There’s straight-forward good news for the Liberal Democrats in today’s Daily Mail:
A Harris poll for the Daily Mail, the first in-depth survey of the public response, showed him decisively ahead of David Cameron and Gordon Brown on measures of energy, honesty and strength.
The survey of over 1,000 people who watched the clash found 32 per cent intended to back Mr Clegg’s LibDems – level with the Tories – and just 26 per cent Labour.
Those poll results are dramatic – and reflect what we’ve seen in other polls too. But most striking is the Daily Mail’s editorial reaction. Smart tabloid editors know the dangers if their paper gets too far out of line with the views of the readers. That’s why when there is the occasional story that completely misjudges its readers, the point is rarely repeated. It’s also part of what holds newspapers back from simply trying to lead public opinion in any way they wish.
The Mail’s reaction – knowing of course that many of its readers have now started liking Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats – has been two-fold.
First, the reporting of the story is pretty straight, such as:
Nick Clegg revelled in a surge of support last night after his X Factor-style TV triumph … The result will send shockwaves through both Labour and Conservative high commands … The positive response to Mr Clegg, who pitched himself as an outsider ranged against the two ‘old’ parties, has rattled Conservative strategists. The Tories had been hoping to win around 20 Liberal Democrat seats, mostly in the South and South West.
And so on.
But second, even where the paper runs an op-ed piece putting the boot in to the party’s policies (see the panel from Edward Heathcoat Amory) it’s far more restrained than usual when a tabloid gives something a going over.
Labour and Conservative strategists will certainly be wondering what to do next. So too will many editorial teams.
UPDATE: The Sun repeats the point: it gives the party an unabashed positive write up at the top of its story on the YouGov poll (that it commissioned) which puts the Liberal Democrats in second. It’s not until you get to the twentieth of the short paragraphs that there is a direct negative comment about the party.
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If, and I pray they do, further polls show the Lib Dem swing sticking I think every media organisation in the country is going to have to reassess it’s election coverage. You could see how uncomfortable the presenters and commentators were on ITV News straight after the debate finished, as they had no idea how to deal with Nick Clegg being the main story.
It’s going to be extremely interesting to see how this plays out.
“Labour and Conservative strategists will certainly be wondering what to do next.”
It’s a particularly difficult dilemma for the Tories. Yesterday’s YouGov poll reflects the nightmare scenario for them – not far enough ahead of Labour to be the largest party in the Commons even if they had been at 40%, and now on top of that only 3 points ahead of the Lib Dems nationally, and standing to lose quite large numbers of seats to them.
Up till now, more or less the only campaign message from the Tories has been “Get Brown Out”. That hasn’t worked anywhere near well enough against Labour, and it’s not going to be very effective against the Lib Dems if it’s confirmed they have overtaken Labour in popular support.
So do the Tories divert their fire to the Lib Dems, and try to fight a negative campaign against a popular leader portraying himself as an outsider aiming to “clean up politics”, backed up by a popular shadow chancellor who is far weightier than the Tory candidate? Attacking the Lib Dems might have some effect, but it would also risk making them more credible as contenders for power.
The Tories must be praying that last night’s poll was a rogue, and that the Clegg effect will subside rapidly. But the possibility must be that – if it is confirmed by other polls – the media coverage will actually produce further movement in the Lib Dems’ direction.
There is a huge amount of sub-surface propaganda going on about Lib Dem policies on matters like immigration, Trident and the Euro going on at the moment.
We need to get some clarifications in in the next debate about what our policies really are. Nick needs to give more examples of where the regional immigration policies do work and refer people directly to the manifesto online, not just the right-wing press version of it.
We must also go on the attack about VAST holes in the Tories policies and areas where they are utterly unrealistic and unworkable. E.g. privatisation of schools, inheritance tax cuts for the rich.
Robert C,
I couldn’t agree more.
The overly positive spin in the Mail and the Sun can be seen not just as trying not to get out of line with readers, but attempts to puff us up, so that any more realistic poll putting us in mid twenties next week can be portrayed as a decline. And Heathcoat Amory’s panel doesn’t seem especially soft on us to me.
We need an army of internet activists over the next few days, rebutting scare stories implying we would join the Euro immediately, scrap Britain’s defences, allow all illegal immigrants to stay, and let anyone who would have got less than six months walk the streets with impunity. And we need new potential activists to be well informed about what the party’s manifesto actually says about these issues. An article here, to which experienced activists could refer them, would be a good start. Hopefully someone has more time than me to write it this weekend.
There have been a number of hatchet jobs on the Lib Dems in today’s right-wing press.
The Times:
The Telegraph:
Aside from Cowley Street needing to orchestrate a massive activist letter-writing campaign to the right-wing press picking up on its misrepresentation of Lib Dem policies, i can’t see what can be done to combat this kind of thing. Cameron and Brown themselves will have to hold off of attacking Clegg too much in the leadership debates, because people find that unappealing. The job will be left to the likes of Philip Hammond (who was getting trashed by Ed Davey on the Daily Politics and Newsnight yesterday) and the right-wing press. We’re going to need an effective rebuttal machine to deal with the lies and misrepresentations that are going to be thrown at us.
ugh. can’t use html tags…
We need to keep things in proportion. Nick made a massive breakthrough into the national consciousness through the TV debate. Articles in the right wing press, which we might expect anyway, will have no such effect. That is simply the establishment and its media mouthpeices talking to each other. Nick was upfront about Trident, and we need to be as upfront but not apologetic, about other policies which are capable of misrepresentation.
Even the BBC will now have to take notice of the LibDems.
There was an interesting reference to the Mail on the morning programme. The Mail has highlighted that Nick Clegg is just as ‘posh’ as David Cameron. I presume the implication is that it is OK for genteel middle class Mail readers to vote for him without disturbing the British class structure, in which the upper classes are born to rule..
All we need is two more really solid performances from Clegg in the next debates and I believe the poll position will firm up. It’s a real dilemma for the other parties (and the press for that matter). Go onto the attack and it shows (a) how worried you are; and (b) could risk alienating voters further (the Labservative image resonates); do nothing & it can be presented as having no answer to the Lib Dem message. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this. However, it is important not to get over confident, to ensure that we have the issues in the next two debates really covered off and have strong rebuttal lines when the mud inevitably flies.
Fascinating that the Grauniad online has Polly Toynbee (!) saying Lib Dem surge will let Tories win (as if they wouldn’t have…), while the Independent online has a headline that Lib Dem surge could save Brown!
The game’s changed and the battleground’s shifted. We are now playing offense when the others were attacking us where we hold seats. The ashcroft millions have gone on seats they wanted to gain from us. the Tories are in deep trouble.
The right-wing commentators like todays full page in the Express that attempts to take apart Liberal Democrat policy (illegal immigrants pouring in, the country will be defenceless, we will all sink with the Euro, Vince Cable is an ex-raving Glasgow Socialist, etc) needs countering.
Someone needs to send them the bar charts of the top 20 winnable Labour seats (swings of less than 10 per cent), to show them the party is not just second to a bunch of Tory seats.
And the spokesmen need to bang on the line about being lst or 2nd in 250 seats, so are major players in this election.
The bile in the Express today is just a foretaste of whats to come this weekend.
We need to start putting out rebuttal leaflets saying what our policies really are. In my constituency (Hampstead & Kilburn) I was told we don’t leaflet on policies because people don’t base their vote on them, but we have to do something to counter the lies in the Tory press.
It’s all hands on deck on the main newspaper websites, I’m afraid. There have already been some disgraceful lies being put out in the Telegraph.
E.g. This one by a poster called Bartram, under Charles Moore’s article:
“Most of the Lib Dem policies are somewhere between dotty and complete bonkers. For example:
1) Join the Euro.
2) Join a European Army.
3) Abolish Trident.
4) Abolish prison sentences for all criminals sentenced to 6 months or less. Instead give them community service.
5) Give a complete amnesty to ALL illegal immigrants.
They’re just the silly party.”
This is the kind of stuff we need to be assiduous in rebutting time and time again.
But Cameron wants to keep Trident, and point the rockets at China according the Big Debate the other night, and doesnt say how he will pay for it…not sure if the Chinese Ambassador has had an explanation on this.
Look, one Swallow doesnt make a summer, but two opinion polls putting Labour third is rather remarkable…opinion polling in elections in the UK started in the 1950s with the Gallup Organisation. And never, ever since they first started the game have Labour been put in third place by any poll in a General Election.
….something is going seriously wrong for them. And its a disaster for the Tories, they have had £50 million donated to their war-chest to win this, and started out, remember, after Christmas with daily press conferences to get across their message.
“Look, one Swallow doesnt make a summer, but two opinion polls putting Labour third is rather remarkable…opinion polling in elections in the UK started in the 1950s with the Gallup Organisation. And never, ever since they first started the game have Labour been put in third place by any poll in a General Election.”
But as I pointed out before, the ComRes and Harris polls were confined to people who had watched the debate – they weren’t polls of the electorate in general. So far there has only been one proper opinion poll putting Labour third – YouGov last night. No doubt we shall know more this evening.
I’m afraid you’re also wrong about Labour having “never, ever” been placed third by opinion polls during an election campaign. If you look at Nick Moon’s “Opinion polls: history, theory and practice” (1999), which is available on Google Books, you’ll see that Labour was placed third behind the Alliance in the final polls of the 1983 campaign by two organisations – ASL and Harris – and equal with the Alliance by a third – Marplan. Of course, that was a very different situation from that indicated in last night’s YouGov poll, because the Tories had a commanding lead over both the other parties in 1983.
Two more polls:
ICM:
CON 34 (-3)
LAB 29 (-2)
LD 27 (+7)
ComRes:
CON 31 (-4)
LAB 27 (-1)
LD 29 (+5)
The second tends to confirm that the Lib Dems have moved into second place – and shows them even closer to the Tories than YouGov.
The first has Labour still in second place, but the interesting thing is that “the majority of respondents were polled before Mr Clegg’s victorious showing in Thursday night’s debate”, so most of the Lib Dem boost has probably been missed.
I think on this basis it’s clear that the YouGov poll was _not_ a rogue, and that there has been a very dramatic shift in the landscape.
I wonder whether Mark Pack will revise his opinion of BPIX, given this poll for the Mail on Sunday:
CON 31 (-7)
LAB 28 (-3)
LD 32 (+12)
And YouGov shows little change on yesterday, but has the Lib Dems slipping back into third place:
CON 33%(nc)
LAB 30%(+2)
LDEM 29%(-1)
The Conservatives are likely to change their tactics to shift the polls back in their favour. They will focus some of their effort on their economic credibility (lots of business leaders support us, share prices are going down on the prospect of a hung parliament etc). Honesty about the need for a rise in VAT will become critical before the last leaders debate. Better for the Lib Dems to break the bad news than wait for the Conservatives to do it. It is one of the last few ways that the Conservatives could show they are more truthful and willing to take the hard decisions necessary to get us out of the financial mess.
@ Tony S
“Honesty about the need for a rise in VAT will become critical before the last leaders debate. Better for the Lib Dems to break the bad news than wait for the Conservatives to do it.’
But our plans don’t require a rise in VAT and theirs do. Besides, economic growth is likely to be much more buoyant than when expected during the planning for the budget. Exports are now expanding rapidly, unemployment is likely to be stable or even decline and even retail sales have risen despite VAT returning to normal levels. Public finances could quite possibly surprise on the upside for once.
Google the Mail on Sunday, and read the Peter Obourne column…amazing stuff, his praise for Nick Clegg, “and Liberal Democrats have brought this dull campaign to life ” makes refreshing reading. You have to pinch yourself to remind yourself that this is two million copies of the Mail you’re reading here…perhaps someone can url this piece or do a lift and reprint it for the Voice.
@ Robert C
Who really believes the story of improved efficiencies, abolishing quangos and closing tax loopholes? The voters have seen it promised before, and it is a complicated story to tell especially as Labour has been claiming to close loopholes and improve efficiency for the past few years. Much better to take the pain, admit to a VAT rise and show we are serious (the Irish and the Greeks are taking serious pain already). Economic credibility is vital to the voters, and the financial markets, especially when they are thinking of an inexperienced party becoming the government.
Yes, its strange that the DM of all papers appears to have turned its back on DC in favour of NC. Most other tory / news corp papers were initially cautious, tested the water, and for a few days heaped some measure of praise on Nick.
Was interesting to watch the Sun going from proclaiming that DC ‘won’ the debate, to now showing very little of him instead cautiously questioning, although, importantly, not mauling LD proposals. That, I’m sure is to come from all the tory press over the coming days.
DC’s message is “vote orange get brown”. NC needs to combat it *not* by merely saying, as he has done that “a vote for LD is just that”.
No, it shouldn’t be ‘just’ that!
It can b shown to be the ONLY vote for political reform, because as with every extra vote for LD, the mandate for electoral reform becomes greater as FPTP becomes untenable. How can the party that comes third form the government? This plays to the message that the system is broken. DC isnt proposing change and wants to retain hereditaries. Voters need to be reminded of about this ‘change’ that DC wants!
Trumpeting PR and vote reform could be a BIG card to play in the coming days!!
How you turn that in to a soundbyte, I dont know, but I believe that should be the message!
By the end of the second debate, those still talking of a hung parliament will realise that we are heading for a landslide victory of the scale that has never been experienced in the UK. And it will be Lib Dem’s
The message to the electorate should be simple: a Libdem vote is a vote that counts – towards a Libdem overall majority! It’s as straightforward as that.
Both Daily Mail and THE Sun were putting the boot into us today. I’m not sure it will work, it looked to me like pretty straightforward party political propaganda. I suspect they’re banking on the second debate being a bit of a flop for us, and politics returning to “normal”. But I don’t think their readers will take well to such blatant stuff, apart from those who are so Tory they aren’t worth us bothering with anyway. If Nick doesn’t pull it off, they’ll carry on with it, if he does, I suspect Tory Plan C will be to keep quiet, let the election drop of the front pages.
The Evening Standard was kinder, but WHAT a bubble paper. Is there really no market for a paper about real Londoners as opposed to a few thousand smart set people who hardly set foot outside the City, West End and the poshest suburbs?
Mostly it seems to me the national media just don’t get it. Good on Clegg for not fluffing it, but they really do think it’s just him, and they really can’t see the groundwork that’s built this up.
The attacks on Clegg and on the Party are beginning to get silly. Tonight I read (I forget where) that our policy on the banks is Nick’s revenge for someone now prominent in banking having declined to select him for a tennis team while at school. Plenty of attention for drivel like this, but much less prominence given to the fact that three retired armed forces chiefs have backed the Party’s policy on Trident.
While I am moderately confident that the bulk of the electorate will see the behaviour of the tabloids as a bunch of scribblers working themselves into a tithee, warnings about the consequences of a hung Parliament made by credible people like Ken Clarke quite probably will have an impact. The answer must surely be that none of the polls thus far has shown the Tories getting even close to forming a majority government.
I hope Nick is going to ask Brown tomorrow what he, a LABOUR Prime Minister, proposes to do about 2.5 million unemployed.
The good thing about the next two leader debates (and without disagreeing with Matthew that Clegg’s performance is far from the whole story – he did bloody well, but it wouldn’t have counted for anything without the solid work done by the party) is that Clegg doesn’t need to beat them again: he just needs to not blow it, and he’s certainly capable of avoiding that. The rest is really up to us. (Hangs head in shame for having done far too little so far. Ashfield on Saturday!)