BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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government’s case with the news media led to many of them being weeded
out and replaced in the early months of Blair’s first term. Third, and most
controversially, the New Labour government significantly increased the
number of politically appointed special advisers in government departments, several of whom fulfilled a proactive partisan media relations role
which sometimes brought them into conflict with government information officers steeped in a civil service culture of political neutrality.13
End of the long honeymoon
The New Labour government enjoyed an extended honeymoon period
with much of the news media, which extended well into Blair’s first term.
As the novelty of a New Labour administration wore off, however, the
government’s approach to news management ran up against a ‘media
12 Colin Seymour-Ure, Prime Ministers and the Media (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 170.
13 Barnett and Gaber, Westminster Tales, pp. 116–24; Margaret Scammell, ‘The Media and
Media Management’, in A. Seldon (ed.) The Blair Effect: The Blair Government 1997–2001
(London: Little, Brown, 2001), pp. 520–6.
logic’ whereby in a highly competitive media system, driven by the relentless pursuit of audiences and advertisers, decision-making in newsrooms
focuses attention on those stories which satisfy criteria of newsworthiness. News stories increasingly tended to emphasise conflict and disunity,
negative events and Labour personalities in trouble. For instance, the
persistent in-fighting at the heart of the executive between Blair and
Brown and their respective supporters provided good copy for political
journalists, several of whom were happy to side with either the Prime
Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer in their newspaper columns.
Some of the toughest news management tests for the New Labour government were in the area of scandal and impropriety, hardly surprising in
the light of New Labour’s attacks on Conservative sleaze during the final
years of the Major premiership. Sometimes the government’s exercise in
damage limitation was successful. For instance, potentially explosive
stories, such as Robin Cook’s affair with his secretary or the resignation of
Ron Davies following his nocturnal wandering on Clapham Common,
were skilfully dealt with by New Labour’s media handlers to minimise any
adverse publicity for the government.14 Other stories proved more
difficult to manage. The Ecclestone affair, which concerned large secret
donations to the Labour Party,15 and allegations of abuse of position
made against a succession of ministers, including Geoffrey Robinson,
Peter Mandelson and Keith Vaz, revealed the capacity and willingness of
the news media, particularly broadsheet newspaper journalists, to initiate
and pursue stories highly critical of leading New Labour figures.
Coverage of both Mandelson resignations from the cabinet had all the
hallmarks of a media feeding frenzy.
From around the beginning of 2000 New Labour’s capacity to shape
the news agenda and influence the framing of coverage started to run into
difficulties as a series of highly problematic issues come on to the political
and policy agendas. The Millennium Dome fiasco, the successful campaign for the mayorship of London by the rebel Ken Livingstone standing
as an Independent against the official Labour candidate, the protest
against the rise in fuel taxation by lorry drivers and the foot-and-mouth
crisis in the countryside were all issues which New Labour found difficult
to manage in news terms in the run-up to the 2001 general election.
In 2000 Campbell passed on the onerous responsibility of the twice
daily lobby briefings to two career civil servants and assumed a more
strategic role as Director of Communications and Strategy at No. 10. This
14 Jones, Sultans of Spin, pp. 244–52.
15 Rawnsley, Servants of the People, pp. 89–105.
move was designed to take Campbell away from routine front-line
contact with journalists and to remove him from an environment where
his increasing frustration with the coverage afforded New Labour frequently spilled out into abrasive comments to journalists. Campbell
argued that the real spinners in the interrelationship between government and news media were the journalists and that as a result the government’s message was being distorted in various media outlets.
Blair and newspaper partisanship
A key objective of Blair as party leader and Prime Minister was to try to
win over and then retain the support of as much of the national press as
possible for New Labour. The size of this task should not be underestimated. At every post-war general election prior to the 1997 contest a
higher percentage of national newspapers (as measured by circulation
figures) than voters had supported the Conservative Party. Moreover, the
intensity of anti-Labour sentiment, especially in the pro-Conservative
‘redtops’ (popular tabloids) and ‘blacktops’ (middle market papers), had
been particularly noticeable during the Thatcher premiership, much to
the discomfiture of the Labour leadership. In pursuing his objective, Blair
benefited from the disintegration of the relationship between the Major
government and much of the traditional Conservative press in the wake
of the events of ‘Black Wednesday’ in 1992 when the pound had been
forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by intense financial speculation. This disenchantment of many newspapers with the
Conservatives opened up the possibility of a realignment of newspaper
support in favour of the Labour Party. Neutralising traditional press
opponents or, even better, bringing them round to supporting the New
Labour project were more realistic options for Blair than hoping for the
entry of new pro-Labour papers into the market.16
In the run-up to the 1997 general election New Labour was extremely
successful in disarming the guns of the Tory press and even winning some
national newspapers over to its cause. In addition to disillusionment with
the perceived failures of the Major premiership, four factors help to explain
the apparently remarkable change in newspaper partisanship during
Blair’s term as Leader of the Opposition.17 First, Labour’s ideological
16 Sean Tunney, Labour and the Press: From New Left to New Labour (Brighton: Sussex
Academic Press, 2007).
17 Brian McNair, Journalism and Democracy (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 146–55.
repositioning to appeal to the electoral centre ground made it a more
acceptable alternative party of government for some newspaper proprietors and editors. As a result, little remained of the ‘loony left’ type of story
which had been such a feature of tabloid coverage in the 1980s.18 Moreover,
Blair personally was regarded as a strong and effective leader who was
playing a key part in strengthening the party’s appeal to the electorate of
‘Middle England’. This combination of forceful leadership in the service of
ideological moderation was a winning combination in the eyes of many
newspaper proprietors and editors.
Second, under Blair’s leadership New Labour in opposition actively set
out to curry favour with sections of the national press, especially the
Murdoch papers.19 This was in marked contrast to the late 1980s when
Labour had boycotted News International titles following the company’s
prolonged dispute with its workforce over the introduction of new technology. As part of the charm offensive, Blair flew halfway around the
world to give a speech to News International executives. In addition, New
Labour seemed prepared not to attack the commercial power of leading
media companies. For instance, speculation was rife that in return for
support from Murdoch’s newspapers, an incoming Labour government
would not introduce tough cross-media ownership legislation. While
there may not have been an explicit deal between Murdoch and Blair that
The Sun would support Labour ‘in return for promises that a Labour government would leave Rupert’s British media empire alone’,20 at the very
least a tacit understanding emerged between Blair and Murdoch on this
issue.
Third, a more sophisticated approach to news management ensured
that New Labour’s attacks on Conservative government policy were skilfully prepared for journalists across a whole range of issues. These
included the running of the National Health Service, rail privatisation,
the huge salary increases and perks of the heads of private utilities, and
the Conservative government’s record on tax and sleaze.
Finally, as New Labour’s electoral fortunes improved and opinion polls
showed them pulling well ahead of the Conservatives, newspapers had
good commercial reasons for modifying their attitudes towards the party
so as to stay in tune with the views of their readers. In a competitive
market, refusing to support a popular party in newspaper columns would
18 James Curran, Ivor Gaber and Julian Petley, Culture Wars: The Media and the British Left
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005).
19 Andrew Neil, Full Disclosure (London: Pan, 1997); Joy Johnson, ‘Rupert’s Grip?’, British
Journalism Review, 9(1),1998: 13–19.
20 Neil, Full Disclosure, p. xxv.
have done little to boost circulation figures among voters, many of whom
were eager for a change of government.
The 1997 election campaign witnessed an apparent sea-change in the
partisan allegiances of several leading newspapers.21 Overall six out of ten
national dailies supported Labour in 1997, compared with only three out
of eleven in 1992. So too did five of the nine national Sunday titles, as
against a mere three five years earlier. Indeed, ‘the support in 1997 placed
Labour for the first time in a position of disproportionately high circulation compared to its share of the vote: 62% of circulation and 44% of the
vote, compared with the Conservatives’ 33% of circulation and 31% of
the vote’.22 The single most important contributory factor to this change
was the decision by The Sun to overturn more than twenty years of proConservative sympathies and move straight across into the pro-Labour
camp. Because of its huge circulation and its unbridled hostility to
Labour since the mid-1970s, the support for New Labour expressed by
The Sun in 1997 had immense symbolic significance, even if its impact on
voting behaviour is open to question. Yet the qualitative nature of the
shift in newspaper partisanship in the 1997 campaign should not be overstated. The Sun was the only national daily which moved straight across
from openly supporting the Conservatives in 1992 to calling for a Labour
victory five years later.
In the 2001 campaign even more national titles supported Labour than
in 1997, giving the impression that press support leant heavily towards
Labour to the detriment of the Conservatives.23 However, despite the
massive quantitative advantage Labour enjoyed in terms of both number
of titles and circulation figures, in qualitative terms newspaper support
for Labour during the 2001 campaign ‘was generally subdued, often qualified and sometimes critical’.24 By the time of the 2005 general election,
Labour’s support in the press had declined, with the two Express titles and
the Sunday Times returning to back the Conservatives. The complexity of
newspaper partisanship remained evident, with traditional newspaper
party loyalties being subjected to strain in the wake of Blair’s handling of
the Iraq War issue. There was strong evidence of negative partisanship,
21 Margaret Scammell and Martin Harrop, ‘The Press’, in D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The
British General Election of 1997 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).
22 Colin Seymour-Ure, ‘Newspapers: Editorial Opinion in the National Press’, in P. Norris
and N. Gavin (eds.), Britain Votes 1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 80–1.
23 David Deacon, Peter Golding and Michael Billig, ‘Press and Broadcasting: “Real Issues”
and Real Coverage’, Parliamentary Affairs, 54, 2001: 666–78.
24 Margaret Scammell and Martin Harrop, ‘The Press Disarmed’, in D. Butler and
D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2001 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 156.
often expressed in highly personalised terms of anti-Blair (for instance
the Daily Mail), although criticism of the Prime Minister by several newspapers (including the Daily Mirror) did not necessarily persuade them to
support the Conservative alternative in 2005.25
Under Blair’s leadership, therefore, it is clear that New Labour was successful in decoupling longstanding ties of support between certain newspaper titles and the Conservatives. At the same time, press support for
Blair and New Labour was less committed and wholehearted than that
enjoyed by Thatcher and the Conservatives during the 1980s. Some newspapers, such as the Telegraph and Mail titles, were never won over to the
New Labour cause. The Sun provided conditional support, but on the
issue of Europe could be – and frequently was – extremely critical of any
initiative that smacked of supranational integration. In 1998 it even portrayed Blair as ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’26 because of his stance
on the single currency, and five years later led on its front page with the
headline ‘Blair surrenders Britain to Europe’ in commenting on his
stance on the EU constitution.27 Moreover, The Sun was generally more
supportive of Blair personally than of New Labour as a whole.
As some newspapers drifted away from New Labour in tandem with
Blair’s diminishing electoral popularity, it was clear that the Blair era had
not seen a structural realignment of national newspaper partisanship but
rather a more muted partisan de-alignment. Faced with declining circulations in highly competitive market sectors, newspapers have become
more fickle in unconditionally backing a particular party. Party leaders
increasingly have to negotiate for newspaper support on an issue-byissue basis with owners and editors who keep as close an eye on public
opinion and consumer trends as do politicians.
The mediatisation of Blair’s leadership
In the highly developed political communication networks
of advanced
democracies, key political actors such as heads of government and leaders
of the major parties have to devote a considerable amount of time and
energy to news media activities. One aspect of this attentiveness concerns
the projection and maintenance of a well-defined leadership image in
the mediated public sphere. This is because the media have exerted an
25 John Bartle, ‘The Labour Government and the Media’, in J. Bartle and A. King (eds.),
Britain at the Polls 2005 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006), pp. 124–50.
26 The Sun, 24 June 1998.
27 The Sun, 15 May 2003.
important influence on the emergence of a clear ‘leadership dimension in
contemporary British politics’ which ‘has established the meaning and
value of leadership as a political issue in its own right’.28 As voters have
become less aligned with political parties, the role of the leader in influencing electoral perceptions, attitudes and behaviour has grown. A
popular leader, like Blair in 1997, attracts voters, while an unpopular one,
like Blair in 2005, repels them.
Much of the British news media, notably the tabloid press and television, tend to personalise political issues and to focus overwhelmingly
on the role of leadership figures in their coverage of politics. Prime
Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons, for example, is an
occasion for the two main party leaders to go head-to-head in a competitive contest in front of the television cameras, with an edited version of
their exchange being served up in the main evening news programmes
and in press coverage. Journalists frequently evaluate the performance of
the two leaders as they would boxers in a championship fight, assessing
whether either managed to land a knockout punch, while opinion polls
constantly measure the public’s evaluation of leadership performance.
More importantly, many policy issues are now presented and interpreted
by the media through the prism of their impact on a leader’s authority
and electoral popularity. While there is no single template for success in
the mediatisation of leadership, an image that is weak, blurred or incoherent is potentially highly damaging.
Blair not only understood this media dimension of contemporary