James Frayne is Director of Public First and author of Meet the People, a guide to moving public opinion.
What would a sale of the Telegraph titles to an entity backed by the UAE say about the Conservative Party? Let’s look at some important context first.
A few weeks ago, I ran a series of questions to see which policy goals people thought the Conservative Party had met since it went into Government in 2010.
The results amongst Conservative 2019 voters were appalling. Presented with a list of options, only two – providing Ukraine with support in their war and rolling out the Covid vaccine – secured meaningful acknowledgement. Around 60 per cent of Conservative 2019 voters thought the Conservatives had met these goals.
However, fewer than ten per cent credited the Conservatives with improving border control, cutting immigration, reducing the tax burden, building houses, or reducing “woke” policies in central and local government.
Naturally, the results for the general public were significantly worse: 43 per cent credited the Conservatives with providing Ukraine with support; and 40 per cent credited them with the Covid vaccine roll-out. Just seven per cent credited the Conservatives with improving control of our borders; seven per cent with reducing overall burden of tax; and eight per cent with reducing “woke” policies in national and local government.
When you ask people why the Conservatives have found it difficult to meet big policy goals, the top answer for the public was that the politicians in charge of big policy areas aren’t good enough. Alarmingly for the Government, this was also the second top answer for Conservative 2019 voters.
In short, many voters think this lot aren’t good enough.
This comes across more strongly in focus groups. In groups, you hear seething frustration that every important policy goal seems just too difficult for Conservative politicians to meet. During Covid and its aftermath, people genuinely cut the Government slack; they could see this event, out of the blue, affected delivery of everything.
But this sympathy has long, long gone – again, even amongst Conservative voters.
You really can’t blame people for thinking this. For Government politicians are endlessly blaming factors apparently out of their hands for big problems. Increasingly, they blame the scale and complexity of policy challenges for their failure to sort them out.
You hear this most often and most intensely on immigration and asylum. It’s too difficult to reduce legal migration and too difficult to stop boats arriving and to rapidly process those who have arrived on these boats.
But you hear it elsewhere too: it’s too difficult to cut long-term welfare; it’s too difficult to introduce a seven-day NHS; it’s too difficult to build beautiful houses and streets; it’s too difficult to maintain the course on Net Zero.
Increasingly, ministers talk as if they have no levers to pull; they talk like they’re not in power; they talk as if they were columnists, not executives.
Why is this relevant to the proposed sale of the Telegraph titles?
We’ll see what happens; things are moving quickly and it’s possible the Government are actually privately very firm on all this. But reading some comments out of Government, and noting too what isn’t being said, it’s hard not to worry.
It’s starting to feel that this issue might also end up in the too-difficult box – and therefore that the sale might ultimately go through, regardless of what Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, does in the immediate term.
Too difficult because domestic laws and regulations in place are apparently too vague to stop the sale; too difficult because our relations with the UAE are too important to jeopardise; to difficult because all this is happening between private companies; too difficult because it’s ultimately down to Ofcom.
For a Conservative government, this ought to be very simple: British newspapers cannot be owned by an entity backed by a state that doesn’t have genuine press freedom. How can there possibly be any consideration whatever on this point? It’s a point which ought to be so unbelievably obvious, it should be dismissed out of hand.
While it would be silly to claim this is an issue of massive public concern in the short-term, it will matter a great deal to Conservative activists and members. Many will be shaking their heads in disbelief that their party is apparently even considering this.
Over the longer-term, if the sale went through, and more people heard what the Conservatives had done as the row played out, they will likely be asking why ministers, with all the powers at their disposal, were yet again unable to stop something which they said they opposed. Just like everything else.
James Frayne is Director of Public First and author of Meet the People, a guide to moving public opinion.
What would a sale of the Telegraph titles to an entity backed by the UAE say about the Conservative Party? Let’s look at some important context first.
A few weeks ago, I ran a series of questions to see which policy goals people thought the Conservative Party had met since it went into Government in 2010.
The results amongst Conservative 2019 voters were appalling. Presented with a list of options, only two – providing Ukraine with support in their war and rolling out the Covid vaccine – secured meaningful acknowledgement. Around 60 per cent of Conservative 2019 voters thought the Conservatives had met these goals.
However, fewer than ten per cent credited the Conservatives with improving border control, cutting immigration, reducing the tax burden, building houses, or reducing “woke” policies in central and local government.
Naturally, the results for the general public were significantly worse: 43 per cent credited the Conservatives with providing Ukraine with support; and 40 per cent credited them with the Covid vaccine roll-out. Just seven per cent credited the Conservatives with improving control of our borders; seven per cent with reducing overall burden of tax; and eight per cent with reducing “woke” policies in national and local government.
When you ask people why the Conservatives have found it difficult to meet big policy goals, the top answer for the public was that the politicians in charge of big policy areas aren’t good enough. Alarmingly for the Government, this was also the second top answer for Conservative 2019 voters.
In short, many voters think this lot aren’t good enough.
This comes across more strongly in focus groups. In groups, you hear seething frustration that every important policy goal seems just too difficult for Conservative politicians to meet. During Covid and its aftermath, people genuinely cut the Government slack; they could see this event, out of the blue, affected delivery of everything.
But this sympathy has long, long gone – again, even amongst Conservative voters.
You really can’t blame people for thinking this. For Government politicians are endlessly blaming factors apparently out of their hands for big problems. Increasingly, they blame the scale and complexity of policy challenges for their failure to sort them out.
You hear this most often and most intensely on immigration and asylum. It’s too difficult to reduce legal migration and too difficult to stop boats arriving and to rapidly process those who have arrived on these boats.
But you hear it elsewhere too: it’s too difficult to cut long-term welfare; it’s too difficult to introduce a seven-day NHS; it’s too difficult to build beautiful houses and streets; it’s too difficult to maintain the course on Net Zero.
Increasingly, ministers talk as if they have no levers to pull; they talk like they’re not in power; they talk as if they were columnists, not executives.
Why is this relevant to the proposed sale of the Telegraph titles?
We’ll see what happens; things are moving quickly and it’s possible the Government are actually privately very firm on all this. But reading some comments out of Government, and noting too what isn’t being said, it’s hard not to worry.
It’s starting to feel that this issue might also end up in the too-difficult box – and therefore that the sale might ultimately go through, regardless of what Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, does in the immediate term.
Too difficult because domestic laws and regulations in place are apparently too vague to stop the sale; too difficult because our relations with the UAE are too important to jeopardise; to difficult because all this is happening between private companies; too difficult because it’s ultimately down to Ofcom.
For a Conservative government, this ought to be very simple: British newspapers cannot be owned by an entity backed by a state that doesn’t have genuine press freedom. How can there possibly be any consideration whatever on this point? It’s a point which ought to be so unbelievably obvious, it should be dismissed out of hand.
While it would be silly to claim this is an issue of massive public concern in the short-term, it will matter a great deal to Conservative activists and members. Many will be shaking their heads in disbelief that their party is apparently even considering this.
Over the longer-term, if the sale went through, and more people heard what the Conservatives had done as the row played out, they will likely be asking why ministers, with all the powers at their disposal, were yet again unable to stop something which they said they opposed. Just like everything else.