The media
The Tory PR disaster
Paul Johnson
The Thatcher ministry is, by modern British standards, quite an efficient government. It is curious, therefore, that it should be so grotesquely inept in one im- portant branch: public relations. Doubly curious, indeed, because Mrs Thatcher herself has been brilliantly successful in creating, sustaining and imposing her own image. Why, then, is the Government's col- lective one so bad? And, make no.mistake, it is bad. Since the election, for instance, Downing Street's press chap, Bernard In- gham, has succeeded only in creating un-' favourable publicity about his own empire- building, real or imaginary. In the mean- time, Mrs Thatcher's team, for no good reason, has acquired the reputation of being accident-prone, 'a banana-skin government'.
Of course scandals like the Parkinson af- fair are liable to pop up without warning to haunt any government. This type of thing was predictable enough; it confirms the old adage that Tory scandals involve sex, Labour's money, and the Liberals' both. And, as it happens, the Government has handled this one reasonably well, so far. What disturbs me is the PR packaging of far more weighty issues. For instance, Nigel Lawson's promptitude in lopping off a fur- ther £500 million in public spending struck me as admirable. Here was a Chancellor who, unlike Denis Healey and others, did not wait for the roof to fall in but acted the moment the figures went out of kilter. It was an admirable example of instant and efficient Treasury control. Instead, the Government allowed its enemies to present It as (a) an act of panic and (b) dishonourable — a series of cuts carefully concealed during the election and imposed Immediately the voters had been success- fully duped.
Again, the cuts in the National Health Service were long overdue and, in the view of many experts, inadequate. The NHS is about the only institution even in the public sector which has actually taken on many more people in recent years while providing fewer services. Its productivity is appalling and is getting worse. Its waste, inefficiency and bureaucracy are easily exposed by any comparison with the private health sector. The reason is that the private sector is not unionised, so doctors and matrons, rather than union officials, are still in control. In the NHS the unions have campaigned brutally for higher wages, shorter hours and working methods which lower productivity and make the lives of patients even more disagreeable than they need be. Indeed, the unions do not hesitate to halt the whole system when they feel like going on strike. The Health Minister, Kenneth Clark, had
no difficulty in flattening NHS represen- tatives with the facts in a recent TV debate. But in general the Government is losing this public argument and is being presented by the• NHS unions, the real villains of the piece, as Scrooge-like and heartless. How come?
The explanation, I believe, is that there is absolutely no one, at cabinet level, with the direct responsibility for presenting the Government's case to the public. It ought to be virtually a full-time job and, indeed, when Charlie Hill did it — with great suc- cess — it was. Mrs Thatcher has been un- characteristically feeble in handling this problem. First she appointed Angus Maude; but he soon went. Then Francis Pym got it as one of his many jobs, and it would be difficult to think of a person less suitable. Now, I believe, it is one of the tasks entrusted to John Biffen. How he, as Leader of the House, can be expected to oversee public relations when he is in charge of the Government's entire legislative pro- gramme and its day-to-day business in the House — kept up late on the front bench when he might be scanning the early edi- tions and monitoring the peak TV exposure — is beyond my powers to explain. The arrangement is a complete nonsense. This is a radical government, the first in many years, doing difficult, fundamental and often superficially unpopular things which are easily misrepresented. It needs someone who is shrewd in such matters, who is privy to all cabinet decisions and helps to take them, both to advise senior ministers on how to present policies and, still more, to get across to the public a fair and true pic- ture of what the Government is seeking to do. That must be a full-time job, and a demanding one too.
One of the reason's the Government's image is so poor is that it receives a con- tinual pasting on TV, and not just from the obvious left-wing quarters such as Panorama, Newsnight and Channel 4. When Michael Foot made his unpleasant and unworthy attack on Fleet Street last week, I notice that he had no complaints about TV coverage. No indeed: why should he? I had to laugh when I read a report of the first public speech made by Stuart Young, the new Chairman of the BBC, in which he quoted the requirement of the BBC's Royal Charter and licence that it should 'refrain from expressing itself on matters of public policy'. Does he seriously think that his underlings take any notice of such old-fashioned nonsense? There are very few BBC current affairs programmes which do not express themselves on public policy, usually with a leftwards slant.
ITV is moving in the same direction.
Why has not the IBA publicly rebuked Jeremy Isaacs, head of Channel 4, who ad- mitted at the Edinburgh TV festival that it had shown too many left-biased program- mes, a mistake he hoped to correct by recruiting right-wing programme makers? ITV is required by law to produce balance within any particular programme. But even on programmes which lend themselves easi- ly to balance, the result is often distortion, and always to the Left. I cannot ever remember seeing a studio discussion with a right-wing bias — and if readers disagree I beg them to give me examples. Last week I was up in Newcastle to take part in a political programme, with a studio au- dience, called Friday Live, made by Tyne- Tees. I do not know on what principles the audience was picked, but it seemed to con- sist mainly of yah-boo Labour supporters. In addition to three journalists (where a reasonable balance was kept), the platform consisted of two Labour MPs, Ken Liv- ingstone, Michael Meadowcroft MP, the Liberal guru, Bill Rodgers, Julian Crit- chley, the anti-Thatcher Tory — who duly proceded to do what he was invited to do, attack the Prime Minister — and another Tory MP, Michael Fallon, also believed (mistakenly as it turned out) to be critical of Thatcher. The anti-Government bias was deliberate and overwhelming. Halfway through the programme I protested long and loudly about it; and I was told, after- wards, that many viewers had telephoned in to agree. But if I had not been there, the programme would simply have sailed along in the anti-Government breeze, for not many people are prepared to denounce a programme as it were to its face. What I did ought to be done by the IBA, whose job is to enforce the TV Act. If it fails to do so, public-spirited citizens should take its members to court for failing to carry out their statutory duties. Perhaps that will have to be the next step in the effort to make TV observe political neutrality,
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