Brian Monteith: Cameron needs to shift focus from PR to facts

THE Prime Minister should stop worrying about how he is perceived and start concentrating on what matters, writes Brian Monteith

THE Prime Minister should stop worrying about how he is perceived and start concentrating on what matters, writes Brian Monteith

It is to be expected that, from time to time, governments get themselves into a fankle of their own making. When you have a coalition composed of two parties that must, by definition, be pulling different ways, the chances are that confusion will be more commonplace than normal. Add to this maelstrom the fact that Britain’s own particular coalition is led by a Conservative Party that has, under David Cameron’s leadership, been grounded more in public relations perceptions than political philosophy and you have seemingly never-ending dramas made out of minor crises.

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This is because the perceptions of the non-stop media reporting, the tittle-tattle of the parasitical commentariat and the predictable grandstanding by the opposition leadership all count for more with the PR-conscious political elite than the hard facts of economic performance.

Thus, last week was one such soap opera from hell in which the Conservatives were cast as the villains, if not the clowns. Or was it?

The Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, finally resigned after four weeks that seemed like four months of Tory navel-gazing following his intemperate outburst at a police constable. Even though the episode happened immediately following the exposure of scandalous behaviour by senior police officers at the time of, and for many years after, the Hillsborough tragedy, all the public sympathy was towards the police constable who had been abused.

The point was that Mitchell, a politician with reputedly few friends even in his own party, could become a pawn in the “one nation” game that was being played out between Cameron and Ed Miliband, because he was condescending and patronising. No-one died, but Mitchell committed the capital offence of creating a bad perception. What Cameron thought he could skilfully control is now coming back to bite him.

The Labour leader, living in his million-plus house, servicing his £400,000 mortgage, could say he would seek to heal the division within the country by pitting the plebs against the toffs. Healing division by furthering division is no better than his other gee-whizz idea of solving the debt crisis by creating more debt.

The Conservative leader, a millionaire too, but with a fancier education, could say he was being a strong prime minister by refusing Mitchell’s offer to resign and toughing it out, only to finally capitulate and – wait for it – replace the Chief Whip with yet another old Etonian, Sir George Young. For someone like Cameron who seeks to impress people that he has acute PR antennae it was worthy of a West End comedy. But no-one in his party is laughing.

Feeding into this soap that would make the likes of Howard’s Way high art was the ridiculous story that the Chancellor, finding himself unable to get a seat in a standard class railway carriage, had moved to first class and tried to resist paying the upgrade. Whatever the merits of the story, the reek of hypocrisy emanating from Labour and the SNP in trying to divide the nation into Lord Snootys and Bash Street Kids is nauseating.

Even just a cursory investigation of published expenses shows that when it comes to claiming for first class travel at the taxpayers’ expense it is Labour that has most to be embarrassed about – even though MPs are not meant to use anything other than standard class fares.

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It is also evident that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made 48 claims for parliamentary rail travel that have all been at standard fare. He clearly is not some elitist travelling in some privileged manner but a normal rail traveller familiar with the vagaries of using the railways.

Not to be outdone by ignoring the felicitations to use only standard class there are three SNP MPs who have also claimed for first class rail travel: are they Lord Snootys or had they forgotten to mention this to the First Minister before he made his deplorable comments? I struggle to think of what an independent Scotland might be under his gaze, but in his egalitarian vision it clearly involves one class of rail carriage – and by logical extension, one class of school, for how else are we not to have people with different backgrounds going to different schools?

It is, of course, all nonsense, but then Cameron only has himself to blame, for his preoccupation with how things look rather than with how things should be is pulling his government down and giving his enemies the opportunity to score cheap points which also gets them off the hook of offering a plausible alternative economic strategy.

The real danger for Cameron is that the perception that he himself has fed – of a clubbable government run by toffs for toffs – will become the enduring symbolism buttressed by a sense of incompetence because so many (the narrative goes) have never had a proper job.

Again, Cameron has left himself exposed to this charge by forming a government that has so often played to the modern idea that older politicians with past careers were not needed in the Cabinet.

There is a solution, and that is to be less concerned with what the metropolitan elite think of him and his government and to work for the blue collar voters without which the Conservative Party has never won an election. The next point is to recognise that it is the economy, stupid, that will determine the next election, not all the craftiest, trendiest posturing that unconservative advisers might dream up.

Was last week that bad? By the way Cameron measures it, by the way the media measures it, by the way the opposition want it to be measured, it was a disaster. And yet unemployment fell, with especially good news for young unemployed. The deficit is coming down, order books are improving – the news is there if Cameron would focus on it.

It is this news that the government should be reminding the electorate of rather than allowing itself to be distracted. In 1997 the Tories threw away a golden economic legacy to Labour by looking an arrogant and out-of-touch spent force.

Cameron must get a grip of his priorities or lose the battle for news and the election.