MPs are often fond of complaining that they are ignored by senior figures in their parties as orders are passed on from central HQ with no explanation or opportunity for backbenchers to discuss strategy. Yesterday’s mess over Labour’s internal memo advising MPs on tackling Ukip partly explains why that high-handed approach often happens.
Emailing strategy documents to MPs is like leaving a toddler in a freshly painted room with a set of marker pens and expecting to come back to find everything in pristine condition. There is a reason why such papers should be numbered, handed out in a locked room for discussion and collected at the end, if you don’t do that they will end up in a national paper (and even those precautions may not be enough). But if that mistake was somewhat naïve, the party’s handling of the fallout has been utterly baffling.
Ed Miliband’s response to being asked about the paper — which offers perfectly sensible advice on how to move the immigration debate onto territory more likely to persuade someone to support Labour — has been to deny all knowledge of it, claim it was badly written and say that it doesn’t represent the party’s views.
It is worth dwelling on this for a second. The leader of the opposition is apparently comfortable telling people that there is a rogue campaign strategist firing off instructions to MPs just months before an incredibly tight general election. Even worse than that, this strategist is contradicting the party’s actual strategy. And the only way Ed Miliband found out about this was when it was published in a national newspaper.
On this basis we should be grateful to the MP who leaked the document. Who knows what other instructions have been sent to MPs in recent months? Perhaps there was a paper instructing MPs to insult people who drive vans and hang the St George’s cross on their home, or telling politicians to write bizarre conspiracy theory articles about why the BBC won’t devote precious airtime to a Twitter hashtag.
A perfectly sensible route would have been to point out that the paper doesn’t actually say Labour should ignore immigration, indeed Ed Miliband was actually doing a speech on the subject, and has anyone noticed the mess the coalition is getting in over the deficit? But now the story has been allowed to move on as Westminster journalists are handed the chance to indulge in their favourite game of endlessly analysing party process.
All of this matters more than just a day’s bad coverage. We are almost officially in the ‘long campaign’ phase of the general election and Labour, just as in the case of Emily Thornberry, has demonstrated it can be blown off course by the slightest puff of wind. This is the point at which party operations should be approaching peak match-fitness for the battle ahead, Labour increasingly looks like its coach would get lost on the way to the stadium.
Sean Kemp is a former Liberal Democrat special adviser in Downing Street
Comments