Just a thought on the new government

OK, put yourself in Peter Mandelson's shoes. Do you stand idly by while the Tories and Lib Dems get all cosy as they negotiate Labour out of government? Or do you....interfere.

No, you set a hare running that there's a possibility of a deal with Labour, raising the hopes of grassroots Lib Dems round the country that they are not going into a coalition with the Tories, thus taking the blame and the fury for the cuts they will impose. You also raise the hopes of the many people who voted Lib Dem to keep the Tories out, only to face the prospect of putting them in.

Now, Mandelson, knows these talks will fail, he knows the mood of the party and he knows the mind of very senior colleagues who will not allow a deal with Lib Dems to go unchallenged. It is doomed to failure. The negotiating team went in clinging to things, such as ID cards, that the Lib Dems could not live with. The talks were doomed and intended to be so.

But you've done two things. You've raised the hopes of Lib Dem rank and file, making them realise the horror of what they're getting into. You've also made the Lib Dem leadership look like flip-flopping, duplicitous opportunists, auctioning off power to the highest bidder.

Now, all the above might be fevered fantasy on the eve of a Tory Government.

Or else it might be an act of Machiavellian political maneuvering worthy of.....Peter Mandelson.

And lest we forget. In 1997 Labour won 418 seats - 418 - now that was a majority, that was a mandate to govern. The Tories were utterly destroyed and left with just 165 seats.

Labour now have 258 seats, easily enough to come back at the next election and take power from what they have ensured is a very shaky coalition.

Oh and the Labour Party website servers went down last night, such were the numbers logging on to join the party. At the same time the Tory and Lib Dem recruitment pages were running just fine. Maybe they've got better servers.....maybe.

The Lowry, Salford and The Pitmen Painters

Off to The Lowry in Salford Quays, Manchester, at the weekend to see a production of The Pitmen Painters.

Written by Lee Hall, he of Billy Elliott fame, it is based on the true story of a group of miners from Ashington, who, inspired by a WEA lecture, took up painting themselves and became a feted artistic group.

It was a good production, funny, poignant, moving at times and definitely worth seeing. Hall has great fun with the language of the miners and the confusion it causes to their tutor. One memorable line to the bemused tutor being: "Ye dee dee ort deen't ye?" Trans: "You do do art, don't you?"

And when the brass band started playing Gresford - The Miners' Hymn commemorating the disaster that still resonates in Wrexham, you'd have to be an unfeeling soul not to get a lump in your throat.

But then came the touch that for me detracted very slightly from a great play. As the play finished the slides that had shown us the miners' works of art, turned to text, informing us that their hopes of a "University of Ashington' had not been realised. Their pit had closed in the early '80s, and that Labour had abandoned its commitment to workers' ownership of the means of production.

It was just a bit clunky, a bit like a great big hammer blow of political pointmaking, when so much had been concealed before in the story itself.

I don't need a subtitle at the end of the play to tell me the socialist miners of the 1930s and '40s might feel betrayed by the way the Labour movement has abandoned its principles.

I'm slightly suspicious of plays, films or books which tell a story and then rather clumsily say: "Right, here's the moral and here's how you should think about it." Let people decide for themselves having seen it.

Having said all that, it was still a great production and worth catching on its UK tour. It's on at Sheffield's Crucible this week.

The Bravery of The Sun

Courageous move that by The Sun, backing the Tories, or rather, abandoning Labour.

How upset Labour  are depends on where your bullshit detector points between Harriet Harman's, rather tepid "we're all angry but we won't be bullied" rant; rumours that Brown berated Sun execs with a four-letter tirade and Labour spin that it doesn't really matter.

Look, Labour, or rather Tony Blair, would not have courted Rupert Murdoch the way they did if it didn't matter. But perhaps they were taking the Sun Tzu approach of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. Either way, after the paper's declaration in 1992 that "It's the Sun Wot Won It" when John Major defeated Neil Kinnock with a little help from his friends at Wapping who exhorted the last person to leave Britain if Kinnock won to turn off the lights.

But that was 17 years ago, when the internet was just being born and things have changed in the way people relate to newspapers.

Not that newspapers had as much impact as they would have you believe if you take account of this study which states that while papers might hold some sway over individuals, it would be wrong to overstate their influence on the outcome of elections.

A view echoed by Alistair Campbell, who writes on his blog: "...people will make their own minds up. What a daily paper urges them to do will figure marginally if at all in that judgement, and provided Labour continues to defend the record, take the fight to the Tories, and set out the forward policy agenda with clarity and vigour, the battle ahead can still be won."

My point is that back in 1992 The Sun might get away with claiming its part in the Conservative victory. But now, in a political scene no longer dominated by print media, where 24-hour news and internet sources are far more likely to break political news than The Sun is, it's a brave move for a dead-tree outlet to claim as much influence as it does.

Of course, if the gamble pays off then it will no doubt run a suitably self-adulatory headline the next day. But what if they don't?

What if the economic recovery is just round the corner and its effects are felt before the next election? What if the electorate decides that on balance things are looking up and they don't want to gamble on the Tories?

The Tories will weather it of course and hope to be back next time. But for the paper that backed them and failed to get Cameron into Downing St it could be far more devastating. An unmistakable sign that the paper had been emasculated and its political influence was at an end.