Three Hundred Cups of Tea

There is a wonderful portrait of Edmund Burke staring disapprovingly down at the receptions held in the Member’s Dining Room. Yesterday afternoon I met MP there for a lobbying reception for guide dogs. In addition to the usual speeches and backslapping, the organization showed a video about attacks on guide dogs by other dogs that made tears drip into my teacup. 

Organizations here, quite cleverly, draft press releases ahead of time and then provide a photo opportunity and a cameraman for the members. MPs queued up to kneel down with Norman the guide dog and some bigwig at a kennel association for a picture to go with the press release. Another reception I went to had a nationally famous TV doctor and a banner about whichever disease was being touted for awareness to pose with.

I went to an interesting meeting this week on the American Presidential election, which featured two prominent pollsters from either side of the aisle. They both emphasized that the election will largely come down to a highly coveted and hard to pin down demographic: white, married women who often make voting decisions based on what they hear from their friends and family rather than taking their cues from the media. Of course their friends and family are likely taking their cues from the media, so it’s really a matter of filtering; what breaks through is important. I love this kind of analysis and it was fun to have Americans sharing with a British audience and being probably a bit more candid than they would be normally in the States. I also really appreciated the looks of intense concentration and confusion on the Americans’ faces as they tried to understand the variety of accents in the audience questions.

At the inevitable reception that followed (this one had tiger prawns, yum!), I chatted with the Republican pollster, a game show host type guy with a blindingly white smile and a pocket-handkerchief. We had a cordial discussion about whether the right-wing buzzword of elitism only reflected academics (his view) or if the term included and was perhaps even dominated by the very rich (my view). I googled him after the event and was delighted to see that he had been an advisor on the Michelle Bachmann campaign last year.

The halls of Westminster were quiet after Labour’s attempt yesterday to oust the Culture, Media and Sport Minister for his shady connections with News International and the grounds that he lied to the Parliament about a disappearing memo.  The Liberal Dems abstained from the vote for the most part, injuring their already fragile coalition with the Conservatives, but the vote still failed.