GUEST POST: Peter Bingle is Director at The Terrapin Group. Connect on LinkedIn
There is no more thankless job in British politics than being Leader of the Opposition. This is even more of a truism during a pandemic when the public mood dictates that politicians put to one side petty partisan point scoring and do what’s best in the national interest. The normal rules of the game are suspended. It is difficult to be different.
That said, the case of Sir Keir Starmer is a curious one. There is no doubting him as a caring and thoughtful politician. His legal career confirms his academic acumen. And yet something is missing. Charisma. He doesn’t have any!
Starmer is Leader of the Labour Party because he isn’t Jeremy Corbyn. An understandable reason perhaps but not sufficient, particularly when the Prime Minister is somebody called Boris Johnson. Starmer suffers from an affliction called anonymity.
Starmer’s weakness is cruelly exposed every Wednesday at PMQs. He methodically dissects the government’s track record and highlights numerous mistakes. He uses the PM’s previous statements and decisions against him. The trouble is it doesn’t work against a PM who brushes asides facts and figures and answers questions he was never asked! Boris has panache. Starmer has none.
There will be some who point to Clement Attlee. Churchill once jibed: “Mr Attlee is a modest man, with much to be modest about!” Attlee then went on to win the 1945 general election. The comparison doesn’t really work today because of the crazy world in which we live. There is no private time for senior politicians. They are exposed to the public glare twenty-four seven. Boris loves it. I’m not so sure Starmer does.
Starmer’s other major weakness is his lack of connectivity to the common man. Despite coming from very ordinary circumstances (unlike Boris!), Starmer doesn’t seem to understand what really matters to working class folk. His (mis)handling of the Brexit issue was one of the principal reasons for the Tories smashing Labour’s red wall of northern seats. His suggestion that the way to win them back is for Labour to be more patriotic was rightly dismissed. It might seem a sensible idea in a large house in wealthy Camden, but further north it came across as rather patronising. And it was …
Supporters of Starmer will point out that more time is needed for him to start a conversation with the British people. They don’t really know anything about him. Once the pandemic is sorted, he will travel the country meeting the people. Perhaps, but remember the tragic case of Jo Swinson. The more the public got to know her the less they liked her to the point she lost her seat at the general election.
So, to summarise. Starmer is a good, decent and thoughtful man. He is probably destined, however, to join that list of Labour Party leaders who never win a general election. Up against the life-force that is Boris Johnson, Starmer just comes across as very dull. Who would you rather spend time with? The answer is a no brainer. Such is the brutality of British politics.
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GUEST POST: Tony Freeman is a Freelance Thought Leadership Consultant specialising in financial technology. Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
Shortly after the 2016 EU referendum, I visited Singapore to meet-up with clients and colleagues in my role as Brexit policy manager for a large US-headquartered global financial services firm. I offered to deliver a briefing for the local team and was greeted with a response that was to become remarkably familiar as I visited other office locations in Indo-Pacific and the Americas. Incredulity is the best word to describe their viewpoint, which was driven by two factors: very slanted local media reporting and a lack of understanding about what the EU is (and wants to be).
I’m a typical Tory – meaning I’m a long-term Eurosceptic. We joined an economic community but were being increasingly drawn into a political superstate. I’m a free marketeer who wants global trade to flourish. A rising tide really does lift all boats! Where I’m less typical, I suppose, is that while I’m no fan of the Customs Union I am very much in favour of the Single Market.
My experience of dealing with Brussels over many years of working on financial services regulation led me to believe the UK would be better off out the EU. When you see how the sausages are made you can’t help but think about becoming a vegetarian … Despite this, I was surprised by the result and very apprehensive about how the exit process would work. (It turned out to be worse than I thought, however that’s for another day.)
Back to Singapore. Anticipating their puzzlement about why the UK had gone mad, I did some homework on the astonishing success of its economy. When Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965 it was a very undeveloped country. Its population was estimated to be 50% illiterate, malaria was rife and its GDP per capita was only US$516. It has almost no natural resources – it must import water and sand from its near neighbours. So, going it alone was a very brave move indeed.
However, by 2018 Singapore’s GDP per capita had reached US$87k – higher than the US. For comparison, Ghana – another former British colony – took its GDP per-head from US$974 in 1970 to a meagre US$2,200 in 2018. This is despite being richly endowed in natural resources: its colonial name was The Gold Coast! The decision by the UK to leave the EU was, by comparison, a more modest change.
So, why do many people seem to think that using Singapore as a model is a bad idea? The concept appears to be that Singapore is a low-regulation country. This is a misconception. My experience, based on dealing with financial regulators, is that Singaporean regulators and policy-makers do not fit any sort of stereotype. They do not have any hesitation to do what is appropriate for their market and they have a very business-orientated approach.
A key part of any policy is that it should enable growth. Conversations with regulators very often revolve around what you are not allowed to do. In Singapore, it’s all about encouraging you to do more – and to do it in Singapore. This isn’t de-regulation. Singapore now has many advantages: low taxes, stable politics, a robust legal system and zero tolerance of corruption. And alongside these: a strong regulatory system is also a cornerstone; it attracts business.
The phrase ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ appears to have been coined by the media with its origins in the fears and prejudices of politicians in the EU. The UK won’t become another Singapore, however that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from its success. I hope we do.
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GUEST POST: Fraser Raleigh is an Associate Director at SEC Newsgate and a former Conservative Special Adviser. Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
As the Prime Minister held a sombre press conference last night to mark the grim milestone of 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in the UK, he might have thought back to when he stood at the Downing Street podium all the way back on 12 March last year – two weeks before the first lockdown – and delivered the stark warning that: “I must level with you, level with the British public, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” Few could have imagined at the time quite how many more families that warning would sadly become a reality for.
How the Prime Minister’s claim yesterday that ‘we did all we could’ is viewed will depend entirely on existing perceptions of the government and its performance. It will variously be interpreted as a plaintive insistence that the government has worked in good faith to tackle a once-in-a-century crisis, as an admission that the government’s best was simply not good enough, or as an attempt to counter blame by insisting that nothing more could have been done by any government.
Throughout the pandemic, blame has never been too far from the surface of the political debate. Responding to the death toll, Labour said yesterday that ‘monumental mistakes’ have been made and at Prime Minister’s Questions today Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer pushed the Prime Minister on the UK’s death toll, asking repeatedly: ‘why?’.
The list of things the government has been accused of getting wrong is a familiar one: being too slow to lockdown, slow off the mark in ensuring the provision of PPE, confused on its messaging on masks, failing to protect social care, stuttering in its initial ramp up of testing, cumbersome in establishing a test, trace and isolate system, too quick to attempt to return the economy to normality over the summer, forced to U-turn over the ill-fated exam results algorithm, too slow to implement a ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown in the autumn, overpromising on the easing of restrictions over Christmas, too slow to enter the current lockdown, and insisting schools return for the new term before closing them. Critics of the government, business groups, trade unions and sector bodies will all have their own to add to that list.
How and when to apportion blame has been part of the politics of the pandemic from the start, with Labour leader Keir Starmer accusing the Prime Minister of wishing away problems rather than confronting them early enough and the Prime Minister portraying Starmer as ‘Captain Hindsight’, wanting to score political points rather than pulling together, backing the government’s efforts and waiting until the pandemic is over before learning lessons from it.
That attempt to defer blame until the end of the pandemic makes both political and practical sense for the government while overstretched ministers, officials and public health workers are flat out dealing with both the effects of the current wave of the pandemic and the mass-roll out of the vaccines that will get us out of it.
But the often talked about public inquiry that will come when the dust settles and normal life returns will not produce a standalone cathartic moment that neatly assigns blame and allows the country to move on with one shared view of what it has collectively been through.
Public inquiries take time. They are laborious and forensic, as the ongoing Grenfell Tower and the Infected Blood Inquires – both opened in 2017 – and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – launched even earlier – have all demonstrated. Often the time-consuming, legalistic and methodical nature of inquiries causes frustration and further pain to those who want answers. The future inquiry into how Covid-19 was handled will no doubt face similar challenges.
And in any case, public inquiries are very different from public opinion, which unlike political blame is far from black and white. It is subjective, reflecting existing political views, different personal experiences, and perceptions of individual leaders. But it can also recognise different narratives as being true at the same time, such as the UK being among the worst in the world for Covid-19 deaths and among the best in the world for not just distributing but discovering the vaccines that provide an escape from the last year.
How blame is formally apportioned during any inquiry, how politicians attempt to assign or avoid it, and how the public view both will be a central part of British politics for many years as the long legacy of the pandemic remains with us.
At the heart of maintaining public confidence that lessons are learned – whoever and whatever deserves blame – will be ensuring that at the centre of it all are those families – many more even than the Prime Minister warned last March – who did go on to lose loved ones before their time.
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GUEST POST: Patrick Adams is a political consultant. Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
Last Saturday, Boris Johnson was the first European leader to receive a call from the 46th US President Joseph R. Biden Jr (Joe Biden for short). According to the transcripts and tweets – driving “a green and sustainable recovery from Covid-19” are top of the agenda for these two gentlemen.
What I have set out below – regardless of who you thought would or wanted to win the election – is that – despite the choreographed blonde hair and populist tendencies – New York-born Mr Johnson has more in common with Mr Biden than his predecessor and fellow New Yorker Donald J. Trump. That is because, at heart, he’s a liberal conservative.
This year, the UK will host both the G7 Summit in Cornwall and the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow and that presents No10 and the White House with a golden opportunity to ‘build back better’, together, and thus strengthen the longstanding alliance between these nations.
As highlighted, Mr Biden and Mr Johnson are keen on driving the ‘green agenda’. With COP26 taking place in November, now is the time for bold initiatives and nothing screams bold than Mr Biden signing an executive order to re-join the Paris Climate Accord the day after his inauguration. The British Government has already made several commitments related to greener energy (and is bound by the accord in the EU-UK trade agreement) and is making steady progress across several areas.
For example, the UK has prioritised investment in wind energy in its attempt to become the ‘Saudi Arabia of wind power’. Further to this, the UK is committed to banning the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2035 – actions the new US administration will likely support.
It appears the President’s first foreign trip will be to the UK rather than an EU27 member state. Whether that’s due to the pandemic or a deliberate move, reports suggest Mr Biden wants to move past any disagreements and start afresh with Mr Johnson and Mr Johnson is no doubt only too happy to hear that.
On China, the US and UK seek to curtail its growing influence and to highlight human rights abuses. Specifically, the UK has imposed harsh sanctions on China as opposed to the mixed response from the EU. The recent China-EU investment agreement, approved by the Council, may be an issue for EU-US relations. Similarly, the Nord Stream Gas pipeline between Russia and Germany will increase divisions for the alliance. As such, the EU risks alienating the US by the company that it keeps.
Defence is another area where the Biden administration will have differences of opinion with some Europeans. President Trump insisted that all NATO member states meet their two per cent defence spending requirements. This issue will not disappear with another president and Mr Biden will likely lobby for an increase in spending, albeit in a much more diplomatic way.
The UK, on the other hand, has already taken the lead on this issue and will be an ally to the US. Firstly, it is one of the few NATO members that meet its spending requirements. Secondly, the UK has increased defence spending by a further £16.5 billion.
There is rarely such a thing as friendly nations, but generally only nations with mutual interests. The UK and US have many mutual interests other than the above topics, and it will be for the President and the Prime Minister to build on them. I’m optimistic.
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GUEST POST: Joshua Woolliscroft is an Account Manager at MPC. Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
For amateur and professional psephologists alike, this year’s local elections – if they go ahead – look set to be more exciting than usual. Not only is this the first electoral clash between the Prime Minister and Sir Keir Starmer, it is also a double batch with the 2020 cancelled contests rolled into one.
The big question is has the Government’s handling of the pandemic had an impact on its overall popularity? And, perhaps more crucially, will the successful roll out of the vaccine and the signing of the Brexit trade deal give Boris Johnson a surprise bounce?
Looking back at 2016 and 2017 – when these elections last took place – you see two very different pictures. 2016 was the swan song of David Cameron’s premiership, his last tilt at the polls ahead of the EU referendum. The election saw a swing against the Conservatives, leading to the loss of 50 councillors and one council. Conversely, in 2017, Theresa May took 11 councils; skewering UKIP on the right and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour on the left.
Although a notoriously inaccurate indication of local voting intention, the polls are stubbornly tied with the Government and HM Opposition jockeying for a one-point lead. CCHQ may be hoping for a repeat of 2016, where Labour squeaked a narrow lead with very little to show for it. While the launch of the Reform Party could chip away at vulnerable authorities, no one – except for Nigel Farage – is expecting a serious challenge from them right now.
Assuming the roll out of the vaccine remains on track throughout Winter and into Spring, the electorate may, just might, vote Conservative. Equally, delays or a perception of mismanagement could lead to a vengeful public seeing Labour as a slightly safer choice.
It is often said that the electorate is capable of anger, but rarely gratitude. A good day for the Prime Minister should be one the pundits barely notice, shaving a few councils and retaining most mayoralties. There has been a lot of talk about momentum in British politics. An average to fair result for the Tories in May (or later) could sap some much needed energy from Labour.
Hard as it is to believe, the first rays of a post Covid-19 morning could be on the horizon. If the Government wants to be re-elected in 2024, they need to seize the initiative of that new dawn. Avoiding a disaster this year should be the first step in the right direction.
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GUEST POST:James Somerville-Meikle is a Committee Member of Catholics in the Conservative Party.Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
As the dust settled on post war Britain, Winston Churchill asked Sir Hugh Fraser, then MP for Stafford, to help get more Catholics involved in the Conservative Party.
Sir Hugh was one of a tiny number of Catholic Conservative MPs in the post-war Parliament. Things have got better since then, but it’s fair to say there is room for improvement in relations between the Conservative party and the Catholic community in this country.
It’s perhaps fitting that as our country, and our Party, begins the task of rebuilding from the pandemic – arguably the greatest challenge faced since the second world war – there is renewed energy in making the Conservative party a home for Catholics.
Almost 70 years since Churchill identified the problem, this month sees the inaugural AGM of a new group for Catholics in the Conservative Party. It’s a grassroots group – set up by people who want to build bridges between their faith and politics.
There are many reasons why it makes sense to improve relations with the 4.5 million Catholics in Britain, but perhaps the most obvious is that there is a great deal of overlap between the teachings of our Church and the values of our Party – something that should be promoted. On top of this, the Catholic church continues to have an active role in providing services, not least running ten per cent of schools in England.
Catholic Social Teaching is a treasure trove for policy-makers with its focus on the part each person can play in building the common good. But this has too often been a treasure trove raided by the Left rather than the Right in this country.
It’s not that long ago that there were some parts of the country where the Labour parliamentary candidate almost had to be a Catholic, and the role of people like Cardinal Manning – who famously supported the London dockers strike in 1889 – was a celebrated part of Labour’s folk law.
And yet the appeals to individual responsibility, compassion, and the dignity of people, contained in Catholic Social Teaching are themes that also fit within Conservative thinking. It’s this centre-right interpretation of the common good that has inspired groups like the Centre for Social Justice, founded by Iain Duncan Smith – one of our most prominent Catholic MPs.
Of course, even amongst Conservatives, there will be disagreement about how the teachings of the Church can best be put into practice. Part of the thinking behind this new group is to provide a place to have these discussions. There are no right or wrong answers. You will find committed Catholics on every wing of the Party and every level of government. We want to bring together Conservatives who are committed to bringing about the common good, whoever they are and whatever their background.
Sometimes just having the conversation can be helpful. Labour, with its tradition of Christian socialism, perhaps has a head start on us in this regard. Countless words have been written about how Christianity can be put into practice on the Left of politics, which has helped to raise the profile for a particular brand of left-wing thinking in the Catholic church.
We have some catching up to do, but the foundations are there. Whether it’s the role of figures like the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel in bringing about Catholic emancipation in this country or the work of David Burrowes and Tim Montgomerie in founding the Conservative Christian Fellowship – we have our own story to tell, but sometimes we’re not very good at telling it.
Our new group not only aims to strengthen links between Catholics already in the Party, but also make it more appealing to Catholics who don’t see the Conservative party as their natural home.
For some people, getting involved in the local church can be the first step into politics, but Conservatives have been slow to recognise the potential of Catholic churches to produce leaders of the future. How many church readers or parish council members are there in this country who would make fantastic Conservative candidates for local council, devolved bodies, or Parliament? But we don’t ask them and perhaps our Party has not always looked that welcoming.
There has perhaps never been a better time to improve relations with the Catholic community in this country. A quick look at the electoral map shows the areas where the Conservatives gained seats in 2019 – the North West and North East of England – are also places where the Catholic church in this country has traditionally been strongest. It’s encouraging that two of the parliamentary patrons for Catholics in the Conservative Party – Alexander Stafford and Marco Longhi – are from the 2019 intake who won their seats from Labour.
If we want to maintain the trust of voters in these areas, it will mean getting under the bonnet of what makes people in these communities tick. In places like Blaydon in Gateshead, where my Grandma lives, the local church is an important part of the local community. These are often the places where the values of “faith, flag and family” remain strong as David Goodhart described in his book ‘The Road to Somewhere’.
At a time when the importance of culture and identity in politics only seems to be getting stronger, we ignore people’s values at our peril. At the next election we will face a smarter challenge from Labour. I’ve lost track of the number of times Sir Keir Starmer has mentioned “family” recently – framing his latest free school meals intervention as an attack on the Conservative’s record on support for families. We need to get smarter too.
That is not to say our Party needs to become Catholic to maintain the ground we have gained. I don’t expect to see the Vatican flag flying from CCHQ anytime soon! But it should make us more prepared to listen and engage with the Catholic community in this country. We might be surprised by the amount of common ground we find.
The Conservative party has made great strides in recent years engaging with groups that are under-represented in politics – particularly women and people from black and ethnic minorities. If this new group can harness some of that energy and enthusiasm for outreach work with the Catholic community, which itself is extremely diverse, then there could be benefits for everyone. Our Party has always been at its best when it is a broad church, in every sense.
Perhaps, as Churchill would say, the relationship between Catholics and the Conservative party is only at the end of the beginning.
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GUEST POST: Mo Metcalf-Fisher is Head of Press at the Countryside Alliance.Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
It’s easy to get frustrated, but after a few months on the job you quickly get used to it. The main reason for this is that you learn the quickest and easiest way of addressing a problem with a news item is to liaise directly with the author of the piece.More often than not, issues can be resolved amicably and professionally.
At all levels of news output, from local to national, the ability to speak with a specific journalist about their story is incredibly important.
I am not talking about articles you simply don’t like, of course, but items that are genuinely badly written, factually incorrect or lacking in balance. Sometimes, even, the absence of a basic right of reply.
Obviously, depending on the severity of a grievance, press officers may have no other option than to immediately escalate their complaint to the highest levels. In most cases (certainly from personal experience), a basic acknowledgment is often provided promptly.
More often than not, though, the preference is to keep it between the two parties without involving editors or, in the most severe cases, IPSO or Ofcom.
Thankfully, in most cases, online news websites make the process of identifying a journalist incredibly easy.
Their name is often placed at the top of an article with a link to their portfolio.
Frustratingly, I have often found this sensible process not to be applicable in the case of the BBC – specifically, its news site.
Most BBC articles lack any mention of an author, which makes the process of complaints incredibly hard to follow, should it be required.
It is difficult to know exactly who to complain to and, in the real world where minutes count for hours, press offices cannot wait for days to hear back from a centralised complaints department.
If there had been no attempt to make contact with your press office in the first instance, it is almost impossible to know how to identify the reporter behind a piece.
When I have been afforded the opportunity of working with a BBC reporter, I have found them to be courteous and professional.
However, this can be overshadowed by a frustration – which I know many in the PR industry share – about the lack of author transparency.
If the BBC is to enjoy the confidence of press offices, it must ensure that its reporters are accountable for their own work and easily identified.
I see no reason why this cannot be the case, given that every other significant news outlet does so already.
The BBC should promptly follow suit.
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GUEST POST: Owen Meredith is CEO of the Professional Publishers Association (PPA). Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
How challenging is your new role of CEO of the PPA?
It’s been a really interesting and exciting time to take it on. We all know the challenges every business has faced through Covid-19, particularly publishers, but I’m excited to have the opportunity to support people through the recovery. There’s light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccine rollout, and we’re making sure that our members have the tools in their armoury to take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way so they can rebuild and grow their businesses back.
What are the current top concerns of your members?
One of the main concerns is changes in the advertising market. Since the early weeks of the pandemic, the advertising market has come back with some strength, particularly digital, which is performing better than forecast. But for print, the forward-booking advertising market has been really challenging because we still need to build long term confidence. We’ve also seen strengths around print subscriptions, where people are looking for time away from a screen, and there’s some opportunity there for both publishers and advertisers.
Are publishers throwing a lot of weight behind their print versions?
Through the crisis, some publishers temporarily moved out of print because of changes at retail due to Covid-19 restrictions. Also, B2B publishers, who were sending print copies to workplaces, were suddenly not reaching their audiences in the same way and they had to adapt.
In the consumer market people have turned to print as a form of escapism and a way to indulge their interests and passions. Here publishers are investing in print, investing in pagination and paper quality. I’m sure we will see more of that as people crave more time away from screens.
How important is print’s sustainability to publishers?
Print is a highly sustainable product and our members are very committed to the sustainability agenda.
At the PPA we have a Sustainability Action Group that looks at how we can improve our carbon footprint and commitment to ecology, so print is definitely here for the long term. If you look at the way publishers have changed, how they deliver their print products in terms of paper wrapping and other alternatives to plastic, there is a sustainability agenda that print can support.
What events do you have planned for 2021?
The PPA Festival in May is one of our most important events. I think realistically we are not going to be able to hold a face-to-face event of the scale of previous festivals, but we are looking at creative ways to provide networking opportunities, insight and content to members and the industry. At the end of June, we have our PPA Awards, and we are optimistic that we can do a face-to-face event where we can celebrate the industry and – hopefully – the economy and life returning to normal.
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GUEST POST: Mario Creatura is Head of Strategic and Digital Communications at Virgin Money. Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
Late on Wednesday evening Facebook chose to ban President Trump from their platform and Instagram indefinitely, but at least for the duration of his presidency.
Twitter temporarily froze his account, but then took the more drastic decision of banning him permanently on Friday. Given his words directly led to the violence on Capitol Hill, who could blame them for taking this potentially preventative action?
While social media companies have for some time now been encouraged to remove accounts perceived to be harmful or criminal, this is nevertheless a watershed moment for the core definition of these organisations – one that will shape the role they and regulators play in curating our digital world.
This could not be more important. It all centres round the ongoing debate about whether social media companies are ‘publishers’ (with an editorial policy akin to a traditional newspaper) or ‘platforms’ (where they act as the passive host through which any and all content can be shared).
For years now they have maintained the façade that they are platforms – in short that they are not to blame for much of the biased, twisted material that’s shared through their tool. But if they are making choices about who to ban, what content is permissible, and what action is justified in the policing of their sites then their argument quickly deteriorates to the point of ridiculousness.
This is not a semantic, academic debate for media lawyers. In late November last year, Prince Harry sued the publishers of The Mail on Sunday over a story claiming that he has fallen out of touch with the Royal Marines. If Facebook is a platform, then they are broadly protected from similar lawsuits. If they are acknowledged to be a publisher then this totally changes the ballgame and leaves them open to such libel actions as well and could remove them from the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The banning of President Trump from social platforms will likely have a huge impact on clarifying this debate. Social media companies are undeniably taking an editorial stance, one that many will agree with in this instance. But once that premise is accepted, how can we object to future judgements that we are less keen on?
Too little, too late?
In this very specific situation, what will the impact of Facebook and Twitter’s decision be on Trump’s advocates?
His removal from these platforms takes away his primary means of communicating to some of his increasingly aggressive base of supporters. One possibility is that over time this ban will hurt him and his populist philosophy by making him seem unconnected and ineffective. They could think: ‘If Twitter can silence the great Trump, is he really the all powerful leader we think he is?’
The alternative, far more dangerous path is that it will yet further embolden his fanatics. A scenario that paints the elite, wealthy techno giants as being in hock to the out-of-touch Democrats; claiming they are so terrified by Trump speaking the truth that the will do anything to silence him. ‘They stole the election, now they’re trying to gag him!’ In this version of events, where do these people go? Do they continue to spout their views on mainstream channels, without an obvious leader to corral them?
The editorial decisions made by social media companies could quite feasibly create a digital Hydra – they can try to cut off the head, but many will grow in its place, spawning yet more leaders of hyper-partisan, totally populist campaigners to accompany his already large following of loyal lieutenants.
After all, it’s simply too late to now be punishing Trump by removing his bully pulpit. He’s on his way out and frankly the damage has been done. And he’s not done it alone, dozens of his Senators, Congressmen, political staffers and loyal media outlets have stoked the rhetoric that led to the violence in DC. It has already spread too far for it to be halted by simply banning Trump.
What’s next?
While Trump’s gagging on social channels sends a clear signal that tech giants are taking their curating role seriously, it needs to be more than a Democrat-wooing PR-exercise. Personal responsibility needs to be taken urgently among our lawmakers and the press to self-regulate the content that they all individually publish, whether or not digital companies are finally identified as publishers. We simply cannot wait yet more years for this debate to play out or for social media companies to regulate free expression retrospectively.
For one: it will cause resentment of the social channels from the perceived oppressed side of the deal. If Trump is censored by Twitter, then Trump supporters will turn their guns on to Twitter.
For another: social media companies are significantly more adept at adapting to the shifting needs of the digital sphere. There is already fear that any attempt by legislators to regulate social media will be out-dated and irrelevant by the time the lengthy legislative process is complete.
Whose job is it to police the digital police if they exist beyond traditional borders with little knowledgeable accountability?
The decision to ban Trump has already unleashed waves of criticism – some arguing that it’s an attack on free speech, others that it’s a more serious assault on democratic institutions. That pales into insignificance when compared to the mass of calls for an entirely reasonable principle: fairness. Many are calling for Twitter to ban Ayatollah Khamenei for the same reasons as Trump – will social media companies be able to operate their content moderation policies consistently?
Trump may have led the creation of the ripe environment for sedition, but many agents played their part in advancing it. Obfuscating social media companies, slow legislators, and partisan communicators all must share in the blame for last Wednesday’s violence.
For that accountability to happen, influencers need to get to grips with their responsibility to consider the consequences of their personal content and for us all to understand the true role of the social media giants.
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GUEST POST: Eliot Wilson is Co-Founder of Pivot Point and a former House of Commons Clerk. Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
Being prime minister is not an easy job. Whether you adopt the approach of Thatcher’s four-hours-a-night, or Macmillan’s retreating to Trollope novels at moments of extreme stress, it is a position which occupies your every waking (and probably many a sleeping) moment; the situation is not helped by the fact that the vast majority of prime ministers live ‘above the shop’ in the apartment complex of 10-11 Downing Street. Time to think can be at a premium.
Boris Johnson is certainly not short of challenges to which he could devote his brain power.
Covid and Brexit are the two most obvious and pressing matters, but one could easily add the “levelling-up” agenda, HS2, the grievous state of the hospitality industry, repayment of the national debt, the examination system in schools, NHS shortages and law and order, and that would be the in-tray only half full.
Being leader of the opposition is a very different matter. The effective levers in your hands are virtually none, especially when you face a government with a healthy parliamentary majority early in the electoral cycle, and if you are not to be wholly reactive (“We think the government should have gone further…”) then thinking is one of the few things to which you can devote a lot of time.
Just before Christmas, Sir Keir Starmer made a “major” speech on devolution and the Union.
This is the sort of parlour game into which opposition leaders are forced; those who occupy the territory willingly are political oddballs and often Liberal Democrats. The content of the speech promised a commission to examine the devolution of power, advised by former prime minister Gordon Brown.
While this is not a move which will capture the imagination on voters’ doorsteps, it is a sensible and grown-up response to the persistent popularity of the SNP in Scotland and the inexplicable perception that the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has handled the Covid crisis well.
A recent poll showed support for Scotland’s secession from the Union at 58%, which would be a comfortable plurality at a referendum.
This is literally an existential threat to the UK: from a business point of view, secession would mean the United Kingdom losing the human capital of 5.5 million people, access to the oil and gas reserves of the North Sea, an enormous potential source of tidal and wind energy and the huge financial services sector in Edinburgh, apart from anything else. It is by no means unrealistic to imagine an independent Scotland by 2030: the government must address this.
What must worry unionists is that Boris Johnson, personally and institutionally, simply does not have the bandwidth to take the fight to the nationalists at the present time. It is often suggested that Johnson, for all his mixed heritage an ineffably English figure, is ill-suited to woo a truculent Scottish electorate.
But if not him, then who? The Labour Party lost its relevance in Scottish politics with its Westminster annihilation in 2015, and its Holyrood leader, Richard Leonard, is the sort of man who is forgettable to his own memory foam mattress. The Liberal Democrats are a harmless fringe. Faute de mieux, the battle for the Union must be an SNP/ Conservative fight.
But who is going to stand in the front line? The Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, is a landowner who looks like a refugee from a late-stage Macmillan cabinet; Baroness Davidson (as she will become) is a proven vote-winner but is only standing in at Holyrood until next May; the Scottish leader, Douglas Ross, is accident-prone and yet to find an authentic voice which resonates with the electorate north of the border.
The prime minister needs help. He needs some heavyweight unionist figures (who need not necessarily be Conservatives); he needs an ultra-smooth and highly responsive media team; and he needs some enormous brains to sit in darkened rooms and find the arguments against secession which will strike a chord with the voters.
The second and third categories should not be impossible to satisfy. The first, the cheerleaders, may prove more difficult. If anyone has any ideas, the address is 10 Downing Street, London SW1A.
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