Nick Griffin: “I understand why liberals can misunderstand what we think.”

Rather controversially, the Conservative blogger (and long suffering West Ham fan) Iain Dale has interviewed BNP leader Nick Griffin for Total Politics. And it’s an absolute masterpiece.

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.

General Election generalisations (cont.)

Continuing on from my recent post, here’s the second batch of Interesting Things to come out of the recent General Election panel debate, hosted by Gorkana.

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.

General Election generalisations

Hello again,

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.

A British Obama?

Frank Skinner (yes, that Frank Skinner) writes in his weekly Times column that British politics needs its own Obama-figure. Someone who could inspire the general public and “get the disillusioned masses back into the polling booths”.

Judging by the reaction in the UK to last year’s presidential election, Frank isn’t the only one who would welcome an Obama-like figure on this side of the atlantic.

But what does ‘a British Obama’ even mean?

What it doesn’t mean (I don’t think) is a prominent, black UK politician. Although Westminster is, even today, far whiter than the average workplace (embarrassingly so), Obama did not inspire such enthusiasm and and admiration  simply because of his race.

What made Obama such an engaging figure was, in my opinion, his manner of speaking. Obama talked during the election campaign as someone who was outside of the normal to-and-fro of politics. He did not engage in the usual political sniping and his tone and manner throughout was one of calm analysis, of someone who is assessing the problem from the outside and is able to spot the solution.

In short, Obama did not sound like a politician. He sounded like a leader.

So, could someone do the same for us? I doubt it.

The British system does not lend itself to this kind of discourse. With a parliamentary rather than presidential system, British politics does not give a politician much room to stand ‘outside the debate’.

Our leaders are never representing themselves in the way that American presidential candidates are. They must speak for the entire party, since it is the party that gets elected, not the individual. This means the emphasis must always be on the difference between opposing parties, rather than one candidate and the establishment in general.

So it looks as though we are stuck with what we have. A choice between two sides (alright, three at a push) discussing broadly similar policies in language (and haircuts) that makes them seem almost identical.

Balls.

Disclaimer: issues discussed on this blog are likely to be over-simplified and any analysis should not be considered comprehensive or correct in any way.

So there’s this new thing. It’s called “social media”.

The last few days has seen some interesting interplay between old and new media. First of all, we’ve had the quite brilliant mydavidcameron.com. If you don’t know what this is, first of all where have you been? And secondly go check it out. It’s pretty self-explanatory.

The success of mydavidcameron.com is a great example of the way newer online forms of media can cause trouble for political parties.

A bold, in-your-face poster like the (now infamous) Cameron one is always going to be open to mockery. But in the age of photoshop and blogging, crowdsourcing and twitter this derision can go viral in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.

This isn’t a few jokes on a TV panel show or in the pub. This is one great idea spreading across the internet and out into mainstream media, growing in scope and popularity as it does so. And, I’d imagine, causing a fair bit of embarrassment to those in Tory HQ.

This isn’t the first time a traditional media campaign has been subverted by social media (anyone remember Clinton’s 3am ad?) and it won’t be the last.

Meanwhile… the Lib Dems have been making it work the other way: gaining interest among the mainstream media by making policy announcements on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Except, as Jon Bernstein has pointed out, they were doing nothing of the sort. Rather, they were playing on the press’ current obsession with all things trendy and digital to gain some handy column inches for what is otherwise likely to be perceived as a non-event.

As Jon writes:

A Twitter and Facebook campaign may generate a debate — that’s what social media can do when used well — but it’s a fair bet that most people know about this latest tweet-fest thanks to old media.

So fair play to them. The Lib Dems need to work harder for the media’s attention and this has gained some extra coverage for their policies and made them look relatively tech-savvy all at he same time.

The truth seems to be that very few politicians get social media. But they all know it’s a big deal. And with each party looking to exploit every possible opportunity as we build towards the election, you can bet they will keep trying.

Oh and this one’s my favourite.

The obligatory first post

Hello there,

So. Welcome to my own little corner of the internet. I know it isn’t much right now but once I’ve moved some more of my stuff in, hung some curtains and put a bit of colour about the place I’m sure it’ll start to feel quite homely.

This is my very first post on my very first blog so not too sure what the protocol is but I think this is the bit where I tell you who I am and what I am going to be talking about.

My name is Phil Corfan and I spend my days working for a B2B PR agency in the UK working with a variety of clients, mainly in the recruitment, HR and technology sectors.

But that isn’t really that interesting.

What I’m mainly going to be talking about here, and why I have started this blog, are the things that I find interesting outside of work. To begin with, the plan is for this blog to focus mainly on politics, both at home and abroad.

OK, so you might not find that interesting either.

But the idea is that there is a lot set to happen in the next six months or so and, rather than sit alone and shout at the telly in frustration, I thought it might be healthier to try and put some thoughts down in a semi-organised fashion.

As time goes on and my limited attention span kicks in, the subject matter will probably become a bit more diverse, For now though, I’m going to try and keep it simple.

So that’s the plan and hopefully the name of this blog reflects what is going to happen: venting and pondering on current events and issues.

Anyway, that should be enough to begin with, since no one will read this anyway.

Bye for now.
Phil