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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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 Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:04 pm Post subject: blair in numbers |
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| Quote: | Blair in numbers
Tony Blair has announced that he will step down as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007. Strong stomachs will be required over the next seven weeks as the political classes feed us a steady diet of nostalgia and hagiography. This should reveal, for anyone who doubted it, that something approaching a personality cult exists around Blair, as it did around Thatcher and Reagan before him.
A government memo describing the plans for Blair's departure was leaked last September. Its call for Blair to go "with the crowds wanting more" with the PM as "the star who won't even play that last encore" was the cause of much hilarity from the general commentariat. And yet, pathetically, that's exactly the send off that he is now getting. And more pathetically still, the wails of anguish from the punditocracy as the dear leader departs couldn't be more at odds with the views of the apparently irrelevant public.
So BBC political editor Nick Robinson tells us that "love him or loathe him...Blair will be missed" and will "leave Downing Street after a decade in office without being forced out, and with a smile on his face - a feat which no other modern prime minister has matched". Whilst the BBC's graph tracking Blair's approval rating throughout his time in office, show his support steadily declining from a post-97 election high of around 75 per cent to a current low of less than 25. There are highs and lows, but the trend line heads downwards inexorably. Hard to see what he's smiling about. And if he's not being forced from office, is that his achievement or our democracy's failing?
Then we have the headline on the front page of today's Guardian, which tells us that a "Poll shows [Blair] will leave with voters' respect". The framing of the poll results in question, both in that headline and in the article, are a masterclass in editorial spin. Someone has plainly decided that something positive needed to be said about Blair in this piece. One is almost forced to admire the valiant efforts of hapless writer Julian Glover to make completely contradictory facts support the preordained conclusion.
For instance:
"Despite Iraq and Labour's steep decline in public support, Mr Blair will be remembered as a force for change in Britain - although not necessarily for the better - by 60% of all voters and 70% of Labour ones"
Its hard to see exactly where the word "despite" comes in here, unless one had already decided to say that there were positives in the poll to offset Blair's recent disasters, and then had to find a way to present the facts so as to support this conclusion. As the article admits, being a "force for change" is neither a positive nor a negative, so where's the "on the one hand Iraq, but despite that...." angle here?
I'm sure many Iraqis see Blair as a "force for change".
"Asked to give their impressions of the prime minister, taking into account his entire decade in power, 80 per cent of Labour voters say that he was good for the country. Overall, 44 per cent of voters agree - a rating that stands well ahead of Labour's current position in the polls."
Blair then can at least say that most of the people who vote for his government think he's been good for the country. A mighty achievement. But that still leaves the 56 per cent of the general public who were not able to say the same.
"But despite the police investigation into cash for honours, 44 per cent of all voters and 73 per cent of Labour ones still say that they think Mr Blair was "an honest kind of guy"."
Another curious use of the word "despite". 56 per cent of the public can't say that Blair is honest. More than a quarter of people who actually vote for his government can't say that Blair's honest.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I can't see anything in this poll that says that Blair "will leave with voters' respect".
Let's look at the results of another poll, which appeared in The Observer last month. See if you can find any of these conclusions fairly reflected in the political obituaries of Blair that appear in the coming weeks.
Respondents are asked to rate Blair from 0 to 10, where where 10 means strongly like, and 0 means strongly dislike. 48 per cent rate him 0, 1, 2 or 3. 24 per cent rate him at 0. 19 per cent rate him in the corresponding 4 places at the top of the scale (7, 8, 9 and 10). 3 per cent rate him at 10.
56 per cent of respondents say their view of Blair has deteriorated over 10 years. 5 per cent like him more.
55 per cent believe that Blair is too influenced by the rich.
57 per cent say Blair "has stayed in office too long". 9 per cent think not long enough.
6 per cent think Blair's performance in office has been very good. 20 think good. That leaves 71 per cent. Of these 42 are evenly split between poor and very poor.
Its unsurprising that 58 per cent think Iraq was Blair's biggest failure. But how many times will we see reflected in political coverage the fact that the next on the list was his presiding over an increase in the gap between rich and poor? That polled 10 per cent, well above the fuel tax (3), foxhunting (3) and Europe (1). Plainly the public and the punditocracy have different political priorities (and the claim of the rightwing tabloids to "speak for Britain" might need a review).
Finally, lets look at the big myth on Blair's popularity - Blair the electoral wizard. Geoffrey Wheatcroft nailed this myth in an article last August. As he points out:
"...that first landslide [1997] needs to be deconstructed. There were several factors at play... The Tory vote collapsed by an astonishing 4 million (not least because rightwing Europhobic parties picked up nearly a million votes)."
"Then the British learned the art of tactical voting for the first time since the 1920s, as demonstrated by the fact that the Lib Dems won more than twice as many seats in 1997 as five years earlier with substantially fewer votes, both absolutely and as a percentage. And finally, as Herbert Morrison put it, "When the British people say something they say it in italics," meaning that our electoral system distorts the result in favour of the winning party, in 1997 giving Blair 63% of parliamentary seats with only 44% of the popular vote."
"Since then it has been downhill all the way. When the desperate last-ditch Blairites talk about Tony's electoral flair, remember that in 1997 Blair and New Labour won fewer popular votes than John Major and the Tories in 1992; that in 2001, Blair won fewer popular votes than Neil Kinnock and Labour in 1992; and that in 2005 Labour won fewer popular votes than the Tories had in the 97 disaster."
"Over three elections under Blair, his party's vote has fallen from 13.5 million to 10.7 million to 9.6 million. And that .....is what statisticians call a trend line."
So Between 1997 and 2005, Labour lost nearly 4 million popular votes; the same amount the Tories lost during the living death of the Major years. And this in the face of no meaningful parliamentary opposition. Yet Major was a disaster and Blair is a magician. And this is the view, not just in the Guardian offices but across the political spectrum, even in Tory central office.
Worth keeping a few of these figures in mind when you're watching TV news or reading the papers over the next few weeks and wondering if you've missed something where Blair's alleged popularity and political skills are concerned. |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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| the sad fact is that his leaving won't really affect anything - change at that level is like altering the face-paint on a clown... |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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yeah totally - but whats interesting is the media coverage of it ...
its like blair and brown - no difference, but labour have to try and create a perception of difference, that brown will somehow be a change from what they know is an unpopular blair, and on cue, the media fall in line |
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Lostinthestates
Joined: 28 Feb 2007
Location: Bethlehem, USA
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| Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| I am actually quite sentimental about Blair leaving even though I do think it is time for him to go especially as he has far too close ties to old Bush! I do think Brown will most likely distance himself more from the Bush-agenda. He does need to establish himself as a PM-candidate so I do think there will be a few changes in labour's political direction. |
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Aja
Reggae Ambassador
Joined: 24 Jun 2006
Location: Lost Londoner ..Nr Philly. PA
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| Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 1:49 am Post subject: |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 11:18 am Post subject: |
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