Learning the lessons of the 2017 election
When you see a striking headline it is often worth reading the detail of the story underneath - which frequently fails to confirm what you might otherwise have inferred from the headline.
Very often when I see a headline that I think is wrong or seriously misleading, and then read the piece underneath it, I find that the article or news report itself is accurate - but the editors in search of a striking headline have written one which is usually related to the issue discussed in the items but gives a strikingly wrong impression or at least overstates the case.
And so it is with the New Statesman's headline on a piece by Philip Cowley in response to the Prime Minister's statement that there was a trillion pounds of uncosted expenditure in the 2017 Labour manifesto. This was probably taken from the book
"The British General Election of 2017" which Philip Cowley had written with Denis Kavanagh, or from press reports about the book in the Sun and the Mail (articles which include the trillion pounds figure pretty much as the PM quoted it.)
I previously wrote a post on this blog based on the same reports which you can read here.
The headline suggest that Mr Cowley accuses the PM of "distorting my book" and the article suggests that her comment "isn't quite what the book says."
The sub-heading, which I suspect is the work of a New Statesman subeditor, says that the real story reflects "very poorly on her and on her campaign."
No criticism of Labour in that headline. Which is itself misleading
Because if anyone is trying to give the impression that the real story in the book makes the Conservative statements seriously at fault and that Labour's manifesto really was properly costed, that would be a far worse distortion than anything which Philip Cowley's article shows the PM to have committed.
Indeed, such an implication would not just be a distortion, it would be downright wrong.
So let's look at what Philip Cowley and his book actually do say. There are lessons in it for both parties.
The book quoted an internal Labour email during the election which casts rather serious doubt on the claim repeated with great regularity by Labour representatives that they had a "fully costed" manifesto at the 2017 election.
The email privately communicated to Labour's senior campaign team, quote,
“some of the problems with Labour’s cost estimates, including the lack of detail on capital spending, as well as some individual costings that were implausible or entirely absent”.
It also highlighted issues with “almost every area of the manifesto, including welfare, health, education, the economy, transport, policing and prisons."
Philip Cowley is still saying quite clearly in his New Statesman piece that these came, quote,
"even conservatively, to billions of unaccounted spending."
One of the Labour figures involved in the preparation of the manifesto is quoted in the New Statesman article as saying of their own manifesto
"It didn't add up! It didn't add up."
Let's precis what Philip Cowley is saying in words of one syllable. These are not his exact words but they are a reasonable summary of what he wrote both in the book and in the New Statesman about Labour's 2017 election manifesto.
HE DOES SAY THERE WAS A BLACK HOLE IN IT.
His main criticism of the suggestion by the Mail and Sun, quoted by the PM, that this black hole amounted to £1,000,000,000 is not that they've invented this figure or that it has no connection to reality, and certainly not that there wasn't a large amount of unaccounted spending in the manifesto.
His only substantive criticism of the statement by the Mail and Sun which was repeated by the PM is that they failed to make clear that this figure of one trillion pounds was the extreme upper limit of the range of values within which the black hole in Labour's budget could plausibly have been presented as being.
One of the Labour leader’s aides told the authors:
“I just kept thinking, they’ll tear us apart on this. But the attack never came."
Well, it damn well should have, and that is the - entirely valid - criticism which Philip Cowley makes of the Conservative campaign.
But which party is guilty of the worse offense? According to Mr Cowley,
1) Labour published what they said was a "fully costed" manifesto which actually had missing or implausible figures in it to the tune of many billions of pounds.
2) The Conservatives should have been able to tear it apart, and failed to do so.
In my humble opinion those offences against the voter are not of equal significance and the Conservatives are not the party guilty of the more serious offence.
Lessons, I think, for both parties for next time.
While I hope and expect that the next Conservative campaign will concentrate on putting forward positive policies of our own, if Labour present a supposedly "fully costed manifesto" with as many holes as their 2017 manifesto had in it - and judging by the 32 unfunded spending promises they've already made in this parliament, that looks entirely likely - they should not be allowed to get away with it again.
Very often when I see a headline that I think is wrong or seriously misleading, and then read the piece underneath it, I find that the article or news report itself is accurate - but the editors in search of a striking headline have written one which is usually related to the issue discussed in the items but gives a strikingly wrong impression or at least overstates the case.
And so it is with the New Statesman's headline on a piece by Philip Cowley in response to the Prime Minister's statement that there was a trillion pounds of uncosted expenditure in the 2017 Labour manifesto. This was probably taken from the book
"The British General Election of 2017" which Philip Cowley had written with Denis Kavanagh, or from press reports about the book in the Sun and the Mail (articles which include the trillion pounds figure pretty much as the PM quoted it.)
I previously wrote a post on this blog based on the same reports which you can read here.
The headline suggest that Mr Cowley accuses the PM of "distorting my book" and the article suggests that her comment "isn't quite what the book says."
The sub-heading, which I suspect is the work of a New Statesman subeditor, says that the real story reflects "very poorly on her and on her campaign."
No criticism of Labour in that headline. Which is itself misleading
Because if anyone is trying to give the impression that the real story in the book makes the Conservative statements seriously at fault and that Labour's manifesto really was properly costed, that would be a far worse distortion than anything which Philip Cowley's article shows the PM to have committed.
Indeed, such an implication would not just be a distortion, it would be downright wrong.
So let's look at what Philip Cowley and his book actually do say. There are lessons in it for both parties.
The book quoted an internal Labour email during the election which casts rather serious doubt on the claim repeated with great regularity by Labour representatives that they had a "fully costed" manifesto at the 2017 election.
The email privately communicated to Labour's senior campaign team, quote,
“some of the problems with Labour’s cost estimates, including the lack of detail on capital spending, as well as some individual costings that were implausible or entirely absent”.
It also highlighted issues with “almost every area of the manifesto, including welfare, health, education, the economy, transport, policing and prisons."
Philip Cowley is still saying quite clearly in his New Statesman piece that these came, quote,
"even conservatively, to billions of unaccounted spending."
One of the Labour figures involved in the preparation of the manifesto is quoted in the New Statesman article as saying of their own manifesto
"It didn't add up! It didn't add up."
Let's precis what Philip Cowley is saying in words of one syllable. These are not his exact words but they are a reasonable summary of what he wrote both in the book and in the New Statesman about Labour's 2017 election manifesto.
HE DOES SAY THERE WAS A BLACK HOLE IN IT.
His main criticism of the suggestion by the Mail and Sun, quoted by the PM, that this black hole amounted to £1,000,000,000 is not that they've invented this figure or that it has no connection to reality, and certainly not that there wasn't a large amount of unaccounted spending in the manifesto.
His only substantive criticism of the statement by the Mail and Sun which was repeated by the PM is that they failed to make clear that this figure of one trillion pounds was the extreme upper limit of the range of values within which the black hole in Labour's budget could plausibly have been presented as being.
One of the Labour leader’s aides told the authors:
“I just kept thinking, they’ll tear us apart on this. But the attack never came."
Well, it damn well should have, and that is the - entirely valid - criticism which Philip Cowley makes of the Conservative campaign.
But which party is guilty of the worse offense? According to Mr Cowley,
1) Labour published what they said was a "fully costed" manifesto which actually had missing or implausible figures in it to the tune of many billions of pounds.
2) The Conservatives should have been able to tear it apart, and failed to do so.
In my humble opinion those offences against the voter are not of equal significance and the Conservatives are not the party guilty of the more serious offence.
Lessons, I think, for both parties for next time.
While I hope and expect that the next Conservative campaign will concentrate on putting forward positive policies of our own, if Labour present a supposedly "fully costed manifesto" with as many holes as their 2017 manifesto had in it - and judging by the 32 unfunded spending promises they've already made in this parliament, that looks entirely likely - they should not be allowed to get away with it again.
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