Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Shadow Cabinet Media Tarts List for April

Each month I track the number of media mentions for each member of the Shadow Cabinet through Lexis Nexis with the help of Julian Nicholson. Obviously you cannot judge the performance of someone purely on the number of press mentions they get, but it is an increasingly big part of any politician's job. I'll leave you to interpret the results!

1 (-) David Cameron 1932
2 (-) David Davis 334
3 (+1) William Hague 305
4 (-1) George Osborne 227
5 (-) Liam Fox 224
6 (+1) Andrew Lansley 138
7 (-1) Chris Grayling 77
8 (+4) Philip Hammond 66
9 (+8) Francis Maude 51
10 (-) Peter Ainsworth 41
11 (-) David Willetts 38
12 (-4) Hugo Swire 37
13 (-4) Caroline Spelman 37
14 (+2) Alan Duncan 28
15 (-1) Theresa May 24
16 (-1) David Mundell 23
17 (+2) Oliver Letwin 17
18 (+5) Theresa Villiers 15
19 (-1) Oliver Heald 14
20 (+1) Andrew Mitchell 12
21 (-7) Cheryl Gillan 9
22 (-2) Lord Strathclyde 3
23 (-1) David Lidington 1

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not counting Boris Johnson articles as Boris Johnson media mentions? Why not, aren't most of them under his real name?

Anonymous said...

"I'll leave you to interpret the results!"

Oh go on - tell us what you think they mean...

Iain Dale said...

Raincoaster, Boris is not in the shadow cabinet so is not included in the list.

Laurence Boyce said...

Obviously you cannot judge the performance of someone purely on the number of press mentions they get . . .

Indeed so. This reminds me a bit of when David Blunkett was in trouble (the first time). Responding to the claim that his mind might not be fully on the job, his people replied that since the storm had broken, Blunkett had clearly been an effective performer. The evidence? The number of media interviews he had given . . .

Anonymous said...

Well, now I know who Philip Hammond is.

Anonymous said...

Dominic Grieve is apparently also not in the shadow cabinet.

How strange.

Iain Dale said...

No, but he ought to be.

Anonymous said...

How on earth can Andrew Lansley be lower than Liam 'Dr' Fox, when he has the open goal of Patricia Hewitt on the other side ?

That's it, I forgot - he relies on the superior media skills of David Davis to do all the hard work for him.

Anonymous said...

Hmm.. I'm looking forward to your equally scientific 'shaggability' index for the local elections..

Anonymous said...

This doesn't add up one little bit. Your data appears to suggest David Lidington is the least high-profile at a time of massive changes in Northern Ireland politics - hardly likely. In fact, it has seemed at times as if he IS the Northern Ireland secretary so ubiquitous has he been on our screens recently and certainly speaking more sense on the subject than Hain and Blair put together.

Time to re-check, I think!

Anonymous said...

Why didn't you post my comment from this morning saying this post was boring. It is and I was right. You've only got 10 comments (12 including the 2 from me telling you its boring). You should put up the constructive criticism not censor it.

Your post on Lord Browne, on the other hand is fantastic.

Iain Dale said...

Anonymous, because an anonymous post which just says "boring post" is of no use to anyone. I always reserve the right, as I have stated before, to delete anonymous posts for whatever reason. Couldn;t quite see the point of leaving that comment. But maybe I just got out of bed the wrong side!

Anonymous said...

Well Davis certainly spends most of his waking hours trying to work out how to get more press coverage, so maybe he'll eventually get to the top of the table. In his own mind at least.

Personally, I don't think it's particularly in the interests of the party for any of those people, with the exception of Cameron to be in the media. But good for their vanity, I'm sure

Anonymous said...

Liam Fox's job should be to be mentioned as little as possible. For the Conservatives' sake.