Perhaps it’s because it’s a coalition and this novelty is too subtle a thing to be grasped by Fleet Street, but it’s still strange how unpopular this government has become. Not with the public; that was to be expected given the decision to stress nothing but deficits and cuts during the Camerlegg ministry’s first few months in office. But you might have thought its inky friends might have stuck around a little longer. Then again, they can feel the wind shifting too.
One consequence of the decision to stress fiscal austerity – perfectly reasonable and even, you may say, necessary – was to confirm, or seem to confirm, one of Labour’s election campaign charges: the Tories are mainly interested in cutting public (that is, government) services. The Big Society, whatever its merits, is going the same way: it’s cuts by a different name. This too, once the notion becomes common currency, is easily taken as confirmation that the Tories, despite all the talk, haven’t really changed at all. No government service is safe in their hands! Chalk this up as yet another communications problem.
Matters are scarcely helped by the fact the government has very few reliable friends on Fleet Street. The Daily Mail is not much impressed by Mr Cameron. The Telegraph is an unreliable ally and, anyway, increasingly Mailish. The Sun can’t stand Ken Clarke and, in any case, is not entirely sympathetic to a government that, on the whole, prefers restraint to populism. (See James’s post for more on this.) The government has been “unfriended” or “defriended”.
That leaves the Times as perhaps the coalition’s most faithful, though hardly uncritical, ally. This leaves the government in a bind. The obvious tactical response is to shift to the populist right. Unfortunately that would place greater strain on the coalition itself, undermining the government’s efficiency (sic) at a time when it needs to present as united a front as possible. Furthermore, neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Clegg are natural populists. They’d risk looking ridiculous – and perhaps weak too – if they were to reinvent themselves in such a manner.
So here we have it. A government that, on the whole, pleases the Economist but few others. You may think this good for any number of policy or philisophical reasons, but the Economist-reading constituency is not enough. (Indeed, some will think it a symptom of the problem too.) I don’t know if a new Director of Stretegy is enough or if Andrew Cooper is the man for the job, but it’s a start and an overdue one at that.
Again, communication problems are often mistaken for policy problems but in this instance there’s certainly a communications problem too. That leads to drift, confusion and weakness which in turn makes the communications problems more acute and leaves a reforming government friendless and isolated on Fleet Street and, of course, in television and radio studios across the country.
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