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Conference speech: Winning the argument - new media and the election

Monday, 08 February 2010 17:24

by Helen Gardner

I’ve been blogging for boriswatch.co.uk (which was a pre-existing blog)  for a year now, during which time I’ve been examining the disconnect between what the Mayor says, and what he actually does.  I’d like to talk a little about how both Boris and the Boris-watchers have used online media for their own purposes.

Boris Johnson was elected on a promise of transparency and accountability; he’s attempted to fulfil this promise by publishing his expenses, and those of his deputies and advisers, online, and also by publishing a monthly list of all GLA payments over £1,000.

However, this new era of accountability has also involved removing archived material involving the previous administration’s activities, such as the annual Capital Woman conference and Rise, from the site. The history of the GLA, much like David Cameron’s face, has been airbrushed to suit Tory sensibilities. Like any skilled illusionist, Johnson uses distraction techniques to deflect attention away from where the real action (or absence of it) is taking place.

One of the Mayor’s favourite spin tactics is to take a failing or weakness and turn it into a joke in his speeches. For some time, now, he has been referring to the loss of no less than three of his Deputy Mayors as one of the examples of his administration saving taxpayers’ money.

The body responsible for holding the Mayor to account is the London Assembly, which attempts to carry out its remit in regular public meetings which are webcast on the GLA website. Assembly Members also request, and are sometimes granted, private meetings with the Mayor. The following report from AM Jenny Jones on twitter last week, however, demonstrates the attitude of Boris Johnson towards those whose job it is to hold him to account:

8:45 AM Jan 22nd from web Jenny Jones, Twitter: Another meeting w Boris today re cycling. Hoping to persuade him to tweak the super highways & the bike scheme to make safer/more successful

12:55 PM Jan 22nd from web At bike mtg Boris said that he won't meet w me again if I don't stop attacking him. Ken never asked for that, even when I was his Dep Mayor.

Now, the Mayor has a twitter account, MayorofLondon, but it’s evident that he doesn’t do his own tweeting as his pronouncements have often appeared when he’s being broadcast on a live City Hall webcast, and he sure isn’t typing while he’s talking.

City Hall were also caught out last year by the incident dubbed Twitpicgate by Guardian blogger Dave Hill.  Guto Harri (Boris’s Director of External Affairs) posted on the Mayoral twitter account a photo of the Mayor, supposedly on a train to Manchester, drafting his speech for the Tory conference. However, other Boris-observers and I pointed out that the photo actually showed Boris in a nice, comfy chair in British Airways First Class, complete with seat-belt. It took intervention from Dave Hill for Guto to acknowledge that he had posted the wrong photo; attention to detail is obviously not a strong point of TeamBoris.

It’s been reported that Nick Boles (who ran Boris’s transition team), is heading up the Tory party’s Implementation Team. As we know, the team chosen by Boles (former Chief Executive of right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange) suffered severe attrition, including the loss of two advisers and three “Deputy Mayors”.

In November last year, the Institute For Government published online a document entitled Transitions: Preparing For Changes Of Government. One of the chapters was a study of the change of administration at City Hall and it’s an illuminating examination of how the personality of Boris Johnson was key to some of the disastrous decisions which were taken.

The report points out that, despite pre-election meetings between TeamBoris and GLA officials to explain how the GLA functional bodies worked, there was no discussion at all of policy, as opposed to process, as Johnson was, apparently, disinclined to develop detailed policies. Indeed, it has frequently been said of the Mayor that he doesn’t do detail.

The early weeks of the new administration exposed the flaws in the new Mayor’s set-up, which had been based on the American model of a powerful, big city leader who brings in their own senior team and has several Deputy Mayors running their own portfolios.
 
Johnson had no experience at all of such appointments and he knew virtually none of the potential candidates for his team. The report quotes a former colleague of Johnson, saying that he has “no gang” – he travels alone. Ken Livingstone, on the other hand, had a core of trusted advisers, sharing the same vision.

The Mayoral team was put together quickly, with no vetting of at all of possible appointees. To take as an example, Ray Lewis, who was appointed Deputy Mayor For Young People. When I heard of the appointment, it took me a few seconds’ googling to determine that he was well-dodgy -  ordained clergy don’t suddenly stop being vicars unless something fairly serious happens.

The Institute For Government report which I’ve cited states that the main failures of the new Mayoral administration were the inability to establish a serious and experienced team and the complete lack of a coherent strategy; it ends the chapter on City Hall with the statement: “Personality alone is not enough”.

With four months to go until the General Election, we’ve seen the Tory poster campaign which has been seized upon and lampooned mercilessly by mydavidcameron.com, amongst others, and the poster hoardings themselves have been defaced and disseminated around the internet. The Tories have set up the facility on their website for the electorate to submit questions to Cameron on selected sections of their draft manifesto; the questions with the most votes will then be answered by Cameron during a live webcast.

This supposed submission to the will of the people, is, of course, open to manipulation and abuse by the Party faithful, and just like Boris Johnson, Cameron will be avoiding any difficult questions. In the run-up to the election, I would encourage all those who wish to keep the Tories out of power to use online tools such as blogging and twitter to expose the ineffectual Cameron for the weak leader that he is and spread the word about the lack of substance behind the spin. I’d also like to see more women blogging!