Forum

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

some questions about the pending uk tory leadership race

which tory contender is the blankest canvass

on which tory candidate can the media build a cultural wave - and where may that lead

which one will be presented in the most image laden way

anybody knowhow the famous focus group on newsnight the other week worked

saw an article from a couple of years ago in a uk broadsheet, full page, framing two up and coming tories as the new bill and ben [tony and gordon], new generation. - cant find it can someone post

in relation to the following link [ brilliant article posted on the board/forum by a m/lenser previously]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/whitehall/story/0,9061,1505868,00.html

what are the business links of the 4 candidates

merkel etc... any international implications wrt political culture change

all the best , sir jay

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

this is the full article posted originally on the mlens board and quoted in the post above. am putting here in full incase it falls off the board, the link thus becoming redundant.

Brothers who sit at Blair's right hand

How McKinsey, the secretive global consultancy firm, is gaining influence at the heart of UK plc

Sandra Laville and Nils Pratley
Tuesday June 14, 2005
The Guardian

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday June 18 2005

We may have given the impression in the article below that Lord Birt was trained by McKinsey. He was not. He is a paid adviser to the company on global media and entertainment practices.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Variously described as the Brotherhood, the Firm, or the Jesuits of capitalism, the global consultancy firm McKinsey likes to maintain an aura of secrecy around its work. It never advertises for clients and through a close network of alumni across the international business world it has developed an elite and loyal following who endorse the need to keep the secrets of success within the extended family.

Article continues

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With McKinsey consultants right at the heart of government, however, questions about the company's philosophy, cost-effectiveness and level of influence on policy are increasingly being asked.
Yesterday the Guardian revealed that David Bennett, a former partner at McKinsey, who has been hired by Tony Blair to head Downing Street's policy unit, will have a key role in deciding the appointment of the new £220,000-a-year cabinet secretary. Mr Bennett is one of a number of McKinsey-trained people already advising the government: Lord Birt, Nick Lovegrove and Adair Turner, who now heads the commission into the future of pensions, to name a few. The firm has landed contracts worth tens of millions of pounds as Mr Blair increasingly turns to private-sector consultants to drive through change in Whitehall.

Lord Hanningfield, the Conservative peer, is still waiting for answers to questions he tabled a month ago about McKinsey's influence on the government. He asked how many civil servants from Downing Street are on secondment to McKinsey, and vice versa, as well as what government contracts the company holds and how much they are worth. The answers were expected a fortnight ago, but the Cabinet Office said yesterday that they had still not been completed. Asked when they were likely to be ready, a spokesman said: "I am sorry, I don't know."

What the answers will not address is the innate loyalty to the McKinsey brand held by all those who leave to work outside the plush offices in Jermyn Street, London, and venture into the upper echelons of Whitehall. All were brought up on the McKinsey philosophy: "Everything can be measured and what gets measured gets managed."

Within the firm hours are long, expectations high and failure not acceptable. "Nothing is ever done for the sake of enjoyment, there is a purpose to everything," said one former McKinseyite. "There is a policy of up or out. If you don't get promoted every year or two you are out. They just tell you you are not getting anywhere."

"Working at McKinsey is a combination of being cossetted and terribly stressed," said Eileen Shapiro, a former McKinsey consultant. "It is a very plush environment but it is also extremely stressful because it is very long hours and a very intense kind of environment."

Ms Shapiro, however, questions whether McKinseyites have the capability to carry through the kind of radical policy change that Tony Blair is calling for. "As consultants you are not accountable," she said. "You advise on the bets but you don't place the bets. Some consultants who shift out of consultancy into a position where they actually make the bets make that transition fabulously, others don't because they don't understand the difference between advising and acting."

McKinsey's blue-chip reputation was shaken in the 1990s when its involvement with Enron, the energy company that collapsed in scandal and accounting irregularities, was revealed in detail.

Enron was regarded as the house that McKinsey built. The consultants were being paid $10m a year for their advice; the company was run by Jeffrey Skilling, a former McKinsey partner; and the in-house journal the McKinsey Quarterly regularly lauded Enron as an exemplar of its philosophy of "creative destruction".

Though McKinsey survived Enron's collapse, it prompted a return to a more conservative style under Ian Davis, who became the first Briton to lead the firm in July 2003.

The new McKinseyites increasingly see sitting at the right hand of the prime minister as their rightful place.

Alumni speak the same tongue, one that is very different from Whitehall's. "Language gets mangled within McKinsey. They never speak about 'a project'; it's always 'a study'," the former employee said. "McKinsey itself is always 'the Firm' with a capital F and the job titles are really modelled on those of a legal partnership."

In the 90s McKinsey recruited the brightest graduates from Oxford University and Harvard Business School. But however clever you are, there is a more important condition of employment. "The question they always ask is 'do they fit?'," said the former employee. "It's not good enough just to be clever; you have to fit."

A brief history

· James 'Mac' McKinsey founded firm in 1926, quitting as professor of accounting at Chicago University

· McKinsey's boast was that its 'management engineers' could not only help ailing companies but show healthy ones how to grow

· As part of globalisation in the 1990s, McKinsey helped privatise services in former East Germany

· Today it employs more than 6,000 consultants in 80 locations around the world

Source: McKinsey & Co

all the best, sir jay

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

ok ok im learning about computer language. Embarassed

wrt second post[ i put the guardian link, which obviously wont fall off] Embarassed

with reference to the media representation of the leadership contest since the conference speeches up until today late 20/10/5 , the day the final two candidates were chosen. i have never in all my life seen such coverage, clearly promoting one outcome. it is my belief that this period of times coverage , certainly on uk terrestrial tv papers and radio, would present a future text book case for "set piece" media analysis for years to come as it , imho has used both classic and subtle nuanced techniques to present.

all the best,sir jay

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

incidently im looking for other signs wrt cultural wave

whether in subject of argument
whether in style/ emphasis of argument
whether in fashion
whether in music

cos it looks like the late 70s/early 80s and themes associated with them are being promoted/pushed

been happening for a couple of years as far as i can see

anything relevent please post

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1598988,00.html

Comment

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cameron is no moderate

He supports the Iraq war and tax cuts, opposes EU social policies and has neocon associations

Neil Clark
Monday October 24, 2005
The Guardian

What exactly is moderate about David Cameron? On taxation, the Tory leadership favourite has signalled his attraction to the flat-rate tax, a far-right wheeze that would leave, according to a Treasury report, up to 30 million Britons worse off and the super-rich even richer. Declaring his support for "flatter taxes", Cameron has enthusiastically backed the decision of his lieutenant, George Osborne, to set up a commission to investigate the idea and has signed up to a classic Thatcherite economic agenda of tax cuts and deregulation.

Article continues

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Europe, he wants the Conservatives to break their long-standing link with centre-right Christian Democrat parties in the European parliament and talks of "fighting to end the EU's damaging social role". And in foreign policy, he is an unreconstructed hawk, his campaign masterminded by the neoconservative trio of Tory MPs Osborne, Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey, all enthusiastic cheerleaders for Pax Americana. Osborne hailed the "excellent neoconservative case" for action against Iraq in 2003 and denies that the invasion has radicalised Muslim opinion.
Gove and Vaizey are signatories to the statement of principles of the Henry Jackson Society, which has its UK launch next month. The society - named after the US Democratic senator who opposed detente with the Soviet Union - campaigns for a "forward strategy" to spread "liberal democracy across the world" through "the full spectrum of 'carrot' capacities, be they diplomatic, economic, cultural or political, but also, when necessary, those 'sticks' of the military domain". Calling for the "maintenance of a strong military with a global expeditionary reach", the society bemoans the fact that "too few of our leaders in Britain and Europe are ready to play a role in the world that matches our strengths and responsibilities".

The list of Henry Jackson patrons reads like a Who's Who of US foreign-policy hawks: including the former CIA director James Wolsey, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defence Policy Board and the man many see as the architect of the Iraq war.

Cameron himself voted for the Iraq war, believing that to vote no "would have been to break the US-UK alliance which has been the cornerstone of our peace and security". Saddam, according to the new Tory saviour, posed a threat not just to the Middle East region, but "to the world", and like all good neocons Cameron blamed the conflict on the French and their promise to veto any second UN security council resolution.

Cameron's meteoric rise from leadership no-hoper to frontrunner has taken many by surprise. But what has happened is that British neoconservatives, faced with the nightmarish possibility that in a straight fight between David Davis and Kenneth Clarke the more charismatic and anti-war former chancellor would prevail, sought to undermine support for the latter by reinventing Cameron, the pro-war Thatcherite, as the voice of Tory "moderation".

The strategy has worked. "The central job of a new Tory leader is to put the Conservative argument in a different way ... to be the change, not just to talk about it. Putting policy meat on the bones just isn't the point" - these are the views of the Tories' modernising guru Daniel Finkelstein. For him, the fact that Cameron looks moderate is all that matters. But those not enamoured by the prospect of a regressive tax system, a revival of 1980s economics, a hostile attitude to Europe or British participation in military invasions of Iran, Syria or any other country the US decides to attack in five or six years' time are well advised to read the small print.

[email protected]

www.neilclark66.blogspot.com

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

re cultural wave world connections

from first post :

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

wrt "eighties remix" analogy and cultural change

note also polands new pm/pres
likely outcomes in france - post riot and later in the month strikes
bear in mind change in germany and previous rift in nato and nominally western powers pre irq latest war

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

some strategy?

watch for "emblematic replacement"

ie: what a vaguely pro labour non politico non alt media subscriber would identify as identifiers/emblematic of labour rhetoric, association, policy strength, potential real legacy, and future rose tinted remembranceand reputation.

off the top of my head: for example

--education education education,
--labour as custodian of national health service - health,
--"not a time for soundbites.....i feel the hand of history".
...... northern ireland peace process
--im not sure on the economy but the signal may have been the imf criticism in 2004?[trad hard tory territory]
--africa??? agenda
--

some of these are "labour strong" and thus will have a different approach in delinking/replacement than "labour soft" areas that are more associated with the blair premiership and take over of middle ground.

iraq is a tricky one, for the tories, and will no doubt require a proxy approach

note also media emotivations to characterise blair - recently ive heard "stalinist" from a consult-correspondent on the bbc to describe a speech of his. - linking into crit of regulations [ any surviving] in "reforms" esp in "hard labour" territory such as health again leading into a changed european approach a] red tape b].........which is less emphasised

then theres the individual libertarian theme intertwined with a more libertarian business approach - .... again less emphasised[ maybe because less real change]

?

some of this has international relevence wrt eg political conditions in europe etc and some linked less obviously

all the best,f

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

liberal leadership and the anti war movement

not exactly on the topic but

of the three remaining liberal leadership contenders:

do they have different views on the iraq war?

and what are the differences?

will it have any importance/relavence to the anti war movement?

will it have any importance/relavence to the broader political landscape in the uk

...
...
...
...

unrelatedly,

i reckon chris hune will get it.

all the best, sir jay

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

re the generational loopback/cohort management
[see previous intuitions in above thread]

im only quoting this bit of the article:

sir jay de mellow · Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 524

bit more on luntz cameron (coulson hunt...etc ) coalition news international uk elections