Lynton Crosby is certainly entitled to a bit of triumphalism. Getting Boris to London City Hall is one thing, but getting David Cameron back to Downing Street with a majority against all the odds certainly ranks as one of the great Lazarus tricks of modern politics. So well done Mr. Crosby. If you weren't already in the super-league of international political consultants, I guess you must be not only in it but near the top of it now.
He's left us with a bit of a gift too. Not a big speaker to the press (no good campaign manager wants to be the story during a campaign, as Alastair Campbell should have realised) he has now given a departing interview to the Daily Telegraph. Amongst all the post-election ink flow, this one provides some of the more interesting and controversial analyses, coming as it does from the man who won.
As I read his interview, I warmed to the man, far more than I might have expected. It was two points in particular that produced that feeling of positivity towards an undoubted political rottweiler of the right. First, apropos of a more significant point, he quoted that well worn canard that "Those who can do, those who can't teach". I sighed internally for a brief instinctive moment as I read that one. No teacher in this country has gone through their lives without having that one quoted incessantly at them by hilarious friends heading off to their long lunches in the city, or gobby students who have just been told off for yet another tedious infraction. But my sigh quickly turned to a gasp of surprise. Crosby was quoting this to do it down. His wife, it turns out, was a teacher and "I don't really agree with that" he said. Well, well. Here was a human side I hadn't realised before. And a possible explanation for one of his earliest influences on the Conservatives' election campaign - the removal of toxic Michael Gove from the Department of Education to the hidden (until the fiasco of the attempt to unseat the Speaker) realms of Chief Whip.
But the second reason for warming to Mr. Crosby was his second, more significant point. He claims that it is not only pollsters who should be hanging their heads for failing to misread the nation. He has a very vigorous, and heartfelt it seems, pop at the world of the political commentariat. He adapts his teacher comment for the world of politics to read "Those who can do, those who can't commentate." It was a feeling I'd had myself. Not, I hastily add, the insight that the commentators had it all wrong. That was a Crosbian intuition based on extensive internal polling. My feeling was an increasing level of irritation at the apparently all knowingness of commentators who hadn't stepped out of the metropolitan bubble. I blogged about it here, getting particularly irate at the desire of the commentators to keep knocking the campaign for its dullness instead of perhaps trying to enagage a little more deeply with the actual issues. Andrew Marr was an annoying example of one who praised the wonderful brilliance of the commentariat but thought the actual campaign being waged by, you know, actual politicians on the ground, was just "tooth-grindingly awful".
Well, Crosby has launched his mighty artillery at them, and is firing a shot in defence of those who have bothered to participate. The street pounders, canvassers, representatives and their agents, all seeking to do something a bit more than carp from the sidelines.
We need good commentators. At their best they provide a much needed guide to the often treacherous paths of political discourse. Divorced from the need to please an electorate they can bring some objective perceptions that illuminate the world that should so fascinate all of us. But Crosby rightly condemns those who seem to see politics more as entertainment. Better paid than many of the ordinaries whose vote is the warp and weft of the active politicians' work and voice, they have become too comfortable in their carping sanctimony. I don't agree with his picking out of Tim Montgomerie necessarily, who has after all been engaged with the political world of both policy and voters rather more directly than many writers, but I do laud his broader principle.
We get the politics we deserve, but very often it is the media not the politicians themselves who too often frame our polity. Yes, they should start taking some responsibility for that.
He's left us with a bit of a gift too. Not a big speaker to the press (no good campaign manager wants to be the story during a campaign, as Alastair Campbell should have realised) he has now given a departing interview to the Daily Telegraph. Amongst all the post-election ink flow, this one provides some of the more interesting and controversial analyses, coming as it does from the man who won.
As I read his interview, I warmed to the man, far more than I might have expected. It was two points in particular that produced that feeling of positivity towards an undoubted political rottweiler of the right. First, apropos of a more significant point, he quoted that well worn canard that "Those who can do, those who can't teach". I sighed internally for a brief instinctive moment as I read that one. No teacher in this country has gone through their lives without having that one quoted incessantly at them by hilarious friends heading off to their long lunches in the city, or gobby students who have just been told off for yet another tedious infraction. But my sigh quickly turned to a gasp of surprise. Crosby was quoting this to do it down. His wife, it turns out, was a teacher and "I don't really agree with that" he said. Well, well. Here was a human side I hadn't realised before. And a possible explanation for one of his earliest influences on the Conservatives' election campaign - the removal of toxic Michael Gove from the Department of Education to the hidden (until the fiasco of the attempt to unseat the Speaker) realms of Chief Whip.
But the second reason for warming to Mr. Crosby was his second, more significant point. He claims that it is not only pollsters who should be hanging their heads for failing to misread the nation. He has a very vigorous, and heartfelt it seems, pop at the world of the political commentariat. He adapts his teacher comment for the world of politics to read "Those who can do, those who can't commentate." It was a feeling I'd had myself. Not, I hastily add, the insight that the commentators had it all wrong. That was a Crosbian intuition based on extensive internal polling. My feeling was an increasing level of irritation at the apparently all knowingness of commentators who hadn't stepped out of the metropolitan bubble. I blogged about it here, getting particularly irate at the desire of the commentators to keep knocking the campaign for its dullness instead of perhaps trying to enagage a little more deeply with the actual issues. Andrew Marr was an annoying example of one who praised the wonderful brilliance of the commentariat but thought the actual campaign being waged by, you know, actual politicians on the ground, was just "tooth-grindingly awful".
Well, Crosby has launched his mighty artillery at them, and is firing a shot in defence of those who have bothered to participate. The street pounders, canvassers, representatives and their agents, all seeking to do something a bit more than carp from the sidelines.
We need good commentators. At their best they provide a much needed guide to the often treacherous paths of political discourse. Divorced from the need to please an electorate they can bring some objective perceptions that illuminate the world that should so fascinate all of us. But Crosby rightly condemns those who seem to see politics more as entertainment. Better paid than many of the ordinaries whose vote is the warp and weft of the active politicians' work and voice, they have become too comfortable in their carping sanctimony. I don't agree with his picking out of Tim Montgomerie necessarily, who has after all been engaged with the political world of both policy and voters rather more directly than many writers, but I do laud his broader principle.
We get the politics we deserve, but very often it is the media not the politicians themselves who too often frame our polity. Yes, they should start taking some responsibility for that.
2 comments:
nice.
easy to say.. hard to do
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