Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Openness and spin
There is something familiar about this story of the First Minister proclaiming openness, only for his government to be caught out almost immediately by the press. It is a cast iron rule of politics that as soon as you make a clear and unequivocal statement somebody will come along to debunk you.
Thus, although the Welsh Assembly Government may be the most open in the western World, it is still constrained in what it can and cannot reveal by law, protocols with other governments, common sense, commercial reality, policy development issues and sheer politics. It can never therefore be really open in the common understanding of the word.
If only there was somebody in there blogging away, telling the world how it was and offering tempting morsels to eager journalists. No doubt some of their colleagues would leap in to accuse them of being immature backstabbers, whilst others would praise them for opening up the process of politics and government.
Politics needs bloggers because it is healthy for issues to be aired openly and because sometimes even when it upsets your own side, there is a need to publicly discuss important matters and processes so as to draw lessons from them and to show that there is a debate going on. That is a mature approach to politics because it involves an active engagement with each other and with the public on both the process and the substance of government and opposition.
Thus, although the Welsh Assembly Government may be the most open in the western World, it is still constrained in what it can and cannot reveal by law, protocols with other governments, common sense, commercial reality, policy development issues and sheer politics. It can never therefore be really open in the common understanding of the word.
If only there was somebody in there blogging away, telling the world how it was and offering tempting morsels to eager journalists. No doubt some of their colleagues would leap in to accuse them of being immature backstabbers, whilst others would praise them for opening up the process of politics and government.
Politics needs bloggers because it is healthy for issues to be aired openly and because sometimes even when it upsets your own side, there is a need to publicly discuss important matters and processes so as to draw lessons from them and to show that there is a debate going on. That is a mature approach to politics because it involves an active engagement with each other and with the public on both the process and the substance of government and opposition.
