Tag: Elections

Building trust takes more than soundbites

I’ve thought fitfully about relationships and how they shape our views during this grinding start to the year.

They keep families, teams, political organisations and communities of interest together. They’re imperfect, occasionaly fractious and sometimes maddening. But we would not be ourselves without them.

Connections and shared experiences that make life worth living have festered on the backburner since March last year. No amount of Zoom catch ups can fill the void this creates in our lives.

This is the context to my becoming more anxious with feelings that, for all the benefits that technology brings, people aren’t connecting with others who hold different views to theirs.

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Building trust is tough: dumping spin will help

Writing on a white wall

I’ve been thinking recently about a meeting I covered as a young reporter, which has stayed with me for years since.

It was an unremarkable event in Sheffield, in around 2004, ahead of that year’s European elections. The British National Party (remember them?) was pressing to win a seat in Yorkshire and city leaders were spooked by the threat that presented.

Civic and political leaders came together at Sheffield City Hall to show a united front against the BNP and give personal statements denouncing them.

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Gordon Brown highlights why authenticity matters

Listening to Gordon Brown speak in Bristol this week, it was easy to forget how heavily the burden of Prime Ministerial office appeared to weigh on him in 2010.

The former PM was here promoting his new book to a packed Wills Memorial Hall and spoke with conviction and humour about his life in politics.

He was also candid about the challenges faced by the global economy over the last decade, his role in addressing the crisis and the friction caused by the resulting fallout.

Here was a man at ease with himself, speaking about life with his kids, encounters with Nelson Mandela and even quoting Taylor Swift lyrics.

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No predictions, just 3 hopes for 2016

If you’ve read any posts, columns and opinions about 2015, it would be easy to think that last year was a bad one.

Columnisrs have negative tendencies, but it seems that there’s plenty to trouble us. Terrorism, austerity, economic under-performance, migration, Europe and runaway house prices all point to a bad year.

I’ve also had many conversations about ‘leadership failure’ over many of these issues. It seems that people have had enough of being soft-soaped. This was demonstrated in Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinary victory over the ‘Westminster elite’ in the Labour leadership campaign. It was also expressed in nastier ways through trolling and threats dealt out on social media.

Opinion formers have an appetite for predictions at this time of year. After so many people called the big events wrong in 2015, it’s daft to attempt it for the coming year.

I want to be optimistic and set out some hopes for 2016. Some relate to national issues, others are more local and there’s a personal one too. All are important to me and, if they happen, it should be a good year.

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Purdah poses challenges – but it shouldn’t shut us up

man in blue crew neck shirt

It seems like a few weeks since last year’s general election, which resulted in a period of political sensitivity (aka ‘purdah‘) lasting well into the summer while the new Government established itself.

Purdah is the term that covers guidance regulations restricting what public bodies can (and can’t) say and do before an election. 

The unusual events that followed last year’s poll stopped many forms of communication for weeks during the initial negotiations between the coalition partners.

I don’t expect the same will happen with the local elections this year. But I have been surprised at how early some councils have declared purdah underway in their areas.

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Election publicty rules raise their head in Oldham

The Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election (which concluded yesterday) threw up a familiar issue for those who work in or with the public sector, in an unusual way.

The Guardian and Labour Party blogs were yesterday reporting that Local Government Minister Andrew Stunell had apologised for a series of events which led to complaints that purdah regulations were breached.

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