British politics, the panel (unsurprisingly) refused to accept any responsibility
• Dan Roberts pointed out that politicians created scepticism by being such evasive and paranoid interviewees (this seems very much like a ‘chicken and egg’ kind of argument to me )
• Iain Martin claimed that people talked about politics in this way because it matters to people and GPW made the claim that politics is a dirty business and the media has to report things as they are
• Jeremy Warner’s answer was perhaps the most revealing however. He made the point that Labour has constantly tried to manipulate the media over the past decade and more so they should expect no less.

While this Labour-specific attack might not be surprising from the so-called ‘Torygraph’, I think all these answers are revealing in that they show how hostile the relationship between Government and the press has become. With such defensiveness and cynicism among the press, it’s only natural it should spill out on to their pages.

So this whole blog thing kind of lost momentum there didn’t it? Still, I’m trying to get back in the swing with a nice hefty post.

This morning I attended a panel discussion run by Gorkana, the PR and media database company, with some of the country’s best respected journos discussing the upcoming election.

It was a fascinating discussion from a diverse and opinionated panel, comprised of:

• Michael Wilson, former Business Editor of Sky News and panel chair
• George Pascoe-Watson, former Political Editor at The Sun and the self-proclaimed ‘mastermind’ behind the paper’s switch to the Conservatives
• Jeremy Warner, Assistant Editor for The Daily Telegraph
• Dan Roberts, Business Editor for The Guardian
• Iain Martin, Deputy Editor for The Wall Street Journal Europe and prolific blogger

It was a lively debate with some great insights and plenty of (polite) disagreement but a few key opinions and ideas really stood out for.  I’ve summarised some of these below with more to follow another day. Perhaps.

#1 It’s the economy, stupid

• All the panel agreed that this year’s election is going to be based on one thing: the economy
• Warner was adamant that the one thing British business cares about this year is the government deficit: they want to know how and when it will be reduced and, so far, neither Labour or the Conservatives have provided any real assurances in this regard
• According to Warner, ‘Brown’s own personal “killer app” is that he can claim to have single-handedly saved the UK from a second Great Depression’
• This means a lot is likely to depend on the economic results for the end of the first quarter, which will come out before the election. If Britain has slipped back into recession, Labour’s key message will be badly damaged.

#2 Labour aren’t doing well, the Conservatives are doing badly

• ‘In the future, the Conservatives campaign will be held up as an example of “how not to win an election”’ – Iain Martin
• The consensus was, given Labour and Gordon Brown’s record, it is astonishing that the parties are so close in the polls
• This can only be the fault of the Tories. In the words of Iain Martin, they should be ‘going to town with a baseball bat over Gordon Brown’s economic record’
• Instead, however, the Conservatives have been putting forward their own alternative proposals. This is a mistake because what they really need is…

#3 One clear message

• In the age of 24-hour news and the 7 second soundbite, you need a simple, clear message to stand out. This applies not just to politics but to all mainstream media campaigns.
• The Conservatives have been launching a wide variety of policies and changing their minds. In short, they have been saying too much
• Meanwhile, Labour (under the battle-scarred leadership of Mandelson and co) have been hammering away at one clear message: ‘take another look at the Tories’. This has started to stick.

#4 BUT we’re still heading for a Tory government

• Despite the recent collapse of the Tories’ poll lead, the panel all agreed the Conservatives are going to win
• Pascoe-Watson even predicted Conservatives would have an absolute majority of at least 40. The argument being that the Tories’ rebrand has been aimed at winning votes from the Lib Dems, who (in theory) would now prefer a Conservative government to a Labour one
• Apart from Brown, not even Labour believe they can win. Ministers don’t expect to be back in office and David Miliband is being positioned as the next Labour Leader.