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
23 Responses to “Did the broadcasters open the floodgates to a Sturgeon tsunami?”
Gerschwin
No, I’m pretty good with all of those things.
Alister Rutherford
This is a deeply disappointing article, which just confirms that Labour are still stuck in a navel gazing hole of gigantic proportions. Let’s blame anyone and everyone, except of course ourselves. If Labour in England can be so undone by the prospect of working with SNP MPs then they are truly lost. Interesting that this anti SNP line did not seem to have much effect in Wales. Scotland voted to stay in the Union and we expect the people we choose to elect as our MPs to be respected in the same way as other MPs. Note that Labour has never had any problem working with the SDLP, another party that wants to leave the UK. Labour failed in England and blaming the SNP or the broadcasters will only ensure that you lose again in five years time. Well past time for you to start looking at your own failures.
stevep
If the TV companies who broadcast the various debates were concerned with impartiality they would have placed an empty lectern with David Cameron`s name on it to symbolise his refusal to engage in debate on anything other than his own terms.
Cole
Actually you’re probably right. Most of the people who read the Mail are already Tories – or just read it for the celeb stuff and ignore the loopy politics. I doubt if all their weird hysteria actually influences many people. The editor is clearly deranged.
GiselleG7
Hi Alister
1. I don’t speak for the Labour Party, am just a commentator here.
2. This is not about who Labour should appeal to or work with. Many Labour supporters were probably delighted at the prospect of a potential deal with the SNP.
3. This is about scaring off potential Labour voters who didn’t like the prospect of a Labour-SNP coalition. You need to look at it from that perspective, not your own. There does appear to be evidence that this was an issue in deterring them.
4. This is one aspect that looks at the broadcasters’ role in Labour’s defeat. I agree there are many other ways in which Labour have themselves to blame. See my blog here: https://gisellegreen7.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/why-did-labour-sink-like-a-stone-metaphor-warning/