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This kind of thing is usually meat and potatoes at Chicken Yoghurt:

Austin Mitchell MP: Selling Educashun

The “Tool Kit” for Labour MPs shows what I should have done to sell the Educashun White Paper.

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The follow-up Press Release: “Parents give schools plan the thumbs up”. MP rushes back to Westminster to give Ruth Kelly the good news. “I have no doubt that they will get their message will be heard (sic) in Westminster loud and clear”. There’s even a quote provided to prove it: “<<INSERT PARENT NAME>> a parent at the event said “The government’s plans are really ambitious. I’m pleased they want to give parents control … but I was even more pleased the <<NAME>> MP and the head bothered to take time out to listen to my views”. Democracy Works!

Clive, Jamie and Dave all have more.

This is classic New Labour astroturfing, as revealed by Channel 4’s Dispatches in May this year, on which I said:

Propaganda techniques used by US pharmaceutical companies and political parties were imported. Letters were written by the press office bigging up New Labour or attacking the opposition parties and then sent to local activists who were asked to get them into the local press. Several identical letters appeared in local newspapers across the country. One letter appeared in one newspaper twice. In Leeds letters were printed in a newspaper from a woman who doesn’t exist. All because New Labour deemed that readers “trusted” the letters page – the views of “real people” – in a newspaper more than any other part. Trust was just another commodity to be exploited and abused.

The New Labour website had a similar doohicky on its website. A visitor typed in their postcode and a page came up saying “Your local hospital has had £X pounds of investment” and “Your community has X extra policemen”, the X’s filled in by a clever little computer programme.

Which at least gave the impression of making a stab of informing voters. The astroturfing shown by Channel 4 and the latest wheeze outed by Austin Mitchell are deception pure and simple. Lies in other words.

Here’s what WriteToThem.com, the nifty website facilitating communication between MPs and their constituents, says about sending cut ‘n’ pasted emails to MPs:

We know your issue is important to you, but we’ve spoken to representatives — and if you are not a constituent, or you send a “copied and pasted” form letter, your message will go straight into the bin.

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[P]lease don’t copy and paste the same message as everyone else. And don’t encourage others to do so. It’s worse than useless as we’ll automatically stop your messages before they get through. Ask people to write in their own words. If they care enough about your issue, they’ll do so.

My emphasis. Cut ‘n’ pasted letters and emails from constituents are ignored and binned by MPs, and fair enough. But cookie cutter quotes sent in the other direction, to gull voters into thinking a policy (whatever its merits) is popular, are fair game from our elected representatives. I suppose that’s what you call “building a consensus”.

I always like to trace these things back to their roots and examine them from first principles. In this case, somebody sat in an office and decided that in order to paint the Education White Paper in a good light, MPs should tell lies, make up stories, puff up potential legislation that they clearly didn’t feel capable or willing to defend and sell on its own merits. (Or weren’t trusted to defend and sell on its own merits.) New Labour employs people to orchestrate campaigns of lies and propaganda because it’s less effort than trying to get the real message through to voters who are obviously regarded as simpletons. Somebody said, “Alright lads, this is what we’ll do…” His colleagues agreed with him and the deceit was formalised and filtered through the system to the sharp end where MPs were told: “You will lie to the press and your constituents.”

The Education White Paper is supposedly about putting parents at the centre of the process. If that’s the case, that they’re to be trusted with influence on how our education system is run, why treat them with contempt when selling the policy? On one side you’re saying that people should be given more power while on the other treating them like children.

This cuts to the heart of the criticisms of the “People Power” aspect of this White Paper. Educated, informed, energetic and enthusiastic parents will immediately jump up and seize the best for their children. Under-educated, lazy, working all hours God sends to put food on the table, and introverted parents will not. They will also be uninformed and misinformed because the Government are not explaining the issue in terms the latter group will understand and be able to act upon. Once again it’s just a case of, “Trust us, it’s gonna be great.” Some bloke they made up said so, so it must be true.

It’s all so dispriting; so difficult to find the energy to summon the anger to give these abject, contemptuous, contemptible bunch of tartuffes another poke. Yet another fundamental aspect of people’s lives, their kids’ education, boiled down polystyrene soundbites and fact-free facts pulled out of thin air. And I keep saying and saying it until I sound like a greatest hits collection: we wouldn’t accept this behaviour from anybody else. If your partner or children lied on such a level and based all their decisions and behaviour on the say so of imaginary friends you’d be looking for a psychiatrist. But with the government, the people who control almost every aspect of our lives, we just shrug and say, “well that’s politicians, innit?”

I sometimes think we’ve (I’ve?) nowhere left to go in describing this government. Their imagination is endless whereas mine is failing. That they are liars and bullies with contempt for process and The People now seems a given and hardly worth mentioning, much like the fact the sun came up this morning. “Morally bankrupt”, while a useful phrase, is overdone and lacks the requisite sting, I feel.

Robust anglo-saxon is useful at times like this but I’m trying to cut down on the swearing.