TPPR - As It Happens

Entries in British Politics (4)

Wednesday

23Sep2009

Journalism Today [Light Posting]

Wednesday 23 September 2009 at 08:26

There is no major posting today because the platform for this Blog [Squarespace] glitched, claimed to have saved an extensive posting and, when we followed its instructions to recover, managed to lose it.

This is a persistent problem with Squarespace which has been drawn to their attention but with little result. There is no auto-save unlike WordPress and the bug that is supposed to deal with the resubmit issue has not been resolved since it was first drawn to their attention in April.

Usually, we just pick ourselves up off the floor and rewrite but there are other things to do today, so the summary is:-

We are all aware of a crisis in journalism that derives from the shift in its secure role within a national establishment to a less secure one within a competitive global economy;
This crisis, to date, has affected the quality of news [the 'churnalism' debate] but not so much the status of journalists - the arrival of new technologies is now changing this state of affairs;
Cost-cutting can support the cross-subsidy of heavyweight news but only in a growing economy - a low growth scenario and the demand for capital for investment online mean tough choices;
Journalism is heading in the direction of other skill-based celebrity economies (arts, sport, even politics) in seeing high paid 'stars' competing with mid-level 'entrepreneurs';
Ambitious journalists will increasingly see themselves as 'brands' operating on multiple platforms (books, blogs, columns, shows, and so on) with some appointing 'agents';
'Entrepreneurs' will also be seeking a presence on multiple platforms and blurring the historic professional distinction of writing independent narrative and writing commercial copy;
A 'hack' class will be increasingly indistinguishable between jobbing journalism and PR - it will be worked harder and be more insecure, with too many people competing for the work available;
Online media will stabilise into viable business models based on free front pages, paywalls and micro-payments - the younger generation will find growing opportunities in content production.
There will be competition for space between activists writing for free, journalists under economic pressure and the commodity approach to content in the marketing services sector;
Politically, this competition may create an angry unstable 'intellectual' element within society at local and regional level and on the margins of the metropolitan media;
Ideologically, the professional old guard is heading into the sunset and the mass media is likely to tend to increasing conservatism (albeit libertarian);
'Stranded' grunt workers could become deracinated, unstable and radical (though of both right and left) - this group may create a powerful motive force for social change in Middle England.

Thank Squarespace's glitching for the lack of detailed argument and the references. Although we will try to be better at saving as we go (though we did on this occasion, but clearly not frequently enough), we cannot guarantee that this won't happen again. Our apologies to regular readers.

Tim Pendry |

1 Comment |

Print Article

Email Article

tagged

British Politics,

Journalism,

Media,

Squarespace in

Modern Media

Friday

18Sep2009

On Game Play in Reputation Management

Friday 18 September 2009 at 12:37

Some days ago, a correspondent asked, not unadmiringly, how it was we 'got away with' so much, not only in the postings in this blog but in the open and radical arguments made elsewhere on the internet by our public personae.

It made us think about this for two reasons - first, because we have never done otherwise or been anything but ourselves and, second, because it is about time we considered why our style seems to be a winning formula at this particular point in history.

Regular readers will know that we take a hyper-realist view of international relations. Our watchword is 'sentiment is not analysis'. We look at national and international politics with a clinical, almost alien eye, not as engaged participants (although we do participate) but as observers.

They will also know that we are not afraid to adopt this approach in covering hitherto taboo subjects in the professional advisory world such as antisemitism, national mythologising or sexuality if we think that this has relevance to political or business decision-making.

If you seek any of us out on the web beyond the blog, you will find yet more radical and contentious material, designed to provoke, elicit debate or criticise the 'idees fixes' and assumptions of our culture. We do it because it is fun but also because it works for us.

We know about the authoritarian right or the libertarian left because we engage directly with them. We disagree with but respect the positions of people who have been neglected by the traditional political adviser but who are giving us important clues to the future direction of politics.

By analogy with ecology, you might say that in the political and cultural ecosphere are species of thought that might prove more adaptive to radical change than the grazers who seem to dominate the grasslands today. Our assumption in politics as in evolution is 'punctuated equilibrium'.

For example, twenty years ago, 'Greens' were nutters on the fringe. Now they are not only a small but significant force in the politics of Europe but their attitudes inform much policy-making on the Western centre-left - and the European centre-right as well.

All this 'engagement' seems to go against the grain of the 'professional' approach of many consultancies where the consultant acts as a discreet hired gun separating their private views from their public persona, working within the system and its expectations rather than as gadfly in its borderlands.

When the day ends, they switch off and go yachting. We don't - our engagement is our life or rather we let life into our business.

This clearly works because once we start with a client, we tend to remain with them for a long while - if not on retainer then for repeat business. The interventionist, participative, risk-taking gadfly approach gets us serious information and it puts us, more often than not, ahead of the game.

We have had our ups and downs but no-one has ever questioned our integrity (so far) nor have we ever been in a position where our private stances and corporate positions have created a conflict of interest. There is a cohesion and consistency to our game play in the world.

We have taken all this for granted until now - initially as a discreet operator in unfavourable circumstances and then as an open operator in favourable circumstances. But what is going on here? Are we just lucky or is our style an indicator of other changes in our business and political culture?

After some thought, we incline to the latter - but also that we are lucky to be around, just as thinking about how to solve business and political problems is beginning to change.

There is a new awareness that sticking to the rules is only useful if the rules represent all that there is. In the three key areas of international affairs, politics and international business, game players have assumed until recently that the rules were all clear and were sufficient.

A series of shocks - the collapse of public trust in the political process at home, the break-down of American hegemony as mere assertion of power and the credit crisis and its associated economic correction - have shown that man cannot live by Davos alone.

The world exposed to scrutiny between 2003 and 2008 has resulted in a hunger for change (represented by the election of President Obama but still delayed in the UK by the clinging to power of New Labour) and in a world of smart diplomacy and (on its way) negotiated international regulation.

New rules are in formation. As things settle down, the traditional finance and professional services community (lawyers, accountants, management consultants, bankers and new breeds such as compliance and security consultants) will adapt and create a new order.

Yet there is a recognition that ideological 'group-think' got us into the mess in the first place. Within a framework of new rules, the necessity for order needs to be tempered with a commitment to flexibility and to the wise use of legitimate executive power if the new order is not to become sclerotic.

The age of Gramscian top-down manipulation is coming to an end in favour of direct dialogue and direct and open use of power. Talk of 'nudge' philosophy and the arrival of cognitive science in politics will not last too long because such techniques cannot be effective at our current level of knowledge.

This means that the arts of politics and of free-form diplomacy and the management of the struggle both between companies and between business and discontented populations is back on the agenda.

These are arts not sciences, played within the law but ones where judgement and real time analysis are more important than knowledge of the rules themselves.

Three years ago, our analyses were often regarded as so radical as to be embarrassing. This summer, a presentation to senior overseas bankers on political risk which we had considered radical resulted in amusing exchanges in which our audience proved to be more radical than us (too far so, we think)!

It is as if their perception of the world had been so changed that they were now liberated to think not merely the 'unthinkable' but to consider thoughts that, bluntly, questioned their own possible future existence as a means of ensuring that continued existence. Denial is no longer an option.

The point here is that, so long as certain boundaries are maintained, managing reputational risk now requires a very different approach to communications than hitherto - defensiveness based on 'who you know' in a closed network of media outlets operating to shared and cosy rules is not sufficient.

The new media have transformed the way information is issued to the public while the old media no longer has quite the power to make or break people or businesses. The consultancy of 'what is being said at dinner parties' still has its role but it is not, in itself, enough.

A defiant ethical stance to reputational attack, based on the facts and good practice, can be used to stand up to the self-regarding claims made against clients by journalists, politicians and bureaucrats. No one need crumble before the Fourth Estate. No one need cut deals if they are sure of their ground.

Above all, reputation management is moving from that phase in history where it was centred on emotional responses (the 'Diana effect'), in a world dominated by tabloids and earnest 'trust me' Prime Ministers, to one where each 'hit' can be countered with an ethical factual counter-strike.

Just as the best defence against a viral disease is often inoculation with a weak form of the virus, so defence against criticism is self-criticism that pushes the client on to the high ground from whence he can exploit the internal moral contradictions found amongst all self-regarding NGO and media critics.

Perhaps a turning point in the UK was Max Mosley's determination to fight (on privacy grounds) the attempt to damage him for a somewhat louche private life that was nobody's business but his family's.

Perhaps another has been the repeated defeat of political attempts to use dossiers to damage private interests as a means of creating political momentum amongst weak legislators rather than open a proper debate within strengthened legislatures on the facts of the case.

But privacy and dossier journalism are now on the agenda for reform. The way that we conduct our politics, and so the issues surrounding reputation management, will be very different in the next great thirty-year economic cycle than they were in the last.

We will continue to engage directly (albeit in a non-partisan way) with the political process (though never as lobbyists ourselves) and in international affairs.

We will continue to take an assertive stance with the media on behalf of our clients and we will continue to tell it like it is - especially when the message might not be what they want to hear.

Tim Pendry |

A Jeffersonian Model for Modern Britain

Monday 17 August 2009 at 09:56

The Japanese, German, French and Hong Kong economies are now coming out of recession. This leaves all eyes on the original core of the economic crisis - the Wall Street/London axis - and, of course, on the effects on the global economy of any wild card collapses like the Ukraine or perhaps Russia.

'Ave a Cup of Tea, Dearie'

The consensus amongst the British establishment is no longer grim so much as dogged. Things may be tough for some time to come, but (so it is believed) capitalism will not collapse, adjustments will be made and things will right themselves in due course.

James Buchan in Prospect Magazine asked last month whether Britain was bust. The conclusion was that we would 'muddle through'. "Ave a cup of tea, dearie". Dunkirk spirit.

There is certainly something very British about our grumpy belief that our Government is like the British weather - changeable, unpredictable, subject to some sort of 'hurricane' very very occasionally but basically dull, stable and gloomy, something to be endured.

Market Tolerance

The markets appear to have worked out that the Government has to continue to over-spend for political reasons until the election takes place, but that, once the need to be nice to the electorate is over, it will err on the side of the international investor over the demands of its people.

This helps to explain the tolerance of the market for the oodles of debt being offered to the market. Of course, the UK economy is one of the world's largest. It is also politically stable by global standards with a strong state and a stubborn and large anti-socialist middle class.

In short, the UK is a very good bet for repayment and for eventual fiscal stability. The market believes that the British state is so strong that it can enforce almost anything that is required on its people without threat to itself. It is probably correct in this assessment.

Nothing Is Certain In Politics

We have elsewhere suggested that the British political structure comprises a newly dominant Tory Party with three parties vying for the party of opposition - the troubled New Labour Party, the weak Liberal Democrats and the rising UKIP (at least in the South).

But the assumption that New Labour might not win a majority in the House of Commons may be false. The Tory Party is as tainted by scandal as its main rivals. As Cameron moves to the centre-ground, he alienates his 'tribesmen' who may be inclined to dabble in UKIP's waters.

The Tory Front Bench attack on Tory Daniel Hannan, MEP, over his Fox News remarks on the NHS may appeal to the mass of British voters but an attack on Hannan is also a coded attack on the eurosceptic right within the Party.

Libertarian Dissent

There is a complex of dissident values here - euroscepticism, a demand for tax cuts and a call for cuts in 'waste' in public services. Hannan's comments on the NHS open up the irritation amongst some of the libertarian Southern middle class at the remnants of the old social democratic consensus.

The markets will demand that the 'Keynesian' explosion of expenditures (as much political as economic) be reined back by whoever is in Government next year. Given this requirement, the parties only differ on the balance of spending cuts and tax rises.

The Conservative High Command is trying to ring-fence the health and education sectors for political reasons (though it keeps adding departments as different constituencies moan that they are being left out). Now it finds that it has its own Fifth Column.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

But all the major parties are now just squabbling over the type of pain to be inflicted on the population and who will be most victimised.

What would a Government of 'national interest' rather than one of party advantage being doing now? Almost certainly, despite the Keynesian claims, it would be beginning to cut public expenditures that do not relate directly to current or future economic growth and innovation.

Each week that passes without some recognition of the scale of the crisis burdens future generations that are wholly innocent of the greed and stupidity of their elders.

Community and Market

Similarly, no major party (with the partial exception of the Liberal Democrats) has grasped the nettle that the crisis arose from permitting a market system to follow its instincts without any community intervention.

In the struggle between community and market, the State, as representative of the community interest, has moved in thirty years from being the sclerotic social democratic assassin of innovation to the other extreme - a mere player in a game whose rules are being set elsewhere.

Even now, there is no sign that Government of any stripe has any understanding that the State, even if it is a State that fully supports liberal economics, is not just a player but the player. In the absence of world government and a weakening US hegemon, it must set the rules so that it can always win.

A Bit of Political Philosophy

This begs the question of what the State is and what it is for. The institutionalist view is that the State is an interest separate from the community it notionally serves. History tends to confirm the truth of this proposition.

Conservative opinion is understandably nervous that any attempt by the State to set the rules for the economy is tantamount if not to socialism then to corporatism and rule by special interests. This is the libertarian driver for the Tory Right's concern to cut taxes and weaken the State.

It is a point of view that bringsthe Tory Right into alignment with the US Republican Right - and with Fox News. Without a strong alternative - that state and community are fully aligned in practice - this emphasis on individual freedom becomes increasingly attractive to many angry citizens.

The Alternative Tradition

There is another radical tradition, historically of the Left, which identifies the interest of the community with the State.

Conservative opinion is rightly nervous here because, since the foundation of the Labour Party, this has meant, in practice, a strong state directed first at socialism and, latterly, at support for the special interests that sustain the clique at the top of the main Party of the Left.

However, there is no need for an identification of the State with the community to mean the domination of the community by the State - in practice, the domination of the population by whichever clique captures the party that captures the State.

A Jeffersonian Alternative

An alternative might be the radical recasting of the political system so that the State becomes the servant of the people, decentralised and much closer to the model of Thomas Jefferson. There is no voice for this model at the heart of British politics, although the Liberal Democrats come closest.

Given the lack of the political classes' support for any radical recasting of the political system (despite the growing evidence that increasing numbers in the wider population are inclined to 'revolution'), the mainstream parties are repeatedly trapped into making the existing system work.

But what would a Jeffersonian model look like? Well, we use Jefferson loosely here. The UK is an advanced service economy with exploited migrants, not an agrarian economy based on slavery. Similarly, the Enlightenment would scarcely stand up to the intellectual scrutiny that it would receive nowadays.

Spending Cuts

But we can adapt to the general principle by which the State is merely a tool of the community and has no desire to expand except that it be in the interests of the community. The community will make its own assessment of its needs through democratic means without the intrusion of special interests.

The honest position is that we have all got drunk at the party and have been presented with the bill. This bill must now be paid but those who drank the most should pay it. Revellers should not scarper and leave the bill to be paid by servants.

Public spending must be cut but the cuts must be, and be seen to be, at the expense of the State structure and of the special interests who benefited most, generationally and sectionally, from the revelry.

The Banking System

The UK has made itself highly vulnerable to the global economy by allowing mega-financial institutions to dominate its economic policy-making. There is a role in servicing such global institutions but the national banking system and the global banking system need separating out from each other.

Regional and community banks and stock markets need support and to be discouraged from becoming sucked into the global market in the way that the Landesbanken in Germany and the Icelandic banks have done. This means a far more active engagement by Government in regulating the banking sector.

The aims must be to restore the capital base of the banking sector as a prerequisite for stable lending and increased transparency in banking business. This will not nationalise banks but will demand the same sort of standards that we might require in food quality, consumer rights or travel safety.

Social Capitalism

The one concession to post-Jeffersonian socialism is that, when Government takes tax revenue, the bias in expenditure must be less towards immediate consumption (employment and general services) and increasingly towards investment in the infrastructure for innovation and growth.

New Labour's model appeared to be to pump money into people's pockets so that economic growth could be fuelled by demand for goods and services. An alternative is to create the infrastructure for economic prosperity through investment and education.

To be fair, Gordon Brown eventually changed his tune with plans for investment in energy and, latterly, transport infrastructure - and one of the few successes of this government has been investment in parts of vocational education - but all this is still relatively late in the day and still limited in scope.

The Bonus Culture

While not fully accepting the po-faced earnestness of Compass in its plans for a High Pay Commission (since innovation and success deserve high rewards), there must be a link between pay and long term success that recognises that short term bonuses are not the way to run an economy.

The short term bonus distorts the market and fails to build up long term national capital. There can be no objection to regulation of such tools so that they can become linked to real long term measures of wealth creation.

This author can certainly see no objection to progressive retrospective taxation of recent bonus income in the light of the crisis if ever we get to the point where unemployment is sustained at 3m for more than a year and there are massive cuts in public services.

A Jeffersonian Programme

So, there we have it ... a Jeffersonian programme of sorts ...

The State given to the community and taken away from special interests.
'Fair' public spending cuts.
A partial withdrawal of the national economy from the global system in order to stabilise it.
A shift of expenditures from support for consumption to investment in economic infrastructure and innovation [the 'new deal' model].
Government intervention to assist the bottom 15% and to restrain the top 15% without intervening in the liberties and independence of the 70% inbetween.

Bodging It

Does any current political party come close to this sort of moderate national programme? The current political class is, as Buchan has suggested, muddling through.

All parties are still committed to an economic model that dominated the period from the 1980s to the credit crunch. None have a sense of a nation that is greater than the sum of its individuals.

It is a recipe for long term decline as a succession of political oligopolists bodge their way through social order problems, spending cuts and economic distress.

For all the communitarian talk of Brown and Cameron, neither has presented a workable model for the command of the State by the people nor for the just sharing of the pain in the coming years of austerity.

Either we give up on the interventionist State altogether and take the libertarian route of the Tory Right and of UKIP or we develop some sort of communitarian democratic model, tantamount to a revolution from below.

This author suspects that we will be muddling through for decades to come.

www.tppr.co.uk

www.pendrywhite.com

If you want to follow TPPR events and commentary, try http://twitter.com/TPPRNews

If you want to follow Pendry White events and commentary, try http://twitter.com/PendryWhite

Tim Pendry |