Page 161 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 140

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
tabloids, and should appear in as many statesman-like settings as possible’
(ibid., p. 88). Thus, he was seen touring the country in a distinguished, ‘prime
ministerial’ car, flanked by police outriders, and carrying himself with the
bearing of one confidently on the verge of real political power. Slick, photogenic
front-bench spokespersons like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were preferred
in public campaigning work to the more radical voices of John Prescott, Tony
Benn and Ken Livingstone.
Such tactics were again insufficient, however, to deliver electoral success.
Labour improved its position by comparison with the results of the 1987
election, but failed once more to deprive the Conservatives of an overall
majority. In the aftermath of a fourth consecutive general election defeat, an
internal debate began within the party which echoed earlier ambiguities
about the value of political marketing. Once again, senior Labour voices
could be heard decrying the pernicious influence of the image-makers and
asserting that Labour should dispense with them, or at least downgrade their
role in campaigning. The SCA was accused of robbing the party of its
socialist identity, in favour of red roses and gloss.
Despite such criticisms, however, the election of Tony Blair as leader in
July 1994 signalled the ascendancy of Labour’s image-managers: those like
Patricia Hewitt, Peter Mandelson and others who believed that a Labour
victory was conditional on ‘moving from a policy committee based process
to a communication based exercise’ (Heffernan and Marqusee, 1992, p.
103). The astonishing, and unpredicted landslide election victory of May
1997 vindicated that approach, which inevitably followed New Labour into
government. Professional communicators like Mandelson, Alistair Campbell
and Charlie Whelan were key players in the first Labour term, often com-
manding more media attention than the politicians who were ostensibly their
masters.
As ‘the people who live in the dark’ moved into the media spotlight,
however, political public relations, and spin in particular, became a victim of
what I have called elsewhere ‘demonisation’ by journalists (McNair, 2004),
its techniques and practitioners almost universally reviled. In the most blatant
example of ‘spinning out of control’, a media adviser in the government’s
transport department, Jo Moore, was caught out when, on 11 September
2001, she sent an internal e-mail suggesting that this would be ‘a good day to
bury bad news’. She survived that incident but was removed from her post a
few months later after another PR gaffe, as was her minister in charge,
Stephen Byers. In September 2002 the Sunday Times reported the ‘dirty tricks’
activities of New Labour’s so-called Attack Unit, which varied from simple
rebuttals of perceived smears against the party and its leadership to compiling
dossiers on opponents and leaking negative details from them to the media.
As a result of such stories, coverage of which was increasingly dominating the
political news agenda in the first half of Blair’s second term, his government
was required to trim some of the excesses of its communication apparatus and

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