Yesterday evening, for the first time in my life, I went to a football ground. Not to watch or play football, but to listen to a speech by Dominic Grieve MP, the Shadow Home Secretary. And I was extremely impressed with him. Not only was his speech 1st class, the 30 minute chat I had with him impressed me even more. His knowledge of a plethora of issues was well  in-depth and informed. He even managed to sidestep the awkward comments and conversations that can be so common when speaking to some of the older clientele.  But there was one thing that he said, which had nothing to do with policies or fixing the Labour mess, but represented precisely what Labour truly stand for. And that is media manipulation.

I have already blogged about how I believe Labour, Gordon Brown specifically, used the timing of the US elections to political advantage. By calling the Glenrothes election 2 days after the US election and 1 day after a massive 1.5% interest rate cut (although that could not be predicted, the date of any possible cut was known. Lucky, but as we all know, you make your own luck in life), the news agenda was dominated by these events rather than the fate of Glenrothes. However, a quick look at the papers reveals that the day before the election, there was apparently no chance that Labour would win (see for example here, here and here). And apparently, Nick Palmer, the Labour MP for Broxtowe said

I don’t know any Labour MPs who are expecting us to win - the range of opinion is from “Well, we’ve given them a run for their money” to “Bloody byelections, what can you expect?”

Yet only a couple of days earlier, according to Dominic Grieve, there was not a single Labour Minister that thought they would loose. Most thought they would win by a healthy, but reduced, margin. It seems that the Labour spin machine was in, well, full spin. By letting it be known that they thought they would loose, Labour have managed to turn the headline “Labour reduce their lead by half” or “Despite Brown bounce, Labour still on course for election loss” to “Labour’s tale of the unexpected” from the Beeb. In fact, a swing towards the Conservatives of the same magnitude in the general election could result in a small, but very real, majority for them.

Despite what I would call a disastrous result - despite all of the resources in the World thrown at the seat, they still lost half their majority - the media are full of “Brown Bounce” stories because he fed them with a “we are going to loose” line the day before the election. It’s a perfect manipulation of the media.

I certainly don’t remember hearing about the convenient timing when the date was announced, the media all ran with the same story the day of the election (that Labour will loose) and now the media are full of the Brown Bounce. And this is the culture that is true New Labour - no strong policies, just media manipulation and plenty of coverage. And is has got to end. The media must be independent, free to investigate and report on their own. They should not be bullied into running the politician’s particular spin that day. Enough of the “Tomorrow, the Home Secretary will announce…”; enough of the same stories blanketing all of the news papers; enough of the bullying tactics. If a particular policy is not strong enough to win on debate and strength of arguments alone, it is probably the wrong policy.