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Iain Watson, our Political reporter writes this week's newsletter.
This may seem bizarre for someone working on a breakfast show, but I'm not really a morning person. I've tried to adjust, of course, but usually I don't have to get up early every day of the week. Except of course when all the main parties are launching their election manifestos - some of them slap bang when we're on air. So with the alarm firmly set at 5.30am all week, by the end of it, the words of the famous Monty Python sketch are going round in my head: 'we used to get up five hours before we went to bed...tell young people these days and they don't believe you.' Still, at least I haven't been sent up chimneys or down a pit. Yet.
Some of the parties at least sympathise with this aversion to the pre-dawn press conference. It's in their self interest of course. They don't want grumpy journalists with low blood sugar going on the attack. So just before their manifesto was launched, the LibDems laid on a fine spread, serving up sizzling rashers of bacon and sausages - for some reason, sliced in two, right down the middle - to the restless hacks. It didn't work of course. It seemed only to increase the appetite for red meat. A bleary eyed Charles Kennedy was asked how much sleep he had had before the 7.30am press conference began - the sort of question you can only get away with because you know he can at least now blame late nights on his new born. The arrival of Donald James had delayed the LibDems' manifesto launch by two days but Charlie might have been better off if the labour had lasted for the rest of the election campaign. The assembled masses beasted into him on his plans for a local income tax ! and, sadly, the only figures in his head were probably the weight of his baby. He didn't quite seem to know at what income level you'd be worse off under his scheme to replace the council tax and needed a very public baling out from his team.
If the LibDems seemed a little under prepared Labour were well, perhaps overly stage managed. They even held their manifesto launch in a theatre. Like the other parties, their event was in London - a planned regional 'leg' had been ditched - so for most of us who spend time at Westminster we still feel that the campaign in the country hasn't really got under way.
Labour adopted the iconography of the Soviet era. The manifesto was in the form of a little red book and the venue for its launch was also draped in red and it looked rather like a soviet-style presidium. (Either that or a Franz Ferdinand video) The Dear Leader stood at the podium at the front of the stage flanked directly on the left by the person who is clearly now his anointed successor, Gordon Brown, and on his right by his Beria, John Prescott. Ideological favourites Charles Clarke, John Reid , Ruth Kelly and Pat Hewitt made it to the front rank but kremlinologists were fascinated to see the man occupying allegedly the third most important post in government, the foreign secretary, relegated to the back row alongside the Culture Secretary and others. Jack Straw was not expected to have a speaking role at all but he was forced to indulge in some soviet era self criticism at one point by yelping from the back row that he kept bumping into Iraqis who were grateful for the! ir liberation. Did he have any doubts about the war himself? Don't you believe it! Of course the manifesto's content didn't necessarily match the image, with a greater role for the private sector in the health service amongst the policy detail. But messrs Brown and Reid are old hands at this game; their conference speeches are usually full of references to Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan, just before they mention PFI.
But I must indulge in a bit of self criticism myself. Labour apparatchiks were happy to talk about much of the content of the manifesto in advance but the format was a closely guarded secret. Now isn't that the final victory for the importance of style over substance?! So we could of course just have waited until the launch to find out what it looked like, but journalists have their own unofficial contest at election time to get under the wire and confound the party's official spokespeople. The night before the launch, I'd been given a very unofficial description of the front cover of a document piling up inside Labour's HQ showing 'thumbnail' pictures of happy Labour people followed by a picture of a smiling Tony Blair himself. The document, like the manifesto, was called 'Britain, Forward not Back.' But there was one flaw. It wasn't the manifesto. It was a 'digest' to be sent to Labour Party members only. Wish I'd known that before I took a stab at what the actual documen! t might look like. On air. Like the politicians, journalists are not gaffe free and we have good and bad days on the campaign trail but I'm still feeling a bit silly.
Thankfully all this was avoided when it came to the Conservatives. I had a copy of the manifesto before it was formally launched and flicked through it live on air. It was denounced by opponents for not being detailed enough 28 pages to Labour's 112 - but are people really going to re-elect the government on the basis that they've told us they'll extend the power of parish council wardens? And if they broke this promise would we really turf them out of office?
The Conservatives had a document with mock handwriting on the front page, listing six priorities for government. One of them was 'school discipline' but it really should have been school standards. The handwriting was appalling and there was a completely random use of upper and lower case characters. I've seen better writing on a gastropub menu board, frankly.
One of the priorities was accountability. So at his press conference, I asked Michael Howard if he didn't deliver on the promises he was making - and to the timescale he set out - would he resign a PM? Say what you like about him, he is a consummate politician. Quick as a flash, he said he'd sack his underperforming underlings instead. So if his shadow cabinet perform well during the election, it will be a triumph of fear over hope.
Iain Watson
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