INDEX	Thursday, November 11, 2021
Capturing the headlines: even if they are against you!
One of the many odd things about Tony Blair when he was PM was that he had an inclination to run the campaigns of his oponents as well as the Government. At the time this seemed distinctly odd. You'd think he had enough to do running the country without organising those who were against him. But since his long and disastrous years in office ended, something of the purpose of his strategy has become clear. Today Governments like to dominate the news agenda, even if that agenda is hostile to their mission. Take climate change. The Tories run the businesses, own the farms , control the fishing companies and have shares in the logging operations that are the targets of soft green campaigners; yet the news is full of stories about COPS! Why is this? Well, of course, governments mainly fear "events, dear boy" as former Tory PM Harold Macmillan revealed. Things like the poll tax riots can destroy a government, but COPS is hardly likely to. So the trick is to keep COPS (and other soft critical issues) top of the agenda. When real news like the botched attempt to let one of their Tory chums off a ticking off for gross corruption, dominate the headlines, things are going badly wrong. You can see the man under the curtains pulling the levers, for a brief moment. But the great thing about Boris is that he is utterly shameless and appears to have no memory of being caught out (or even how many children he has). When the government seems to be in retreat and great victories seem to be made; that's the time to work out whether the gains are really so great and whether that was, in fact, where the government wanted to go in the first place. With that in mind expect lots of stories about NHS break downs this winter. Crisis, what crisis?
INDEX
Thursday, November 11, 2021 Jonathan Brind