Historical Maritime combat

Consider first the astonishing role reversal of the two major parties

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Consider first the astonishing role reversal of the two major parties. Here are some questions that will be neither asked nor answered unless the media raises them: should the proportion of national wealth devoted to defence continue to run well ahead of what, say, Germany or Japan spends? What should be done about increasing poverty, the plight of the young homeless and unemployment rates of more than 20 per cent in black communities? Should the UK go forward into a currency union with the rest of Europe? The party managers want to close down debate; the media must force it open.. For a party quietly confident it will retain the White House, and which is starting to nurture secret ambitions of recapturing at least one of the two chambers of Congress this November, the Democrats are in quite awful shape. That is the strange paradox of American politics as the party of Franklin Roosevelt,

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John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson gathers for its convention in Chicago today. TV news programmes are unlikely to be captured by the political parties.Of course the media do routinely try to interrupt the message.

For example, at midnight last Tuesday on radio news the BBC led its story on Maurice Saatchi's elevation to the House of Lords with Labour's protests. We were thus informed of the reaction before we were given the news even though the item was absolutely fresh; midnight was the time fixed for the announcement. A similar technique is to suggest a "split" or "damaging gap" whenever a politician departs from a word-for-word rendering of party policy.Both these familiar approaches, often distortions of balanced reporting, are ways of challenging political marketing campaigns. Frankly neither achieves very much.But there is a movement of great promise under way. This is the detachment of traditional Tory newspapers - the Daily Telegraph, the Times, Mail, Express, Sun and their Sunday counterparts - from the Government, which they have periodically attacked since the last election. This change gives hope that for the first time this century these newspapers may decline to become propaganda sheets for the Conservatives during the next election campaign. Whether any one of them will actually recommend readers to vote Labour or Liberal Democrat is impossible to guess.

But it would be a tremendous gain if they at last gave up the role of Tory megaphone.It is also important that newspapers and broadcasting companies try to widen the debate well beyond the narrow bounds set by the political parties. The list of subjects not debated during a general election campaign is extraordinary. The party conferences in their present form cannot be boiled down into an hour's infomercial each day. When we get to the General Election itself, public meetings will be all-ticket affairs for obedient supporters. The party managers' single- minded objective is to prevent the media from interrupting the message.However, the United Kingdom is not the United States.

Limits on election spending keep advertising expenditure well below American levels. Labour already suppresses debate and dissent and the Conservatives will surely attempt to do so Both will tightly control their annual conferences. Mr Dole's ratings jumped 10 points.Could Tory or Labour party managers pull off a similar marketing triumph here? They have the desire and understand the techniques They likewise start with market research and polls They similarly simplify the proposition being put to voters. The far-right champion, Pat Buchanan, who obtained 3 million votes in the primaries, was silenced. Protest groups were confined to an obscure parking lot and each given precisely 55 minutes to make their presentation, at which point the microphones were switched off.The networks, eyes open, knowing they had been had, ran this contrived event exactly as it was presented The Fourth Estate was nullified.