Bernard Ingham: Turn off the TV and free politics from enslavement

TODAY is rich in irony. On the 70th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa – Hitler’s invasion of Russia – our trade unions are planning next week’s assault on the coalition’s will over public sector pensions.

Just as Barbarossa ended in crippling defeat at Stalingrad, so will the unions’ campaign conclude either with tougher strike laws or the state’s impaired ability to pay pensions – and probably both.

In the wake of Arthur Scargill, our dense union leaders prove conclusively philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel’s dictum that “people and governments never have learned anything from history”.

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Which brings me to the recent history of government presentation. Like Parliament, it has been utterly corrupted by television. In the process, both government and Parliament have connived at their own devaluation.

Yet there is no sign that either has heard of Hegel, even though Tony Blair ran into trouble by announcing the 2001 election in, of all places, a South London school.

I can testify that as recently as the Thatcher years, all government presentation was ruled by first,the imperative of reporting to Parliament, then conventions against politically compromising public servants and finally a natural courtesy against presuming on people’s – and schoolchildren’s – goodwill.

That meant that the House of Commons was still the focal point for government reporting. It was the cockpit where government announcements were fought over and either passed or failed the test of convincing presentation.

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And then came the televising of the Commons in 1989. Far from extending coverage of politics, it came to concentrate on punch-ups such as Prime Minister’s Questions or clips of memorable spats such as Speaker Bercow’s with Tory MPs.

Increasingly – and especially under the Blair Government – news was privatised. It was taken out of Parliament and bruited abroad against the background of hi-jacked or, more likely, hand-picked audiences with dissent suppressed and reporters restricted or gagged.

At the same time, MPs were presented with a Sicilian choice. They could make a speech in the House which would be archived for posterity in Hansard but attract no notice when 300 yards away down Millbank, they could command an audience of a million on regional TV where they felt they needed to be seen.

Steadily – and inevitably – authority has drained out of the Commons and public discourse has been grievously impaired by television’s evident belief that homo sapiens have the attention span of a gnat.

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As has been clear for years, television is in the business of entertainment, not serious education, and is obsessed with pictures, scenery and emotion. I doubt whether 20 per cent of the news served up for us would see the light of day if the subject were not in a state of incomprehensible wailing anguish.

Nothing has more warmed my heart recently than the Guy’s Hospital surgeon who noisily interfered with the respective bedside manners of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. I would have been more impressed if he had been objecting to them and their posse of TV cameras in the ward rather than just the camera crews apparently not being dressed to keep superbugs at bay. But you can’t have everything.

Will anything change? I doubt it. The body politic is as enslaved by TV as it is by the religious fervour of global warming fanatics.

It seems incapable of recognising the artificiality of staged announcements outside the Commons or the distraction for the viewer of the settings.

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If it’s a health announcement, look for an accommodating hospital. If education, go for a school or college. If it’s about the sea, command the nearest heaving deck.

I may sound anciently stuffy, but government is not just a television set. It is a serious matter deserving serious attention. And serious business ought to be discharged in Parliament.

Mr Speaker has it in his power to end all this nonsense. He could summon Ministers who make announcements outside Parliament, and give them a telling-off. He may be encouraged to do this if MPs gave the slightest indication they want to recover some of the Commons’ lost glory as the centre of our democracy.

The Prime Minister could give a lead by laying it down that at least all major announcements must be delivered in the House.

He would then show confidence in his government, strengthen our democracy, cast off the television yoke and demonstrate that, unlike Hitler and the unions, he can see which way the wind is blowing.