Chris Dillow is less than impressed with Jack Straw and Alistair Campbell as he and most people regard them as having negative credibility. I feel that Chris – and given his intellectual firepower, I’m rather worried about saying this – is rather missing the point. He’s not the audience – it just happens that he’s hearing the message. I’ll come back to that later; first, the argument.
Let us assume that Mr Straw’s intentions are genuine and that he doesn’t want the maximum period of detention without trial to be extended to forty-two days.
As it stands, Gordon Brown has two options – to keep going with the policy, or to scrap it. Each option has its pros and cons (which doubtlessly vary depending on your point of view). There will be a few particular things that Mr Brown is considering, not least of which will be his standing in the polls. The predictions for the urns are not good and, to cap it all, Charles Clarke is once again doing the rounds trying to drum opposition to the PM for any reason at all.
If Jack Straw were to vote against the policy, or indicate that he was definitely going to vote against the policy, he would have to leave the Cabinet. That reduces his ability to influence Cabinet colleagues, including the PM, makes him look like an ingrate and (from Jack Straw’s point of view) doesn’t help pay the mortgage. Crucially, it also makes it harder for the PM to scotch the policy by delaying it as the PM would have to show that he was ‘strong’ in the face of internal opposition, particularly as Charles Clarke would probably start touting Straw as a stalking horse for the party leadership.
Equally, merely pushing against the forty-two days doesn’t do much either as it doesn’t change the options available or how palatable they are to the ultimate decision-maker.
Jack Straw’s actions – showing loyalty to the big man and to collective decision-making while making it easier and more permissible for more rank-and-file MPs to express their displeasure and, if necessary vote against the bill – poison one of the two options as the risk of a defeat (a bad result for any government) rises and going down that route is more difficult even if the MP wins. However, it shows that there is at least as much support for the other choice and makes it easier for it to be kicked into touch or lured into a committee and quietly strangled.
Alastair Campbell probably gave all of ten minutes’ thought to that letter. BAA will have their PR agency who will have wanted some – any – good news about T5. Campbell knows full well that many people dislike him (although some have a grudging respect). However, the audience might not be the great unwashed, but Ferrovial, the higher-ups of BAA or anyone else. The publication of Mr Campbell’s letter might, for all I know, be the only positive coverage of T5 in the mainstream press1 but it at least, in the press book, says that there has been some positive coverage.
Now, as promised, why this matters.
All the wonderful, new means of communications we have make it a lot easier to have a public conversation but much harder to have a private conversation between lots of people. There is no effective means of Jack Straw talking to “all MPs” or “all power-brokers” or somesuch as the categories are too large and too porous; an email setting out his position (if I’m right above) would very quickly end up in the public domain. The only alternative is to reduce that risk while still getting your message across and, as it happens, an easy way to reach “power brokers”2 is through the newspapers. Just because something is in the papers doesn’t mean it’s meant for the entire readership3 and so it doesn’t mean that the prima facie interpretation holds.
It can also impoverish communication between large groups unless (and I would say until) there is an acceptance that organisations, particularly political parties, have to be able to debate within themselves and that participants in those debates will include senior, serving politicians. As well as things being misunderstood, they will be deliberately taken out of context which causes people to couch and cage their words, making honest debate harder.
xD.
1.Although people from my company have made a total of eight trips through T5 in the past week without any problems.
2.I can’t think of a better phrase, so please imagine those to be rather large quotation marks. Suggestions on a postcard to the comments box, please!
3.Viz, Guardian Sports
Just because something is in the papers doesn’t mean it’s meant for the entire readership
That being the case, Dave, I’d say Straw using the Guardian to send secret messages to a few dozen chums is at best an act of vanity.
I wonder if the editor of the Guardian would be good enough to flag the intended readership of each article. That way we don’t waste our time reading oblique references not intended for us or intrude on private conversations being held in the pages of a national newspaper. It would be nice to have the guesswork taken out of it – maybe they could have a pullout supplement we could immediately discard.
Going on the assumption that your interpretation is correct, Straw should remember he’s an adult in the Cabinet and not a character in a Len Deighton novel. It’s an odd notion that these people communicate in this way.
Justin,
Perhaps I’ve made the whole thing a bit too conspiratorial. It’s not a small group of people, but in the hundreds or low thousands, and it’s not secrecy so much as putting the message out there in the ‘right’ way.
xD.
The greatest problem with these suggestions, Dave, is that they make sense and that is not a prerequisite with Brown.
Your last 3 paragraphs are interesting. I may explore the question.
Matt