Catalyst - Tough on soundbites, tough on the causes of soundbites

Tough on soundbites, tough on the causes of soundbites
New Labour and news management

Contents

Bob Franklin is Reader in Media and Communications at Sheffield University.
Among his other publications are Packaging Politics, Newzak and News Media and Televising Democracies.

From the day of its election victory, it has been clear that New Labour intended to develop the presentational emphasis that had served it so well in opposition. This was not simply habit. New Labour is perhaps the first government genuinely committed to the view that presentation is part of the process of policy formation. This could well change the nature of British democracy.

Using exclusive private interviews with senior Whitehall civil servants - mainly those working in the Government Information Service (GIS) - New Labour's extended honeymoon with the press and its vigorous policy of news management - spin doctoring - is examined.

The news management system extends beyond party press officers into the GIS, part of the supposedly non-partisan civil service. Existing departmental Heads of Information have been replaced by new appointees expected to be more energetic in pushing the government agenda. Almost twice as many special advisors have been appointed in the first six months of the new administration as were appointed during John Major's term of office. This almost inevitably leads to a blurring of boundaries between government and party interests, between information and propaganda. The fourth estate risks being overrun by a "fifth estate" of public relations and press officers.

This process, if unchecked, has serious implications for democracy. The media, together with focus groups, opinion polls, lobbyists and the like, are moving centre stage in the process of mediation between government and the electorate, at the expense of parliament. As Minister Without Portfolio Peter Mandelson has observed, "The era of representative government is coming to an end." MPs are no longer just the representatives in parliament of their electors - they have become the representatives of the Labour Party to their electors. Politics becomes salesmanship.

The positive effects - perhaps in increased voter turnout - are likely to be outweighed by the negative consequences of packaging politics, producing a "designer democracy". This places a premium on form over content, on photo-opportunity rather than debate, and leads to a cosy collusion between politicians and journalists.

A number of measures to counter these effects should be considered, including televising press briefings by the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, subjecting political appointees to the same code of conduct as civil service members of the GIS and increasing journalistic independence through the creation of an Independent Press Authority.

From the day of its election victory, it has been clear that New Labour intended to continue and develop in government the presentational emphasis which had served it so well in opposition. This is not simply opportunism, knee-jerk control-mania or even ingrained habit. New Labour is perhaps the first government genuinely committed to the belief that the presentation of policy is as important as the policy itself. Lord Mountfield's report on the Government Information Service (GIS) makes this commitment explicit: "Any government needs modern and effective relations with the media. The effective communication and explanation of policy and decisions should not be an after-thought, but an integral part of a democratic government's duty to govern with consent." (1)

But the relationship between policy and its presentation is undoubtedly more problematic and less benign than this government formulation suggests. It leads to, among other things, an increase in centralisation and control of communications by New Labour, an increasingly assertive and even bullying approach to the news media, and a creeping politicisation of the GIS.

In its early months in office, the Labour government undoubtedly enjoyed a protracted honeymoon with the British press. A leading broadsheet journalist conceded that the government "was getting a soft ride from the press", while a senior government information officer confessed to having "been appalled by the slavishness of the British press towards Saint Tony and his holier-than-thou government". (2) Reports in the Sun and the Mirror have been remarkable for their uncritical attitude towards the new government, despite the fact that many print journalists feel more than a little aggrieved at the government's evident preference for television journalism - the presentational style of New Labour is overwhelmingly "picture driven". (3)

By mid-November 1997 there were some signs that the honeymoon was ending. The controversy concerning the exemption of Formula One motor racing from restrictions on tobacco advertising, the apparent financial hypocrisy of Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson and the revolt by 47 Labour backbenchers over planned cuts in lone-parent benefits, triggered critical coverage in many sections of the press. Journalist Simon Hoggart declared that the government's honeymoon with the Labour Party was over; indeed, some backbenchers were instigating divorce proceedings. But it was still marital bliss in many parts of the press. Editorials in the Sun and the Mirror on 23 December 1997 roared their approval of the government's welfare reforms; the Mirror reminded readers that MPs had a "duty to follow their Leader".

Why do journalists appear to have lost their critical edge? Any explanation must take into account the perennial problem for political journalism: namely that politician-journalist relations are inherently collusive. Each needs the other to achieve their objectives. Political journalism, for example, is doomed without at least the minimal co-operation of politicians. Similarly, politicians believe that their careers will be enhanced - and the causes they wish to champion promoted - if they establish productive working relationships with journalists. This symbiosis does not wholly preclude the relationship becoming adversarial, but suggests that its day-to-day character is essentially co-operative, even if it oscillates "between trust and suspicion". (4)

This everyday collusion has developed apace under New Labour. Journalists have much to gain from this new mateyness, but even more to lose. Stories published under the enviable (if overworked) label "exclusive" do not always reflect investigative journalism; the story may simply have been placed in the paper by a Labour press officer. Such generosity may be a reward for the newspaper's previously supportive coverage, or it might reflect the spin doctor's knowledge of the paper's readership and a belief that the story will "play well" with this audience. Yet political correspondents "appear to be wholly caught up in the frenzy of the spinners, desperate to stay in favour, craven to their political masters". (5)

Stories which are critical of the government disrupt the flow of such gifts; worse, the journalist risks deliberate exclusion from authoritative insider sources of information. Spin doctors operate with a sliding scale of retaliation. Negative copy means a journalist "might be ignored for a month, [their] editor might be harangued, [their] appearances at press conferences turned into public humiliation". (6) In these circumstances, independent political journalism becomes difficult.

There is, of course, another reason informing some journalists' uncritical attitudes towards New Labour - they believe that their proprietor Rupert Murdoch has agreed a pact with Tony Blair. In return for his newspapers' support for New Labour in the 1997 election and the party's first year in office, Murdoch benefits from the government's benign media policy. On 9 February 1998, for example, the government imposed a three-line whip on Labour peers. They were not to support Lord McNally's amendment to the Competition Bill designed to outlaw Murdoch's predatory pricing of his newspapers (which was intended to force the Independent and Telegraph out of the market). Eventually 23 Labour peers rebelled against the whip, although the government quickly announced its intention to overturn the vote in the Commons. Murdoch must be similarly pleased with the government's decision to exempt newspapers and journalists from Articles 8 and 10 of the European Rights Bill - which would otherwise have constituted an effective privacy law.

But it was Murdoch's boast in the Times that he had used his "special access" to Tony Blair to decide whether to bid £4 billion for Italian tycoon Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset network, which prompted an outcry among other media interests as well as Labour backbenchers. Blair's Press Secretary Alastair Campbell initially described the claim that Blair had discussed Murdoch's intentions with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi as "crap", "a complete joke" and "a load of old boloney". The very next day he conceded that the matter had been raised in conversation between the two politicians.

Writing in the Observer, Andrew Neil - former editor of Murdoch's Sunday Times - claimed he had been told by Blair that "how we treat Murdoch's media interests will depend on how his newspapers treat the Labour Party in the run up to the election and after we are in government". (7) The complaint of journalists and broadcasters that Murdoch appears to be unduly influential in government media policy is endorsed by a senior official at the National Union of Journalists. "In this country we don't have a problem with the government interfering with the press," he said, "we have a problem with the press interfering with the government; and that's a much more serious problem."

The overriding concern in the government's communication strategy has been to centralise communications under the control of the Prime Minister's Press Secretary Alastair Campbell and the Minister Without Portfolio Peter Mandelson. The central plank in this strategy was Peter Mandelson's brief to "assist in the strategic implementation of government policies and their effective presentation to the public". In the words of the Mountfield report, Mandelson's "presentation and co-ordination role complements that of the Chief Press Secretary". (8) Consequently, Mandelson and Campbell have a responsibility to ensure that "all major interviews and media appearances, both print and broadcast, should be agreed with the No 10 Press Office before any commitments are entered into. The policy content of all major speeches, press releases and new policy initiatives should be cleared in good time with the No 10 private office; the timing and form of announcements should be cleared with the No 10 Press Office." (9) Background briefings for MPs, designed to keep them "on message" on particular issues are distributed to constituency offices by No 10 - they are marked, rather ominously, "From the Head of Attack".

For those who believe that such centralised communication structures lead to government by propaganda, Mandelson's appointment seems like a case of leaving the fox in charge of the hen house. Like Campbell, Mandelson refuses to admit that he "manages" the news, although he appears to concede that news management is a less than proper activity for a politician. Consequently, Mandelson makes some purely semantic distinctions. "It depends what you mean by news management," he says. "If you're accusing me of getting the truth across about what the government has decided to do, that I'm putting the very best face or gloss on the government's policies, that I'm trying to avoid gaffes or setbacks and that I'm trying to create the truth - if that's news management, I plead guilty." (10)

Of course, it may be best not to take this statement too seriously. Mandelson may simply be playing up to his reputation and indulging in a little postmodern irony. But, if taken literally, two aspects of his response seem alarming. First, his apparent refusal to acknowledge that the activity of "getting the truth across about what the government has decided to do" might have propagandist implications, seems at best naive, at worst disingenuous. Mandelson insists that his concern is with "modernising" government communications; there is no intention to "politicise" or control communications. Second, but undoubtedly more disturbing, is Mandelson's claim that he is "trying to create the truth". Now "truth" may be discovered, or revealed, or unravelled or even exposed. But "created"?

A major innovation in truth creation is the daily 9am meeting which is attended by the key communications staff from No 10 (the Chief Press Secretary or his deputy), the Prime Minster's Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell, the Treasury (Charlie Whelan), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (David Clark) and the Deputy Prime Minister's Office (Joe Irvin), as well as representatives from the Cabinet Office and the Chief Whips Office. Chaired by Mandelson, the meeting ensures that strategy and presentation are "in step" and allocates people to resolve current presentational problems. The meeting, says the Mountfield report, has a "rapid response" capability which is "firmly founded upon players who are up-to-the-minute on the Prime Minster's thinking and so able to deal with stories confidently and robustly". (11)

There is evidence in abundance to illustrate the central control which the communications team has exercised from the early days of the Labour government. On 14 May 1997, the Guardian reported that Campbell had "ordered" Sports Minister Tony Banks not to appear on the LBC Sunday radio programme London Matters; Banks had been a regular on the programme for six months. In defence of this veto, a spokeswoman claimed "it's government policy not to have too many people on the airwaves or the message will get lost. Frankly we don't want the airwaves clogged with too many opinions." (12) Too many opinions? Another innovation in democracy by New Labour. In democratic oldspeak, a wide diversity of opinion was considered to be the essence of the process.

Even senior ministers are subject to Campbell's dictates about media appearances. In late March 1998, Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman and her deputy Frank Field were instructed by fax not to give any media interviews because of growing rumours of a split between them over welfare policies. Campbell also chastised Harman and requested an "explanation for why the interviews with the Guardian, Women's Hour and The World at One were not cleared through this office". (13) Such rebukes raise a significant issue. Banks and Field are ministers, Harman a Secretary of State, while Campbell is a civil servant; yet Campbell appears to have greater political clout than any of the others. The constitutional status of such "communications advisors" deserves closer scrutiny.

There are many other instances of the growing communications control established at the centre. In June 1997, for example, an interview on The World at One with Health Secretary Frank Dobson to discuss the ban on tobacco sponsorship was cancelled because it clashed with the day's agreed message: John Prescott's water summit. (14) A further example is more worrying. In late October 1997, four MEPs were disciplined for refusing to sign a "gagging" code, ratified by the party's NEC the previous month: the code explicitly prohibited any public criticism of government policies. "Public criticism" is defined widely to include all media - three of the MEPs were judged to have broken it by speaking to the Guardian, the Financial Times and the BBC.

Labour's desire for centralised control of communications has entailed a more robust attitude towards journalists and the media. In early October 1997, Campbell circulated a memo to all Heads of Information in the GIS complaining that the government service must "raise its game" and adopt the same tactics deployed by Labour while in opposition. "Media handling", as he described media relations, must become more assertive. "Decide your headlines," Campbell said, "sell your story and if you disagree with what is being written argue your case. If you need support from here [Downing Street] let me know". (16)

The "handling" has certainly become rough. Journalists are bullied, harangued, isolated from government news sources and told that their editors will be contacted and advised to sack them. Andrew Marr, when editor of the Independent, and Will Hutton, editor of the Observer, have both been the subject of a negative briefing by Labour sources. David Montgomery, Chief Executive of Mirror Group Newspapers (which owned the Independent at the time) was contacted by Labour spin doctors and advised that he should replace Marr as editor. Labour spin doctors appear to inhabit a pleasingly uncomplicated world of "good guys" and "bad guys" - Marr was told: "You are either with us or against us." (17)

Broadcast journalists are similarly the butt of New Labour's attempt to bully the media into compliance. Kevin Marsh, editor of Radio 4's The World at One since 1992, was the subject of an extreme personal attack by a Labour source in a telephone call to the Observer in October 1997. Marsh was accused of running "something of a vendetta" against Labour. (18) In December 1997, when Marsh was a candidate for the editorship of the Today programme, Campbell attacked him in a letter to the Guardian and in a five-page letter to Richard Clemmow, Head of BBC news programmes, which denounced Marsh as consistently biased against the government. Marsh was accused of being "closed to reason" and of peddling an "anti-Labour follow-any-old-Tory-guff-agenda".

This is not the only letter that reveals New Labour attitudes. A leaked letter to the BBC from Dave Hill, the party's Head of Communications at the time, threatened to end all relations with the Today programme after John Humphrys interviewed Harriet Harman about cuts to benefits for lone-parent families. The letter is extraordinary in its bellicose and threatening language, its arrogance, its belief that it is legitimate for politicians to dictate policy to broadcasters and its presumption that politicians' appearances on the media are designed to win "benefits" for "us". It says: "The John Humphrys problem has assumed new proportions after this morning's interview with Harriet Harman. In response we have had a council of war and are now seriously considering whether, as a party, we will suspend co-operation when you make bids through us for government ministers . . . in order to make sure that your listeners are not going to be subjected to a repeat of the ridiculous exchange this morning . . . Frankly none of us feels this can go on . . . We can see no benefit to us. We need to talk as this is now serious." (19)

Since then, Labour's relations with the media have deteriorated further. On Christmas Eve 1997, Campbell denounced the Guardian's coverage of proposed disability benefit cuts as having "decided against any proper debate on the issue - indeed your coverage has moved into full betrayal mode". This is the language of the zealot. All disagreement is betrayal.

When, in early 1998, John Sargent, the BBC's Chief Political Correspondent, asked about Blair's planned visit to the United States and whether the Prime Minister was worried about the prospect of being questioned about the sexual scandal surrounding President Bill Clinton, Campbell's response was disproportionately hostile. He dismissed Sargent's question as "irrelevant" and attacked the BBC as a "downmarket, dumbed-down, over-staffed, over-bureaucratic, ridiculous organisation". A week later, when The World at One reported Labour backbencher Brian Sedgemore's criticisms of Mandelson's work on the Millennium Dome project, Campbell denounced the programme's "complete lack of perspective" and its "increasingly trivial agenda". (20)

In government, New Labour has access to the resources of the GIS, which incorporates the Central Office of Information (COI). The GIS is staffed by approximately 1,000 career civil servants whose activities are governed by a code of conduct (the Whitehall Red Book) which underscores their impartiality and protects them from possible ministerial ambitions to recruit them as propagandists for the government cause. The GIS's role is to provide background, putting information about government policy in context; under no circumstances should it be seen to be promoting that policy. Special advisors may be paid to be their masters' voices but civil servants must never engage in such partisan ventriloquism. From the outset, Labour has been impressed by the need to "modernise" the GIS. The service was judged to be too "defensive" and "reactive" and to have failed to recognise that servicing media requirements was a 24-hour-a-day job. For their part, GIS civil servants have complained about what they consider to be the "politicising" of their organisation. Their case rests on seven claims.

First, that the new government has appointed an unprecedented number of special advisors to assist with communications. Public Services minister David Clarke, in a written Commons answer on 25 November 1997, said that the government had appointed 60 advisors compared with about 32 under John Major's administration. These appointments cost the taxpayer an additional £600,000 in the six months since the election, an increase of 44 per cent over the Conservative government spend. There is an additional concern here. These advisors are paid from the public purse and, if they are acting as partisan rather than impartial advisors, their propaganda is being financed by taxpayers. The former Head of Information at the Treasury argues that "political parties are free to operate how they like at their own expense. It is one thing for parties to manipulate, but should government do it at public expense?" (21)

Second, a substantial number of Heads of Information in the various departments of state have resigned or retired since the arrival of the new government. This is because, in the words of one of the officers concerned, "Our faces didn't fit" - "there is this feeling that the ministers want to put their own people in." In total, eight Heads of Information of "Cabinet rank" have left along with the Head of Information at the prison service. Sir Robin Butler, in his evidence to a Commons Select Committee, while employing the cautionary vocabulary characteristic of his profession, still described these staff changes as "disturbing and unsettling". (22)

Third, the arrival of the special advisors is creating a two-tier system of information; the advisors have quickly become the dominant partners in the relationship with civil servants. The advisors are hand-picked by ministers and have worked closely with them over a number of years while the party was in opposition; they are trusted and tested allies. The Heads of Information have been inherited by government. By comparison with the partisan advisors they are judged to be tardy, rule-governed, reactive and unaware of the demands of contemporary media. In these circumstances, the advisor quickly colonises the more significant areas of work, leaving the civil servant with more mundane matters. Jill Rutter, who resigned as Head of Information at the Treasury, complained that Charlie Whelan had "taken over three-quarters of her job". (23)

Fourth, the Prime Minister's Press Secretary has encouraged civil servants to adopt a more robust approach in their dealings with the media. One retired Head of Information described the new mood as the "thuggish control-freak approach. As civil servants, Alastair Campbell specifically encourages us to be heavy-handed with the press".

This leads to the fifth claim. The "major change at the GIS has been the emphasis on setting the agenda and the need to stay 'on message'". Campbell is happy to confirm this change. In his memo to Heads of Information, the key ambition of GIS publicity is that the government's "four key messages" must be "built into all areas of our activity". Labour is a "modernising" government, a government "for all the people", which is "delivering on its promises" with "mainstream policies" which are providing new directions for Britain. The incorporation of these themes into all communications activity seems to offer a clear example of the government crossing the line which ought to separate party propaganda from government information. Little wonder that Jill Rutter believes there should be "a strict code of conduct on the handling of government information which everyone in the department signs up to whether they are political appointees . . . temporary civil servants or permanent civil servants". (24)

Sixth, the increasingly centralised control of communications under Campbell and Mandelson seems to make government communications less open to public scrutiny and less accountable, while increasing the potential for propaganda and impropriety. A retired GIS officer commented: "It is very frightening because with an unwritten constitution we have these various checks and balances and one of the cherished elements in all that was that the government in power could not use the fact that it was in power to peddle its own party ideals to help it remain in power. There was the notion of the neutrality of the GIS based on a mission to inform and a duty to tell the truth: and not just the good bits. All that's under threat." Another member of the GIS spoke of "the Stasi-type figures who stand in the corner and seem to watch everything you do".

Seventh, there seems to be a new openness about news management which was exemplified in the Network First documentary about the press office at the Treasury. Charlie Whelan's frankness about his activities was more than a little alarming. "You have to be economical with the truth sometimes," he said, "although you should never lie, but it's very difficult." (25) More worrying was ITN correspondent Michael Brunson's open admiration for the ability of Labour when in opposition to "grab the news agenda and hold it for three days". For Brunson, news management seems to have become a purely technical matter without any political significance and expressing little more than the skill of the spin doctor involved. Managing the news has become a public secret. What is perhaps of greatest concern is the fact that the programme itself, advertised as a fly-on-the-wall documentary, has become part of the spin because of the image it presents of Gordon Brown and his Treasury advisors.

The main consequence of the recent Mountfield report will be to exacerbate some of the concerns expressed above by concentrating further the government's communications network at No 10. Indeed this was Mountfield's central concern (para 5). A Strategic Communications Unit has been established, composed of six civil servants and special advisors selected by Alastair Campbell and answerable to the Prime Minister via his Press Secretary. The unit will ensure that "key government messages" are being communicated in a co-ordinated way across the various government departments (para 23). A 24-hour media monitoring service, to be funded by efficiency savings, is being piloted immediately and "tailored to meet the needs of the 24-hour media world" (para 5).

A new computer system will replace Cab-E-Net and provide the core of the government's "rapid rebuttal" potential, which will be similar to the party's facility in Millbank. The computer will provide information about forthcoming government events to the centre and between departments. It will also include "appropriate lines to take the No 10 daily media briefing, the text of the Prime Minister's speeches and the output of the pilot media monitoring unit" (para 24). The report also proposes changes to the system of attribution (paras 25-31). The twice-daily lobby briefings, which previously have been "off the record", will now be attributed to the Prime Minister's spokesperson (Campbell or one of two special advisors who report to him). Special advisors will be referred to in journalists' reports as the "political advisor" to the appropriate minister.

But reforming the clandestine culture of the lobby will not be easy and the revised system of attribution will do little to prevent the "whispering club" based on the informal briefing of journalists by Labour sources. (26) The report also suggests that a greater emphasis should be placed on recruiting Heads of Information from outside the civil service, makes recommendations for improved training and education within the GIS and proposes that the GIS be renamed the Government Information and Communications Services (GICS).

If all governments confront a genuine difficulty in establishing a clear boundary between the legitimate activity of providing information about policy and the wholly unacceptable activity of using publicly funded bodies as vehicles of propaganda. There will be perennial difficulties here and frequent border disputes seem inevitable. New Labour, however, seems unwilling to acknowledge this difficulty, even though its increasingly centralised control of government communications at No 10, its more robust approach to journalists and its reforms of GIS, illustrate how readily this boundary line between information and propaganda can become blurred. The government is being marketed with even greater vigour than the party. The real concern is that Labour, in its efforts to promote its policies via the media, is quite consciously blurring the divide between party and government as well as that between traditionally neutral civil servants and a partisan group of specialist political advisors. In the words of a senior Labour source: "Whitehall has to wake up to the real world. The idea that you can cut off politics from the officials does not work. Let's stop pretending." (27)

First, politicians have become increasingly enthusiastic about the possibilities of using mass media to promote themselves and their policies to the public. Of course, they have always been in the communications business - some, like Harold Wilson in the 1960s, have been enormously successful in manipulating the media to their political advantage - but since the mid-1980s there has been a marked shift in the extent and character of this promotional zeal. Ed Balls, an advisor to Gordon Brown at the Treasury, identifies his key role unambiguously: "Our job," he acknowledges, "is to explain, sell, justify, package." (28)

Second, politicians have become increasingly adept at using the media. Parties now employ considerable numbers of press officers, spin doctors and communications advisors who work alongside a growing band of marketing consultants and public relations specialists to ensure that everyone stays "on message" - and that the message is one which voters wish to hear. The extensive use of focus groups increasingly guarantees a congenial agreement between politicians' words and voter aspirations.

Third, this ambition to package politics poses a challenge to democratic politics. One consequence, for example, is that relationships between the media and politicians have become increasingly collusive, although journalists critical of the New Labour project have found relationships more hostile and adversarial. The media is becoming less a vehicle for the critical appraisal of government and more a mere conduit for the burgeoning flood of press releases emanating from the expanding numbers of press officers employed by government, parties and interest groups. The fourth estate risks being overrun by a "fifth estate" of public relations and press officers. On too many occasions, the media appears to offer a platform to hired prize fighters and skilled public relations professionals who articulate only the interests of whoever pays their fee. In the process, the media obfuscate rather than clarify policy choices.

While the first two of these claims can be broadly accepted, this final suggestion is hotly contested. Some commentators believe that positive benefits flow from what has been described as "designer politics". (29) Those who take a positive view argue that political communication via news media guarantees that more people are better informed about policy issues. A well produced party election broadcast, so the argument runs, is more effective in communicating policy than a thousand poorly attended public meetings. This increased public awareness triggers greater voter interest in policy issues and the activities of government. In turn, this increased voter information and interest prompts an increase in election turnout and so ultimately makes governments and politicians more accountable. In brief, the packaging of politics increases public knowledge, citizen participation and government accountability.

These are substantial claims. But there is also more than a whiff of technological determinism underlying this advocacy of a packaged politics. Many politicians, broadcasters and academic observers believe it is an almost inevitable consequence of developments in media technology - expressed bluntly, the argument is that "You can't de-invent television." Once a certain media technology is accessible, politicians will exploit it for their political ends, and in doing so they permanently alter the political and electoral landscape. The process is hardly new. Ramsay MacDonald installed a prototype television in No 10 Downing Street in 1932.

The main result of this new style of political communication, with its emphasis on the marketing of political ideas and a growing involvement of politicians in the media presentation of policy, is the emergence of an increasingly depoliticised and passive political culture. Declining figures for election turnout offer one indicator of this shift in political culture. Politics, like football, has been transformed by television into a largely spectator sport with viewers inclined to watch the match from the comfort of their favourite armchair rather than becoming embroiled in the game. Jurgen Habermas's suggestion that the media forms part of a public sphere, independent of economic and political influences, providing active and engaged citizens with the information necessary to make rational policy choices, seems ever less credible. (31)

New Labour's forceful advocacy of open government and freedom of information is therefore at odds with the reality of the considerable management of information which is conducted by No 10. Blair's government is controlling the flow of political communications by and about the government to a degree which is unprecedented in the UK in peacetime. The question that arises is whether New Labour's news managers are merely control-freaks or whether they are master strategists in a game the existence of which the rest of us are only dimly aware.

Certainly one could make a case for suggesting that the party is developing a new version of democracy - one in which the media are absolutely central. It draws strength from President James Madison's observation that "a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both". (32) The project is to form a direct relationship between executive and electorate, largely bypassing the legislature. This emphasis on taking the debate directly to the citizens can be witnessed in the Welfare to Work Roadshows and the use of focus groups to test budget proposals. This use of focus groups, moreover, reveals how these new marketing techniques are no longer confined to questions of policy presentation but are central to questions of policy determination.

One significant consequence of direct communication between executive and citizens is the marginalising of parliament. Again there is evidence to illustrate the reduced importance which Labour gives to the Commons. The early changes to Prime Minister's Question Time, made without consulting the Speaker of the House, are suggestive, although the most telling innovation is ministers' preference for announcing major policy statements at press conferences rather than in parliament. MPs' complaints that they frequently learn of new policy initiatives from television news are increasingly commonplace.

Thus the new conception of "direct' democracy is much wider, in terms of its institutional structures and processes, than traditional ideas about "representative" democracy. The former focus on parliament is supplanted by a new emphasis on referenda, focus groups and other arrangements for connecting the executive with citizens.

The key assumptions of this new model of democracy were recently aired by Peter Mandelson in a debate with German Christian Democrat Wolfgang Schauble. Although Mandelson's remarks were promptly spun into relative insignificance by the No 10 Press Office in the now traditional manner, his comments are revealing. Mandelson believes that "the era of pure representative democracy is slowly coming to an end". Technological innovation has signalled the need for new democratic structures in which citizens occupy a central place, somewhat akin to consumers in a market place. For Mandelson, democracy involves "plebiscites, focus groups, lobbies, 'citizen's movements' and the internet". This direct democracy must supplant parliamentary democracy to create a new politics that is responsive and closely attuned to public choices. "Democracy and legitimacy need constant renewal," he says. "They need to be redefined with each generation . . . Representative government is being complemented by more direct forms of involvement, from the internet to referenda . . . that requires a different style of politics. . . people have no time for a style of government that talks down to them and takes them for granted . . . representative democracy is over". (33)

Parliament's future looks bleak. Indeed, the release of Labour MPs surplus to voting requirements in the Commons, allowing them to go back to their constituencies during the parliamentary session, could also be seen as part of this process. The implication is that they are more effective (at least as far as the party is concerned) campaigning at local level rather than performing their elected duty in parliament. The propriety of using state-funding to send out what are in effect party agents, who represent Labour to their electors rather than representing their electors in parliament, has not yet been examined.

New Labour's vision of democracy suggests a new role for politicians. Increasingly unwilling to take moral and political decisions, they constantly consult citizens to test public opinion on issues, to gain a popular verdict on new policies, before implementing them accordingly. The status of politicians is substantially reduced. Instead of framing political agendas and presenting them to the electorate, the danger is that they will become little more than overpaid messenger boys (and girls) - distributors of questionnaires and facilitators of focus groups - while the musings of small (sometimes tiny), randomly assembled, unelected and unaccountable groups of individuals will weigh far more heavily in the decision-making process than the opinions of elected representatives. The new politics require politicians to abrogate moral and political responsibilities as politics becomes more populist. Political decisions are reduced to market decisions and citizens are transformed into consumers. In short, politicians will no longer be market-driving, but market-driven.

On another level, however, the government's growing enthusiasm for news management - as well as the publicly funded advertising of new policy initiatives - makes politicians influential in the shaping of those very choices that citizens are supposedly making on their own. Citizens' preferences are not constructed in a vacuum but rely on information from precisely those news media which are increasingly subject to news management and spin by the GICS, the COI, the party press offices and the No 10 Press Office, to name but a few. In this way, politicians' policy ambitions contaminate citizens' choices.

Once, an important function of parliament was to act as a bulwark against the ambitions of governments and thereby to protect the rights and liberties of citizens. It is less certain who will protect citizens' rights in New Labour's new model democracy.

On the basis of Madison's dictum that a popular government needs popular (accessible, understandable and credible) information if it is to avoid either "tragedy or farce", a number of reforms immediately suggest themselves.

Finally, there is a need to ensure that the BBC Board of Governors and the Independent Television Commission regulate to sustain the highest standards of news and current affairs provision at a time when there is widespread concern about the dumbing down of UK news media in an increasingly competitive market which promotes profits above public service broadcasting commitments. The attempt by the ITV Network Centre to relocate News at Ten, to allow uninterrupted scheduling of films after the 9pm watershed, is testament to the influences of markets on editorial content. The ghettoising of parliamentary broadcasting and the complaints of the Campaign for Quality Television about the dramatic reduction of documentaries and current affairs programmes on ITV, underline further the need for regulation. Many broadcast news organisations have experienced substantial reductions in financial resources and staff at a time when the government is expanding its news management. The balance is shifting against analysis and in favour of assertion. It needs to be redressed.

(1) Lord Mountfield, Report of the Working Group on the Government Information Service, Cabinet Office, HMSO, November 1977, p. 2.

(2) Guardian, 13 October 1997, p. 17. (All unattributed quotes are drawn from a series of exclusive interviews with GIS staff conducted by the author during November and December 1997.)

(4) P. Mancini, 'Between Trust and Suspicion: How Political Journalists Solve the Dilemma', European Journal of Communication, vol 8, no 1 (1993), p. 33.

(5) S. MccGwire, 'A Dance to the Music of Spin', New Statesman, 17 October 1997, p. 11.

(8) R. Norton-Taylor and S. Milne, 'Mandelson Takes Key Co-Ordinating Role', Guardian, 5 May 1997, p. 3; Mountfield, op cit, p. 7.

(11) E. MacAskill, 'Cabinet Watch', Red Pepper, September 1997, p. 34; Mountfield, op cit, p. 8.

(13) L. Ward, 'PM's Spokesman Rebukes Ministers by Fax', Guardian, 30 March 1998, p. 5. See also L. Ward, 'Cook Denies "Cosiness" with Murdoch', Guardian, 30 March 1998, p. 2.

(15) D. Henke, 'Labour Rebels Told: Sign "Gag"', Guardian, 22 October 1997, p. 1.

(16) N. Timmins, 'Blair Aide Calls on Whitehall To Raise Its PR Game', Financial Times, 9 October 1997, p. 1.

(18) S. Boseley, 'BBC Stands by Assertive Editor Adored by Staff', Guardian, 11 August, p. 6.

(21) R. Shrimsley, 'Civil Service in Denial over Labour Politicising', Daily Telegraph, 6 December 1997, p. 3.

(26) S. Heffer, 'Let's End This Whispering Club', New Statesman, 17 October 1997, p. 12.

(29) See B. McNair, An Introduction to Political Communications, Routledge, 1996, and M. Scammell, Designer Politics: How Elections Are Won, Macmillan, 1995.

(30) R. Day, 'On Political Interviews', in I. Crewe and M. Harrop (eds) Political Communications: The General Election of 1987, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 127.

(31) See J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1989.

(32) Quoted in E. S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy, Boston, Mass., South End Press, 1992, p. 2.