Bob Roberts, one of Labour’s most efficient and down-to-earth spin-doctors, said of the Rupert Murdoch saga: “ We shouldn’t celebrate too much after a good week, just as we shouldn’t worry too much when we have a bad week. That’s politics.” It is a pity that the sane attitude of Ed Miliband’s director of communications is not shared by others in and around the leader’s office.
Premature euphoria at the closure of the News of the World and ongoing pressure on the News Corporation is a dangerous luxury. It risks charges of hypocrisy and, more importantly, could foster complacency in an opposition which has hardly shone in terms of holding the Tory-led coalition to account.
Hypocrisy because there is barely a well-known Labour face who hasn’t taken shedloads of Murdoch shillings for the serialisation rights of their autobiographies and because New Labour slavishly courted Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and the rest during the Tony Blair years. And complacency because it will take a lot more than this sordid episode to propel Labour back into power.
We should never under-estimate the smooth public relations talents of David Cameron – although his attempt this week to disguise savage public sector cuts with his Big Society con-job should fool no one – and the effect of the upcoming gerrymandering of constituency boundaries to benefit the Conservatives at the expense of Labour and, heart-breakingly for them, the Liberal Democrats.
Don’t forget that the lead in exposing phone-hacking was left to Tom Watson and other Labour backbenchers rather than the Shadow Cabinet. Ed Miliband came late to the fray and others only started firing salvos when the News of the World had water sloshing over its gunwhales. And we should not underestimate Cameron’s capacity to turn a disaster into, if not a triumph, then an effective damage limitation exercise. The decision to refer the BSkyB bid to competition watchdogs is a case in point.
The phone-hacking scandal turned into a bloodbath when the focus switched from the royals, celebrities few had heard of, and MPs to the families of murdered children, dead soldiers and terrorist victims.
But Labour’s focus remains inward-looking and too often appears motivated by the desire to punish hacks for exposing their own expenses malpractices.
It has not been a good week to be a journalist in the House of Commons. A normally affable Scottish Labour newbie called me a very rude word – one that rhymes with the surname of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Journalists were all the same, he argued.
I object to being called a Jeremy Hunt, even though, during my long career pursuing a pretty roughcraft, I have occasionally been guilty of Jeremy Huntish behaviour, but the MP should recognise that a general press cull or tighter restrictions on press freedoms is not the answer. Nor is turning this into a purely party political issue. It is true that, for decades, the printed media has been weighted too heavily in favour of the Tories.
But that is the fault of the labour movement that has not properly supported professional operations which have tried to even the balance and which did little to curb the excess of, for example, the late Robert Maxwell.
Don’t forget that Labour voters who – except in Liverpool – continue to buy The Sun in their millions. That is their right. It does not mean that, if someone buys Tory products, they are not necessarily brainwashed into voting for the Conservatives. Newspapers should be supported rather than shut down or gagged. Otherwise we will create a Twitter-led world where anything goes.
