General election 2010:
How the eyes of the world see a very British contestFive foreign
correspondents based in London reveal their view of the election
campaign, which stories matter most to their readers and why British
politics is still so perplexing to outsiders
Tim Adams, Carole Cadwalladr and Elizabeth Day
The Observer/UK
Sunday 2 May 2010
Eduardo Suárez, London correspondent for El Mundo. Photograph: Antonio Olmos
Spain Eduardo Suárez
The London correspondent of El Mundo. Suárez, 30, has been in the UK
since 2005 and before that worked as a leader writer for the paper in
Madrid.
The great sadness for Eduardo Suárez is that Tony Blair is not around
to fight another day. "We all miss him. All the foreign
correspondents." In what way? "Oh, in all ways. He’s such a greedy
guy! And a liar. You know he was just a real politician, an actor, a
multimillionaire. He was just such fun."
And of course, it helped that people in Spain actually knew who he
was. "Whereas Gordon Brown…" Suárez sighs. "Gordon Brown is dour and
boring, nobody cares about him. He is a very bad figure for foreign
correspondents. You can’t do anything with him. He gets on well with
the Spanish prime minister but this is because they are both in a
terrible position – politically, economically – they are like two
drunks who are holding on to each other in the street to stop
themselves falling over."
In fact, it looked like Suárez was going to have a very difficult,
very dull election, right up until the first television debate.
Overnight Spain was galvanised not by a sudden interest in the Liberal
Democrats’ domestic policy, nor the prospect of electoral reform, but
by the vision that is Miriam González Durántez, Nick Clegg’s Spanish
wife.
"Thank God!" he says. "Really. She has been like a gift from God for
me. There was no interest in the election before, none. But now Mr and
Mrs Clegg are on the front page, not every day, but a lot. People
fantasise that 500 years after the Armada we are finally going to put
a Spanish Catholic woman in No 10. It’s made it very easy for me to
sell stories to the paper – I’m doing two or three every day now."
He interviewed her last year for the paper’s weekend magazine, "and I
have to say, I liked her a lot, she is a nice person, really. Who
wears the trousers in the relationship? Well, of course, she does. I
mean, I would say that of any woman. But definitely of any Spanish
woman. And anyway, I just have this impression of her."
The fact that this is the first year that Britain has had a television
debate is, says Suárez, "a bit backward". Spain has had them since
1996. "It’s very funny, it’s like you’ve just discovered television!"
But then there’s a lot that he finds entertaining about our approach
to politics. The fact that "you are only interested in yourself. You
don’t care about anyone else, any other county, you just spend all
your time looking at yourself, this is very funny".
As was Labour’s decision last week to wheel out an Elvis impersonator:
"What were they thinking? It was incredible. The worst decision made
by any political campaign ever."
And then there’s our newspapers, which he finds absurd and
melodramatic. "But I love them. I mean it’s horrible for the
politicians. And the headlines are so over the top. But there’s much
more scrutiny – not just of their private lives, but also their
policies, and this is a good thing. And anyway, nobody is listening to
the papers, are they? People are not fools."
Amazingly, he thinks that in spite of everything our political system
is a lot "cleaner" than Spain’s, and MPs are much more in touch with
their constituents. In Spain, the only contact between MPs and the
people who elect them, he says, is at political rallies, "which are
like North Korean ones – people just go there to clap".
So, who are the stand-out stars? "Well Clegg, of course. But my
favourite is Mr Mandelson. He’s the most grotesque character. I
absolutely adore him. He’s so funny. And he’s such a drama queen. He
exaggerates everything. But he’s very intelligent – he’s the first one
to come up with a new catchphrase. And he’s always in tune with the
mood. He smells the mood around him. Yesterday he said: ‘Flirt with
Nick Clegg and you’ll end up married to Cameron.’ Which is brilliant,
isn’t it? He’s just so funny. Funnier even than Lembit Öpik."
And his verdict on the election so far? "I think it’s quite
revolutionary, I do. It’s almost certain that the electoral system is
going to change as a result of it. I was so angry with those
commentators who said this is a bubble, it’s a Diana moment, it will
burst. And it hasn’t. I think something revolutionary is happening and
this is big lesson for newspapers, commentators and political
parties."
France: Bénédicte Paviot
Bénédicte Paviot, UK correspondent for France 24. Photograph: Antonio
Olmos Benedicte Paviot is The UK correspondent for the TV news channel
France 24, broadcasting both in French and English. She was born in
Paris, schooled in London and went to university at the Sorbonne.
"The Conservatives have been giving the best press conference
breakfasts," Bénédicte Paviot says, "good croissants, excellent pains
au chocolat…" But Tory efforts at seducing the foreign media have not
extended much beyond pastries. "They don’t seem interested in talking
to us at all so far. We have had no end of Labour people – the prime
minister, Miliband on a few occasions – but no sign of David Cameron
or William Hague. I sat at the front for Cameron’s last press
conference, but he didn’t take any questions from the foreign media.
Nick Clegg talked to us and was happy answering questions in his many
languages."
Paviot has been in her current role for three years. "When I started,
the feeling was that once Tony Blair had gone, there wouldn’t be much
of a story here. But there has been one crisis after another, and now
this extraordinary election."
She believes the British system will change. "Britain is due to become
a presidential system, de facto," she says. The TV debates have played
their role, as have "the obsessions with the leader’s wives".
Moreover, "the concept of coalition, which is so usual in Europe,
seems suddenly attractive here." The hard thing to get across to her
audience is the way the British see that as a metamorphosis.
For Paviot, it trends she has seen in her years of trying to make
sense of British culture and politics, the end of deference in
particular. France is a more hierarchical society, and a more
respectful one. "In the same way that the relationship between a
teacher and a pupil has changed so radically in Britain, so the
British seem to want to seize as much power as they can from
politicians. The media has brought politicians into living rooms in a
very immediate way. People want access." Paviot is both amused and
full of admiration for the way the British media works: "The tabloid
culture – raking over every possible past indiscretion – is bizarre to
a French audience. There are strict privacy laws in France, and
chequebook journalism does not exist."
There has been a great demand for news of it all on her channel,
though the only thing it has lacked so far, she suggests, is a gaffe,
a désastre.
We were talking on Tuesday. By the following lunchtime, Paviot’s
prayers had been answered.
Russia: Zurab Nalbandian
Zurab Nalbandian, London bureau chief for Moskovsky Komsomolets.
Photograph: Antonio Olmos The London correspondent for two Moscow
daily newspapers – the mass market Moskovsky Komsomolets, and the
broadsheet Vremya Novestei. Nalbandian, 65, has been in London for 11
years.
Zurab Nalbandian has recently written, for a Russian audience, a book
about "the changing face of Britain". It takes in, he tells me, the
royal family (of course), our obsession with cookery programmes, Tesco
("where the British buy their stuff"), the expenses scandal ("Russians
were so happy"), and binge drinking – shocking even to an Armenian
newspaperman. "I remember going to Maidstone on a Friday night," he
says. "People drink in Russia, of course, but steadily, never like
that. The people who lived in this small town were just terrorised
every weekend…" The book has already been reprinted four times.
When it comes to British politics, however, he admits there is much
that his readers find hard to grasp. "Most Russians would not know
that there is a Labour party even, or at least any of its history. You
have to remember that for 70 years we were told nothing about how
democracy worked. I would say Russians just know Churchill, Margaret
Thatcher and Tony Blair. Stalin wrote to Churchill, Thatcher was
friendly with Gorbachev and Blair was friendly, to start with, with
Putin."
He has lately been introducing his readers to David Cameron – "very
English" – and Nick Clegg, who, with his mother’s Russian heritage, is
a somewhat easier sell. "We had the same thing with Boris Johnson and
his Russian ancestry," Nalbandian says. "It makes Clegg a slightly
more understandable figure to a Russian reader but, to be honest, they
will wait to see who wins before they get particularly interested."
The process itself, with its hung parliaments and vestigial royal
consent, is even more arcane. "I tried to at least explain the TV
debates. As a foreign correspondent, you are always trying to say how
things could be at home. What is hard to explain is how a couple of
phrases from Nick Clegg, about the two other ‘old parties’, seems to
have changed the mind of so many of the electorate. The Russians would
find it intriguing that the British public could be so persuadable."
Is his "how things could be" a mostly positive view of our democracy?
He smiles. "It is more: this is one of the ways that democracies
work."
When he was first posted to London, in 1999, after long stints in the
Middle East and South Africa, Nalbandian was somewhat daunted at the
prospect. "For me, London was the mother of all journalism, and for
Russians of my generation there is always something epic about this
city. I had all these romantic ideas."
And have those ideas matched up to reality? "I have not been
disappointed for a minute. I came here in an effort to understand, and
if you come with that approach then even when a yob confronts you in
the street, or whatever, and tells you exactly what is on his mind,
you find it curious. Like everything else, those things help you
understand this unusual country."
Germany: Susanne Gelhard
Susanne Gelhard of German TV station ZDF in the editing suite of
their London studios. Photograph: Antonio Olmos The London
correspondent and bureau chief for the German state broadcaster ZDF.
Gelhard has lived here for 18 months having previously been posted all
over Europe.
It’s Gelhard’s first British election – although she’s "very
experienced in elections, I’ve worked in Vienna and the Balkans and
Warsaw and Berlin". But still, the British way of doing things is
proving an eye-opening experience.
"My colleagues said to me: ‘Just wait, it’ll be completely crazy.
There are three weeks and there’s no other news.’ And I didn’t believe
them. I thought, how can there be no other news? But they were right!
I mean thank God for the ash cloud."
But then there’s a number of things that are slightly perplexing for
Gelhard. "Such as the fact that Nick Clegg has the same type of
background as Cameron and yet he manages to be the Robin Hood of the
poor. How did it he do that? I think he must have very good PR
management."
The "threat" of a hung parliament is another puzzle. "I think this
panic has been made up by the Conservative party. I don’t think the
financial markets are that afraid of it. We in Germany had a very big
coalition when we had the crisis and this was very useful for the
country because we had many tough decisions to make and the two big
parties came together. Why not have something like that in this
country?"
Then there’s our voting system, and the difficulty of trying to
explain to the viewers at home. "It’s very difficult because no one
can understand in Germany why Clegg’s party is gaining around 30% of
the polls but will only gain 15% of the seats in parliament. I have to
say that I think our system is more democratic. Which, considering it
was Britain that gave the system of democracy to the world, is quite
unbelievable."
Her team has just completed a 45-minute documentary about the
elections. "We called it Class War in the Kingdom because one of our
conclusions is that there is a new type of class war in this society,"
she said.
But what is perhaps the most noticeable thing of all is that the
interest ZDF shows in us, our country, our politicians and our
election is simply not reciprocated. "I have to sell my baby every day
– my baby is this country, the UK. I have to make it as interesting as
possible and sometimes this country makes it a really tough job
because you have this feeling that these people here don’t give a damn
about the rest of Europe.
"I think also that what the Conservatives are doing with European
politics is very upsetting. It’s a reason to be alarmed. Getting into
that coalition in the European parliament with the Kaczynskis is
really very shocking. I have been in Poland and I’ve seen them beating
up homosexuals, and the mayor of Warsaw forbidding homosexual
demonstrations. And this is the party that the Conservatives are
working with in the European parliament. We explain all this to our
viewers."
And Brown? What about Gordon Brown? "Oh, Brown… he’s just a very
tired-looking, worn-out old man, isn’t he?"
United States: Anthony Faiola
Anthony Faiola, London bureau chief of the Washington Post.
Photograph: Antonio Olmos The Washington Post’s London bureau chief
since last September, covering Britain and continental Europe. Faiola,
41, joined the Post in 1994, and has also served as bureau chief in
Tokyo, Buenos Aires and New York.
In the basement of the Financial Times building in central London,
there is a cramped, strip-lit room just opposite the downstairs
lavatories. This is the Washington Post’s London bureau, headed by
Anthony Faiola. It is not the most auspicious setting from which to
report on the British general election for the clued-up American
readership of the Post. Inside, the small room is dominated by two
desks which swallow up the floor space.
A window overlooks a tired patch of lawn, which seems fitting since
Faiola thinks this election is all about the grass roots. "In this
race, we’ve seen a lot of parallels to the last American election with
politicians engaging with the grass roots and internet campaigning,"
he says. "Both Cameron and Clegg have tried to embrace the message of
change, which is basically straight from Obama’s playbook."
Faiola believes there has been a spike of interest in America for the
2010 election, partly because the "political junkies" in Washington
are interested in seeing how the UK handles its deficit, but mostly
because of the emergence of Nick Clegg as a credible contender.
"People love an underdog story," he says.
But don’t Americans still think of the British as stiff upper-lipped
Merchant Ivory characters whose political processes are charmingly
quaint and mystifyingly complex? "Overall, yeah, there are some
Americans who maintain that view, just as a lot of Brits have an image
of Americans with pick-up trucks, shotguns and southern drawls," says
Faiola. "The idea of a hung parliament needs to be explained."
So far, the election run-up has been an exhausting round of press
conferences and campaign trails. Faiola has not been getting much
sleep. He survives on Diet Coke and fat-free Japanese rice crackers –
a legacy from a recent stint as bureau chief in Tokyo.
After several months in London, does he prefer Cadbury’s or Hershey’s
chocolate? "Cadbury’s," he replies, without missing a beat. "The dark
chocolate one." Starbucks or Earl Grey? "I’m afraid I’d still have to
choose a Starbucks."
As for the party leaders, David Cameron has proved to be the most
accessible – Faiola recently interviewed him on the Tory battlebus.
"As I was doing my interview with him, Gordon Brown flashed up on the
TV without a tie and David Cameron just sort of stopped dead for a
minute and said: ‘My God, that’s the first time I’ve seen Gordon Brown
without a tie. He’s copying me again.’"
Having observed all the parties, who would Faiola most like to see win
the election? "I wish I could tell you," he says, deadpan. "But then
I’d have to kill you."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
