On the campaign trail #1

Campaigning starts early for the May local elections; the Tories and Labour are on local doorsteps every Sunday, and I’m supplementing the Labour cause by posting leaflets in local streets.

I first became aware of the Conservative effort at the beginning of January, when I received a ‘sorry to have missed you’ leaflet through the door. What fun I could have had if I’d been at home... I also ran into a local Conservative candidate on my way back from the train station, targeting London commuters no doubt. The absence of any Conservative leaflets could reflect the fact that they’d prefer to actually speak to people to try and frame their policies as benefitting the poor and poor areas. What would the Conservative leaflet contain? News on NHS reform, savage cuts on jobs and local budgets, affecting everything from housing to schools to libraries? When I receive something from them, I’ll let you know.

My local Labour party are also using traditional means of getting the word out about Conservative plans to cut budgets and increase housing rents. I live in an area that is traditionally Labour, but somehow we’ve ended up with a Tory MP. So the leaflets are being distributed as often and as widely as possible. In local campaigning, there are four basic ways to help:

1) Stuff envelopes with locally produced letters
2) Deliver the envelopes, or deliver leaflets
3) Telephone members and non-members for support
4) Go door-knocking with local councillors

As an active member, I’m ripe for telephoning members and delivering envelopes. I’ve previously blogged about my good experience telephoning members, and I thought delivering envelopes would be easy too so signed up to do some deliveries last week.

It turned out a lonely task, and my first attempt to deliver failed. I walked out with my Tesco bag of leaflets, and returned with then 20 minutes later. It is daunting if you haven’t done it before, especially if you’re on your own. My main concerns were getting flak from the houses I was posting to, and silly as it sounds, getting chased or bitten by dogs. After the first failed attempt during the day, I thought it would be better to deliver under the cover of darkness. A few hours later, I set out again with my plastic bag, and soon got into my stride. In fact, I was secretly hoping to get asked about the leaflets! It wasn’t a particularly fulfilling experience, more relief when I’d finished. In all honesty, I feel I may be ready for the more social and effective option of campaigning: door-knocking.

Have you been campaigning for a political party? Are you actively campaigning for the May elections too? What is your experience door-knocking? I’d be interested to know your thoughts to see if it’s right for me.

A history of the PR age

The importance of press relations in politics is about as original as the ‘new, progressive’ politics of the coalition Government i.e. not very. The rise of PR coincided with the rise of New Labour, and began during the era of Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell.*

Remember cool Britannia? After the dull grey years of John Major, people cottoned on to Tony Blair as a man of the people. Not only did he talk politics, but he looked and did normal stuff like strum an electric guitar (all be it in a suit) and kick a football around. To Alistair Campbell, this was all brilliant, and culminated in Noel Gallagher knocking on No.10 and sipping champagne (“someone get the camera out!”).

The Tories were a little slow to catch on to the idea that they needed a leader who could get down with the ordinary folks. After all, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So it was the turn of William Hague to strut his ‘normal’ stuff. Now Alistair Campbell gets a lot of slack, but at least he could do PR properly. I’m not sure what Hague’s advisers were thinking when they told him it would be a good idea to sit in a log flume in a cap, and to say he drank 14 pints of beer a day. Utter nonsense and the Tories were punished for it (and their ridiculous ‘last chance to save the pound’ campaign) in the 2001 general election.

Everything was hunky-dory for Labour until the Iraq war in 2003. Cool Britannia was denounced and the knives were out for Tony Blair. Alistair Campbell had more important things to do like save Blair’s skin. These were serious times.

When David Cameron was elected as the leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, there was a resurgence in the use of PR in politics. The Tories changed their logo from a blue torch to a tree, Cameron got out his push bike and the message was ‘look at us, we’ve changed, we’re now environmentally friendly’. And PR wasn’t only about promoting one’s self. It became a weapon that the Tories used aggressively against Gordon Brown.

In the run up to the 2010 general election people started analysing whether Gordon Brown was comfortable in front of the camera, and if not, then perhaps we should question his ability to ‘connect’ with the public, and even his ability to lead the country. Unfortunately, this attack was taken seriously enough by Labour to start a backlash. Cameron was often portrayed as a shallow salesman, something Jon Cruddas thought was a mistake. However these slanging matches were a main stay of the 2010 election. Trading personal insults on the ability of a politician to be able to come across ‘well’ in the media, and especially on TV, signalled a new, unpleasant dimension of electioneering. One which is also Blair’s legacy.

*Actually, I lie. It originally started in the US with John F. Kennedy and continued with Ronald Reagan, but that’s a whole new blog we’ll perhaps save for another day.

Living in the age of PR

Are we living in the information age? The age of austerity? The age of endarkment? A moral stone age? Definitely no to this last one. I propose that we’re actually living in the age of press relations, where as long as what you’re saying sounds good, policy and substance won’t be scrutinised by the electorate.

It’s happened before when Cameron said pre-May 5 that the Tories were the party of the ‘great ignored’ (That sounds great, David, but what does it actually mean?) And it happened again today, when the Chancellor George Osborne talked about creating a ‘fairer society’ whilst making public sector cuts.

I believe the primary purpose for Osborne using ‘fairer society’ was to make people think his proposals are a means to create something good. Although there is no unbiased definition of what a ‘fairer society’ is, its weakness is that it’s generally agreed to be a good thing. So by equating cuts with ‘fairer society’, if you’re not sure whether the cuts are a bad thing, it will create ‘a fairer society’, a good thing, so they can’t be all that bad can they?

Well, it depends what you mean by ‘fairer society’ and how you get there. What Osborne meant by a ‘fairer society’ today was that which has its finances in order and does not force the next generation to pay the debts of this generation. Well again, that sounds great George, but how are you going to do that? Answer: by cutting public sector spending on policies that will hit the poorest and disadvantaged in society the hardest (reported on this blog ). We already talk about the ‘lost generation’, so I’d rather we concentrate on making sure the current generation has employment opportunities and can afford an education.

For me, the Tories’ cuts will create the antithesis of what I consider a ‘fairer society’, so it’s only when you look at the policy do you realise you’re not talking about the same good idea of a ‘fairer society’. A warning that this phrase and similar 'buzz concepts' such as 'progressive' and 'social justice' should not be taken at face value.

If I ever hear someone on a vox pop saying “yeah, I think it's a good idea because it’ll create a fairer society’. the Conservatives' job will be done, and I'll be moving to Antarctica to live amongst the Emperor penguins.

New is the New New

We were trying to write a short paragraph to sum up this blog and came across a problem. As we were attempting to pick appropriate adjectives we suddenly became aware that we sounded eerily like the Conservative manifesto. For a leftist blog this was a slight concern. Were we Tories all along? Luckily I have a politics degree so went through my extensive notes and happened across the answer below:

Great, that proves it then. Definitely not Tories. So why does every attempt to describe what we believe in sound like the result of some sort of overpaid PR yuppie? The answer unfortunately is that modern political debate has descended into lowest common denominator newspeak that is so simple it means everything and therefore nothing. The simplest message not only can be understood by the most people, it is also harder to challenge. A great example of this is “change”.

Change is generally used to combat incumbent administrations and was used effectively both by Obama and David Cameron. You can’t argue against change. Everyone wants it. If I lived under a government that gave me alone one million pounds a day I would still want change. I would want a million and one pounds a day.

“Progressive” is the newest gem. In the 90s Clinton’s New Democrats found that if you are “new” you are again beyond criticism. New has no precedent that can be held down and scrutinised. This was then copied by New Labour and then again by David Cameron. However, Labour’s new third way was very different to the modern Conservative approach. Whilst they genuinely tried to reposition themselves to straddle the centre ground (leaving them with an ideological deficit), the Tories have instead adopted the language of progressive politics without changing at all. This does mean though that occasionally they tie themselves in knots though. They are carrying out age old Tory policy under banners of “choice”, “responsibility” and “progressive politics”. The ConDem coalition helps them immensely in this regard as it can be sold as a new progressive system of government.

So where does that leave the young writers of a blog who find party politics unrepresentative of their knowledge and beliefs, who are trying to engage in a genuine debate to find left of centre answers? Well just as that sentence demonstrates, by using words like “engage” and “genuine debate” it leaves them looking like a bunch of Tories.