Analysis: Political lipreading is just the tip of the iceberg
Even the prime minister and his deputy aren’t safe from lip-reading journalists. Do politicians need to raise their game?
It was a tantalising question. What were David Cameron and Nick Clegg talking about, as they sat and waited for Barack Obama in Westminster Hall last Wednesday? The camera repeatedly cut to the pair chit-chatting about this and that. It was thoroughly intriguing.
Now, thanks to the services of a lipreader enlisted by the Mail on Sunday newspaper, we have something of an idea. Rather than making small talk, they were actually discussing one of the biggest headaches facing the government: the NHS. “Most people want to change it,” Cameron pointed out. “Well what you mean is,” Clegg replied, “you want to change it!”
The transcript of their conversation is a little veiled, but it appears they hinted at the future of health secretary Andrew Lansley. For political hacks, this is fascinating stuff. It gives us another insight into the tensions at the heart of the coalition government. It also begs the question: are politicians letting down their guard?
There is nothing new, of course, in journalists doing everything they can to find out what politicians say in private. Even when they’re in public, but not talking to the press, their views can be revealing. During the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election campaign at the beginning of this year, during a visit by Clegg, I strained to hear the deputy prime minister’s doorstep conversation with a voter from the end of the garden path. His comments about immigration sounded indistinguishable from those of a Tory – an interesting insight.
So politicians’ unguarded comments are gold dust and, when they can be overheard, frequently lead to headlines. Clegg was himself the victim of bad luck when, a few years back, he was overheard criticising his colleagues on a commercial flight. How was he to know there was a journalist in the seat behind him?
Recent developments are, perhaps, hiking up the pressure on politicians still further. Some have suggested that lipreading can be used more and more now we have high-definition. Cabinet ministers need to be careful they don’t show prying cameras with zoom lenses the confidential papers they’re carrying into No 10 – several were embarrassed by this in the last years of the New Labour government. Complacency in the face of microphones holds many perils, too – as in the infamous “yo Blair!” remark by George Bush, picked up during an international summit. It seemed to sum up the unequal nature of their relationship.
Don’t confuse these unintentional slips with the majority of private ‘leaked’ conversations. Politicians are past masters at communicating their thoughts without going on the record, a key part of the job. Defence secretary Liam Fox may have called leaking documents “cowardly”, but don’t let that make you think it’s not something every minister will consider. The lobby system for parliamentary hacks is designed to aid transferring off-the-record thoughts into journalists’ copy.
These are interesting, of course – much more so than the boringly predictable soundbites on offer when politicians are actually interviewed. Take shadow health secretary John Healey, for example, whose interview this morning failed to generate any headlines at all. It’s not just MPs, either, but officials too who are always more interesting when the tapes aren’t rolling. Old journalists in Westminster complain that briefings by the prime minister’s spokesperson were so much better when they weren’t quotable, as they are now.
No, it’s the slip-ups which continue to fascinate us. They can have enormous power – as with another microphone calamity, when the ‘bigotgate’ scandal overwhelmed Gordon Brown at the height of the 2010 general election campaign. It was probably not decisive, but it certainly prevented Brown from beginning his fightback until it was far too late. And it was so good because the setting was so private: Brown thought that, safe in his prime ministerial car, he was safe to speak his mind. It was a terrible error.
Clegg and Cameron’s conversation in Westminster Hall, oddly, doesn’t seem that way. If anything, it helps underline the Liberal Democrats’ narrative that they are pressuring the Tories to make real policy changes.
“Best not talk about it now, eh?” an irritable Cameron was quoted as saying. Clegg pressed on, not at all bothered by the risk of his conversation being picked up on.
Politicians need to be on their guard – unless it suits them to be overheard, of course.
