How Cameron pulled off the biggest coup of the campaign
Everyone is busy piling into the right-wing print press for being Cameron cheerleaders, brainwashing voters into inexplicably agreeing to five more years of austerity, £12 billion of welfare cuts, the unravelling of our NHS and intense uncertainty over the union with both Scotland and the EU.
The precise impact of newspaper headlines is uncertain, but I don’t think anyone can deny that continually pumping out anti-Labour and anti-Miliband rhetoric can be anything other than electorally toxic. Yet no one seems to be addressing the impact the media had on the election result in a far more dramatic and damaging way – through the TV debates.
Take yourself back to that period of endless debate about the debates.
The initial proposal was for a 4-3-2 formula: the four main parties, as determined by OFCOM; a head to head between Cameron and Miliband; and a three-way also involving Clegg.
I won’t go back over all the arguments for and against the various formats and all the subsequent suggestions that emerged. The crucial point is this: Cameron rejected the four-way debate, on the clearly disingenuous basis that the Greens should be involved.
Everyone knew Cameron’s ulterior motive, yet the broadcasters didn’t seem to care.Suddenly we were told that a new deal was on the table which all parties had signed up to. This surprisingly involved a seven-way debate and a five-way challengers’ debate. Despite the fact that no one in England was going to be able to vote for either the SNP or Plaid Cymru, and despite the fact that OFCOM had ruled the Greens did not meet the criteria of being ‘a major party’, we were going to be treated to a seven-way scrap, followed by a five-way fight that didn’t even involve one of the two leaders who would be PM.
The impact of these debates on the election campaign was explosive. Nicola Sturgeon’s feisty public performance set up the perfect scenario for Tory strategists to get to work on. Sturgeon was cast in the role of the ‘most dangerous woman in Britain’, set to destroy the country with her scary anti-austerity policies and desire to break up the union. A Labour-SNP coalition would provoke ‘the worst constitutional crisis since the abdication’.
Constant Miliband denials of any such coalition were ignored. The threat was now real, it was flesh and blood. The narrative was set. The subsequent ‘challengers’ debate’ only served to hard-wire a Labour-SNP coalition into voters’ brains.
Cameron and his team had pulled off the biggest coup of the campaign, forcing the broadcasters to open up the debates to so many parties, crucially including the SNP. They also succeeded in opening the floodgates to the Sturgeon tsunami that helped wash away Labour in England as well as in Scotland.
Writing in the New Statesman this week, Labour’s pollster James Morris admits the SNP threat was a turning point in the election:
“Our final poll, in late April, told a different story. As focus groups showed the SNP attacks landing, we had Labour behind in the marginal seats among likely voters. The Tories successfully used the fear of Scottish influence as a way of catalyzing pre-existing doubts about Labour in a way that had not been possible earlier in the campaign.”
It was hardly a secret that Cameron wanted to avoid a head to head with Miliband at all costs – the one debate that the public most wanted to see. But the big question is – why did the broadcasters allow themselves to be played? Why did they not only fail to pull off the head to head debate but also agree to not just one but two larger debates without considering the consequences? Over-representation of smaller parties is just as distorting as under-representation.
Maybe no one, not even Tory strategists, had foreseen quite how incendiary an impact Sturgeon would have. But it was clear the SNP threat would have a damaging impact on Labour and could be used as the ultimate manifestation of Lynton Crosby’s infamous ‘wedge politics’.
And what about Labour? Did Labour strategists not see the risks? So keen were they to roll out Miliband at every available opportunity, they appear to have been blind to the consequences of him sharing a screen with Sturgeon. This was a serious Labour fail.
The Tory strategy was very helpfully aided and abetted by polls which misleadingly showed the battle for Downing Street on a knife-edge. These gave credence to the scaremongering about the near certainty of a Labour-SNP coalition. They also stoked the media’s obsessive concentration on the SNP threat and endless speculation about deals and legitimacy, squeezing out discussion of real policy issues. All of this played to the Tory tune.
Once the Tories’ simple but deadly message was created and delivered, it continued to be screamed at us until polling day. It was an effective tactic and the most influential message deployed during the entire campaign, bolstering the already deeply-ingrained Conservative refrain of economic competence and strong leadership.
Broadcasters in England should never have added the S-Factor to their schedules during the election campaign. That decision may well have helped determine the outcome of the election.
Giselle Green is communications director for the National Health Action Party and a former BBC News producer. Follow her on Twitter
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23 Responses to “Did the broadcasters open the floodgates to a Sturgeon tsunami?”
Margaret Tombs
The Labour party want to blame Scotland and the SNP for their loss in the election, that’s nonsense. Even if every constituency in Scotland was won by Labour there would still have been a Conservative majority. Once again Scotland is being ruled by a Tory government that we did not elect and cannot control even if the SNP did ally itself with Labour.
The shame is with the Labour party for allying itself with the Tories during the Independence Referendum and swinging the vote by colluding with their scaremongering and confusion tactics. See how they are rewarded now.
Lesley1
The SNP in Scotland was not the problem but the effect of the debates on ENGLISH marginals. I am sure that Sturgeon trying to publically press Miliband into a deal did a lot of damage in England. This over reaching ‘we will change England too,’ message left both England and Scotland with a Tory government. At the same time she was happy to jump on the anti-Labour ‘Red Tories’ narrative in the same programmes.There is no reflection on this, other than don’t blame us. Sturgeon got carried away
in the debates, backed up by sympathetic minor parties, helping the Tories to make a pincer movement in ENGLAND. Most Labour supporters would have be happy with SNP in Scotland, but the push and push it the debates played straight into the Tory’s hands
JustAnotherNumber
I suspect there are many, many people in English marginals, who voted Tory, gradually waking up with abject horror at the result of their actions.
“Wait, wait!” They’ll be pleading. “I didn’t want to abolish the human rights act, or allow more fracking, or more privatisation of the NHS, or dismantling of worker’s rights, or more tax breaks for the wealthy, or leave the EU, or see more attacks on support for the vulnerable, or an end to state education!” They’ll cry. “I was just terrified about the damned Scots having a say in parliament!”
Gerschwin
Yes, it was all down to the media because everyone is too dim to know better and will vote Lemming like for the Tories if the media tell them to do so, only the enlightened few understand the truth and vote Labour.
Please keep thinking like this and I can enjoy a Tory government for the rest of my life – do keep it up. Excellent work. Thank you.
DRbilderburg
When Labour became the face of the no campaign backed by all the MSM, many people myself included could see disaster heading Labours way, the best way to politically commit suicide in Scotland is be a Tory and to a Man/Woman Labour were, they bullied, threatened , conned, and loved every minute of it
If they had kept their dignity by just saying we thank the Scottish people for their unwavering support for Labour through the good and the bad years, but we think you’d be better off in the union, but we will stand by Scotland if they vote for independence, and if we gain power we will do what we can to ease the transition. You’d be looking at some Labour seats lost, not virtually every single one, and Sturgeon no doubt would have taken most of the seats but their would have been a Labour presence and the whole SNP scare story would have been considerably watered down