It’s not especially a secret that I’m a leftie.  I’ve not talked about it much here, but I suspect you could decode it from my posts, and especially via Twitter.  So it won’t come as much of a surprise that in the upcoming general election I’m backing Labour.

As the election looms it’s looking increasingly likely from the opinion polls that the UK will get a hung parliament on Thursday.  Accordingly the Queen would invite Gordon Brown, as the incumbent Prime Minister, to form the next government. It’s likely that Mr Brown would then approach the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in an attempt to form some kind of anti-Tory coalition government.  For a moment I’m going to assume this happens — that the Liberal Democrats would rather form a coalition with the Labour Party than the Conservative party.

It struck me the other day while listening to Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire talking about the Labour leadership on the radi0, that there’s still a way the Labour Party can come out of this election (for a definition of “this” see below) with a strong mandate to run the country for another 5 years.  Let me explain.

So Gordon Brown is the Prime Minster by virtue of a hung parliament, but he has no mandate for the long term.  He talks to the Lib Dems and agrees on a coalition where they get a number of cabinet members (arguably more than they ‘deserve’ given their size in Parliamentary terms), and an agreement that there will be electoral reform.  For the next 6 months the government gets to grips with reforming the electoral system, but not much else (it’ll be a pretty lame duck, with challenging policy hard to push through even the lower house).  They also keep the pressure on the Torys on the policy and fiscal front.  Towards the end of the 6 month period Gordon Brown announces he is to step down as leader of the Labour Party, and thus the Prime Minister, in November — he feels he’s made a big difference to the country and that the time has come for him to move on.

Labour elect a new, younger, more media friendly leader — a Milliband brother, perhaps.  And this is key.  The new leader announces an immediate general election.

New leaders always get a bump in the polls, and a lot of people will see anything as better than Gordon Brown.  While the other party leaders have been through the mill in this election (and I see no sign of any of them stepping down — David Cameron will have more seats than any other single party, and Nick Clegg will have lead the Lib Dems to the largest number of seats in the recent history of the party), the new Labour leader will be fresh, with new policies and new ideas.  A quick winter general election later and the country welcomes in another 5 years of Labour Government, with at least a small parliamentary majority.

There are, of course, flaws to this plan.  Obviously it could backfire if the new leader doesn’t get quite the bounce needed, or if something goes wrong in the first 6 months of the coelltion (an early VoNC by the Conservatives, supported by independents and rouge Labour MPs would cause problems, as would a fall out between the Labour leadership and the Liberal Democrats).  It could also backfire if the Conservatives simply won the November election, but at least the government would be able to reasonably gauge if this was likely before committing themselves to another election.  Finally there’s the cost involved — I’ve heard it said that the only people who could afford another election campaign would be the Conservatives, with assistance from their wealthy backers.

It may be a risky strategy, but from where I’m sitting, it’s about the best chance the Labour Party have of getting another fully effective 5 year term of office.

Then, this weekend, I spotted a copy of The Daily Telegraph on the train open on an article titled “The Mandy and Osborne Show had us in stitches”, so I had a look.  The article I had initially seen was, in fact, not very interesting at all (some comments by an actress about The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards), but the item above it was.  The section I was reading was the comment section, and the piece above related to the current economic climate.  The article is clearly comment – it’s not hard fact, it’s one writer’s opinion on the way Gordon Brown has handled the slow down in the economy.  As good comment should be it’s a very biased article.

The blog post and the article may not be related, but they started me thinking – do these issues of ethics and bias have any impact on the way I work as a photojournalist?

To deviate quickly. Charles Moore’s article begins:

“The credit crunch is not great pictorially. One can tolerate only so many photographs of screens turning red and young traders burying their lavatory-brush haircuts in their hands.”

To some extent I agree – the economy doesn’t lend itself to great photos – but there are some great shots out there which relate to this.  It makes the photographer look for new ways to go about shooting the news and brings up some very artistic work.  It also happens pretty slowly (in photography terms), so there’s plenty of time to set up and get the very best shot you can and you’re not just shooting in bulk in the hope that one image will be worth something.  Put it this way: it’s no riot.

I’m freelance and make my money (when shooting editorial work) by selling my pictures on the wires.  The more outlets that pick up an image the more money I get.  The more images I sell the more money I get.  When I’m in the field shooting a news story I don’t know how writers and editors are going to spin the story, indeed different outlets will spin it different ways.  Therefore it’s in my interest to shoot an as un-biased set as possible.  For example: if I shoot 12 pictures of Gordon Brown with a light above his head which makes it look like he has a halo.  I put them on the wires and one image gets picked up by one newspaper who want to illustrate their story about how Brown is the saviour of the economy.  However, if I shoot 6 pictures like this and another 6 where he’s waving a large knife around looking menacing (during a publicity at a butchers, say), I might well manage to sell two pictures – one halo to the previous paper, and one knife to a paper wanting to paint him as the butcher of the economy.  So now I’ve made twice as much money.  And if I shoot 12 different pictures of him doing a whole range of things I might well sell 12 images to 12 different outlets each with their own agenda.  And now I’ve made 12 times as much money and can take the rest of the week off.

You see, as a freelance, it’s in my interest to not let my own opinion cloud my artistic (and business) mind.  I guess this changes if you’re staff.  Thank god I’m not staff.

And so to Wimbles’ blog post.  He’s being taught the legal and moral boundaries journalists need to work within as part of his course (or, at least with the moral issues, he’s being made aware of the complexities he needs to take into account when choosing his own boundaries).  While I appreciate we work in different areas – he’s studying broadcast journalism while my work as a photographer is generally for print and new media – there are some similarities (the legal framework is the same, for example).  When it comes to moral boundaries I think it’s easier for me to qualify my choices.  If I take a picture of something then the thing I saw was visible to everyone.  I’m not an investigative journalist, I’m simply an observer.  If my camera can see it then anyone could have seen it and by publishing that picture I’m not revealing anything anyone’s tried very hard to keep secret.  There are gray areas – the paparazzi’s treatment of celebrities is an obvious example – but, for me at least, the boundaries are clear here too: as soon as someone courts a press photographer to further their career they have no room to complain if the photographer then uses them to do the same.

Finally I should say that, luckily for me, I’m very rarely in the situation where these issues come into play.  When I’m shooting editorially I’m at events – sporting fixtures, carnivals, concerts, etc. – and I don’t go about making a living from chasing cutting edge news.  It’s encouraging that courses like the one being taken by Wimbles teach the moral side of journalism as well as the legal side.  It’s very reassuring to know that it’s people like him, with apparently a very balanced view on these issues, who are the future of journalism in this country. But I do sometimes fear that, once out of the protected environment of the college situation, this solid grounding and common sense will come a little un-stuck when it meets with the real daily pressures of journalism and, ultimately, the need to make a living from the stories being written.