Neil Stockley

justmigrate: Hi, I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:10:41 +0000

Hi,

I just moved my posts from Posterous! Do go though my blog for all the new posts.

Its easy to migrate try JustMigrate

3Crumbs app - Are you the local thrifter we all have been looking for?

newmanology: Happy Birthday Richard Nixon! January 9 is the...

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 21:21:13 +0000

newmanology:

Happy Birthday Richard Nixon! January 9 is the 100th birthday of Tricky Dick.

Warning: Labour's new policy czar gets it

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:14:00 +0100

The appointment of the Dagenham and Rainham MP, Jon Cruddas, to head up Labour’s policy review has caused some excitement across the commentariat. [click here, and here.]

Mr Cruddas used to be pigeon-holed, inaccurately, as a tribune of Labour’s “old left”. More recently, he’s attracted interest as an architect of “Blue Labour” and a champion of the white working class, too long forgotten, the story goes, by the north London elites. Otherwise, Cruddas is best known for his tough local battles with the BNP.

What I find really interesting about Jon Cruddas is that he may get what political narratives – the basis of successful political communications- are all about.

Just before taking up his new role, Cruddas spoke at the UEA on “The Good Society”. Here’s one of the more acute observations about his own approach to politics:

What interests me is not policy as such; rather the search for political sentiment, voice and language; of general definition within a national story. Less The Spirit Level, more What is England.

The point was taken up last week by Nicholas Watt in The Guardian:

Shadow ministers will soon learn by heart a key Cruddas mantra: that policy is not about lists. “Policy is about illustrations of a deeper story, the establishment of a deeper sentiment which Labour had and it lost,” is how one figure describes the Cruddas approach …

… Neal Lawson, who has worked closely with Cruddas in the left-of-centre Compass group, says: “Jon has a grasp of an emotive, some would say romantic, human sense of politics – not a dry, arid, mechanical approach. His speeches are poetic and beautifully constructed with stories.

“So why give him a dry policy thing? Because he will make it come alive. He will give some kind of narrative and framework on which we can eventually hang dusty policy. It will be within the context of a sweeping history. He will take us from Aristotle through to Ruskin, William Morris up to early Blair, and tell us a story about all of that in a way very few politicians can.”

On Tuesday, the Daily Telegraph’s Mary Riddell was even more effusive:

… Mr Cruddas is one of the few politicians who can read the country’s mood. Voters hold self-serving politicians in contempt, and so does he. As he said recently: “Politics is more about emotion than programme.” . . .

… Mr Cruddas’s purview goes beyond specific policies. A conservative who despises neo-liberalism, he has challenged the idea that this is a Tory nation presided over by a Tory government and a Tory God. Labour, in his view, is the rightful curator of Britain’s countryside, its heritage, its institutions and its hopes …

Dan Hodges, the self-described “Blairite cuckoo in the Miliband nest” has warned that all this may be a little premature: Cruddas is no policy geek and has an instinctive political caution, he says.

Fair enough, and, it must be said, party policy reviews can go awry They can get bogged down in details, unjoined-up enthusiasms and missed deadlines. They can trigger internal rows and bust-ups. They can be meat and drink for your opponents. One or two shonky brushstrokes can spoil the whole picture. It’s all very well to offer a big picture, but it may be the wrong big picture.

And yet, policy reviews can also deliver, once all the shouting, posturing and finger painting for adults are over. The overhaul of Labour policy that Tony Blair initiated in the mid 1990s, part of a much larger “modernisation” of the party’s messaging and narrative, is a good example.

With that in mind, we should look past the policies to the narrative, and how Cruddas might construct it.

Fewer lists … fewer programmes … more romance … more emotion … engaging with the nation’s history, heritage and symbols … and above all, telling stories that create a sense of country and the vision of a new nation for the future.

No other politician, no other party is doing much of that.

What, their opponents should be asking themselves, if this intriguing mix works out for Labour and provides the party with a compelling narrative? What if enough of Cruddas’s political poetry finally seeps into the public’s consciousness, and helps make Labour more popular?

Jon Cruddas is another political storyteller to watch.

London's mayoral election: Bugs Bunny vs. Daffy Duck

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:28:00 +0100

Today, ComRes has published a new poll showing Conservative Boris Johnson 8 points ahead of Labour’s Ken Livingstone in the race to be London’s Mayor. After YouGov showed them running neck and neck at the start of the week, UK Polling Report suggests that the overall picture is a small lead for Johnson.

The result seems extraordinary, given Labour’s strong polling in the capital and the pile-up of political problems now engulfing the Conservative-led government.

If Johnson makes it over the line, he’ll prove that one theory of American presidential elections has crossed the Atlantic: Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck. The journalist and commentator Jeff Greenfield has explained it like this:

Bugs and Daffy represent polar opposites in how to deal with the world. Bugs is at ease, laid back, secure, confident. His lidded eyes and sly smile suggest a sense that he knows the way things work. He’s onto the cons of his adversaries. Sometimes he is glimpsed with his elbow on the fireplace mantel of his remarkably well-appointed lair, clad in a smoking jacket. (Jones once said Cary Grant was his inspiration for Bugs. Today it would be George Clooney.) Bugs never raises his voice, never flails at his opponents or at the world. He is rarely an aggressor. When he is pushed too far and must respond, he borrows a quip from Groucho Marx: “Of course, you realize this means war.” And then, whether his foe is hapless hunter Elmer Fudd, varmint-shooting Yosemite Sam, or a raging bull, Bugs always prevails.

Daffy Duck, by contrast, is ever at war with a hostile world. He fumes, he clenches his fists, his eyes bulge, and his entire body tenses with fury. His response to bad news is a sibilant sneer (“Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin!”). Daffy is constantly frustrated, sometimes by outside forces, sometimes by his own overwrought response to them.

And:

In every modern presidential election in which the candidates have personified a clear choice between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Bugs has prevailed.

I never had much time for Bugs or Daffy, but Greenfield has a point. He cites Kennedy vs. Nixon in 1960, Reagan vs. Carter in 1980, even George W. Bush vs. Al Gore in 2000 (though, as I always feel obliged to remind people, Gore got more votes). Then there’s Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, followed by Obama vs. McCain in the general election.

The infamous tiff in the lift aside, Boris is playing Bugs in this cartoon-like campaign, with Ken as his Daffy. (Click here, and here) London voters seem prepared to put aside party labels, and downplay some key personal attributes to vote for the candidate they like most. For instance, according to YouGov this week, Ken had a 22-point lead over Boris for being “in touch with the needs of ordinary people”. But when it came to who was the most charismatic candidate, Boris was 35 points ahead.

The migration to the UK of Greenfield’s theory should not come as too much of a surprise. After all, it’s a well-worn cliché that elections for London mayor are personalised, celebrity contests, more like American presidential races than a noble contest of ideas between parties of the left and right.

But British general elections are getting more “presidential”. And Bugs keeps beating Daffy: Tony Blair defeated Michael Howard in 2005 and, even if he did not win the 2010 general election, David Cameron prevailed over Gordon Brown.

Footnote: It should be obvious from my profile whom I will be voting for, as first preference. Ken was my second preference vote in 2000, 2004 and 2008. I haven’t yet decided who will be this time.

What voters think of the Liberal Democrats, post-Budget

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:48:00 +0100

Let’s forget Bradford West, just for a moment, and assume that it’s an out-of-the ordinary and unique constituency, a one-off result for a one off politician, as the BBC’s Nick Robinson says.

Shouldn’t the Liberal Democrats be enjoying a new wave of popularity?

After all, our ministers didn’t look silly this week over Cornish pasties or the fuel tanker dispute.

More seriously, lifting the personal allowance and the higher level of stamp duty for people buying properties over £2m were significant Budget victories for the party.

In the first line of the 2010 manifesto the party pledged to raise the personal allowance to £10,000 to remove low-income workers from paying tax. This is now on course to be delivered a year before the next general election in 2015.

The move vindicated Nick Clegg’s decision to set out his big negotiating demand for the Budget in public.

Now for the bad news. The public still do not see the increased personal allowance as a Lib Dem policy. The Populus post-Budget survey, published this week, found that only 23% of voters thought that the Lib Dems deserved most credit for the change. 19% gave the Coalition most credit and 16% said the Conservatives deserved most credit. 22% said “none of them”. Voters have still not heard Nick’s political story behind the Budget, proving how the Lib Dems made a difference.

Moreover, Populus found a net plus-10% of respondents agreeing that “increasing the tax-free allowance before people start paying income tax will make little or no difference to me”. Voters have not heard a story of the policy, which would show how real peoples’ lives will be better as a result of the increased personal allowance.

Meanwhile, the story of the party – the Lib Dems’ brand narrative, the sum total of all the stories – remains negative. According to Populus, the Lib Dems now have the least positive scores for competence, having the best leaders, having clear ideas and being united and the second lowest scores for being honest and “sharing my values”. The figures have changed little since last autumn, when the Populus eve of conference survey showed the brand image continuing to bottom out.

It looks like the higher tax threshold was drowned out by the abolition of the 50p tax rate, the “granny tax” and the prevailing narrative that the Budget did not go do down well with the public, who saw it as mostly unfair. More worrying, these findings show just how hard it is for the Lib Dems to campaign for party policies from within the Coalition.

Yet the party can’t afford and shouldn’t give up on trying to build its own brand. The question is what kind of brand, and how to do it. Nick Clegg wants the Lib Dems to be seen as more competent economic managers than Labour and fairer and more compassionate than the Tories. It’s clear from other Populus figures published this week which of these themes works best for the party.

On party attributes, the Lib Dems’ best score was on “being for ordinary people”, with net agreement of minus 2%, way ahead of the Conservatives (minus 35%) but well behind Labour (+18%). This used to be the party’s strongest suit, and voters may be prepared to give us the benefit of the doubt.

Otherwise, the Lib Dems fared lead least poorly as the party voters trust to “cut the deficit without hurting the most vulnerable” (just 2% behind the Tories) and to “look after the NHS” (just 2% behind the Tories). (Note, however, that Labour had a decisive lead in both these areas.)

The Lib Dems’ worst ratings were as the party trusted to “help business to recover and grow”, “steer the economy through difficult times” and “get a grip on crime and disorder”.

Crucially, the job of reviving the Lib Dem brand won’t be achieved in a few weeks. This is going to be at least a three year campaign, which won’t succeed unless the entire party is involved. But listing policies (like this) and providing vignettes (like this) simply aren’t working. We have to start telling stories to voters about the positive difference Lib Dems in government are making - assuming, of course, that the public wants to listen at all.

Budget 2012: Three stories the Liberal Democrats must tell

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:13:00 +0000

Budget Day. This morning’s Guardian reports:

Wealthy individuals are to face a rise in stamp duty on properties worth more than £2m, as George Osborne helps fund a demand from Nick Clegg to remove taxation altogether from 2 million of Britain’s lowest paid workers over the course of this parliament.

In a victory for the Liberal Democrats, who have reluctantly accepted abolition of the 50p top rate of tax, the chancellor will announce in the budget that stamp duty is to be raised from 5% to 7% on properties worth more than £2m.

The rise will help the chancellor raise an extra £2.2bn to meet the Lib Dem target of raising the personal income tax allowance to £10,000 from 2014, a year earlier than planned.

Clegg, who persuaded Osborne last year to meet this target by 2015, irritated some Tories in February by calling on the chancellor to go “further and faster”.

It’s now widely agreed that if the Liberal Democrats are to have any chance of avoiding a total debacle at the next general election, we need to do a better job of differentiating ourselves from the Tories, come out from under the coalition brand and show how Lib Dems in government make a difference. In opposition, the party built, partly lost and then rebuilt a brand: the decent party, who stood up for “ordinary people not the best off”. But this narrative has steadily faded since the coalition government was formed. Nick Clegg and colleagues need to revive it.

Both the rise in stamp duty and the rise in personal income tax allowance are hard won, key totems for the Liberal Democrats. But their well “trailed” mentions in today’s Guardian and FT don’t mean the party’s political problems are over, far from it.

As the veteran US Democratic political consultants James Carville and Paul Begala once said:

“Facts tell, but stories sell … If you’re not communicating in stories, you’re not communicating.”

Nick Clegg and his colleagues will need to quickly get across three connected types of story.

The story of the process. Okay, that’s a bit dry, maybe it’s the story of the politics. At its most simple, this story tells how Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander (the heroes) set upon George Osborne (the villain) and persuaded / forced him to bring forward Budget measures to “help the millions and not the millions”, as he had planned. The Lib Dems have to brand “our” policies in the Budget. The Guardian story quoted above is a very good start, but stories over recent weeks about Lib Dem splits over the “tycoon tax” and disappointment over the 50p tax rate being scrapped may have muddied the message. And watch for counter stories in the media about “the policies that George Osborne planned to do anyway”. This morning, the Spectator Coffee House blog foreshadows “a Budget by and for the Coalition”.

The story of the policy, which shows how real peoples’ lives will be better off as a result of the Liberal Democrats’ Budget victories. Just mentioning the policy is never enough. Moreover, yesterday’s ICM poll suggested that the public are quite indifferent to lifting the personal allowance and Labour and others will charge that it’s not really a policy for the poorest. This video from the White House, with President Obama asking people“what does $40 mean to you?” contains the kind of story that’s needed. (Maybe Tim Farron and Jo Swinson e-mailed me to ask what I’d do with an extra £60 a month because they were planning a Lib Dem version?) Most importantly, we don’t need more lists of policies or more vignettes.

The story of the party, the “big story”,explaining who the Liberal Democrats are, what the party is about and what the public “gets” by letting them have a chance in government. This one takes longer to tell, and it’s really the sum total of the other stories. In his spring conference speech, Nick Clegg set out the story he would like the public to hear:

The Liberal Democrats are once again a truly national party of government. The only party of the centre ground, not of the left or right, of north or south, rich or poor but doing the right thing for the whole nation …

… A one nation party of the radical centre, representing all regions and nations. Seeing not what divides us - but what unites us. Sound on the economy, passionate about fairness: doing the right thing and battling vested interests. Challenging the status quo.

But will the voters see it that way? Will the Budget prove to be a help or a hindrance?

And in the wake of the Health and Social Care Bill, however, Labour are out for blood and the forthcoming local election campaign will show their mettle at spinning counter-stories.

I think it’ll be clear within a few days whether the first two stories have got up. The state of the party’s brand won’t be clear until usual the round of pre-autumn conference polls have been published. But the heat is on.

David Shearer: NZ Labour Party's new leader and the art of political storytelling

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:49:00 +0000

At last November’s general election, the New Zealand Labour Party received its lowest share of the vote (27.5 per cent) since 1928.

After the wipeout, with John Key’s National-led government riding high, Labour MPs elected a new leader, David Shearer, who had been in Parliament just over two years. The other contender had baggage, but Shearer’s real attractiveness lay with his newness, his firm positioning in the middle of the road, his laid back style and his authenticity. This time, Labour wanted a “real person” at the helm, rather than another technocrat.

It all sounded so familiar. My erstwhile comrades had found their own version of John Key, the banker who went and made squillions in Singapore and London, and then went home to become prime minister, after just six years (two terms) in Parliament.

The sympathetic commentary picked up on David Shearer’s unusual and inspiring “back story”: his time overseas in international development and humanitarian work. Some of the best tellings are here, here, here and here. His backers came up with this strapline (which is, by the way, a kind of story):

John Key went overseas and made $50 million, David Shearer went overseas and saved 50 million lives.

Shearer and his campaign team told with great skill a story of the politician. This establishes the politician’s or leader’s right to be heard, as well as his or her credibility and sense of authenticity. Two of the best examples I have seen were also given by near-unknowns: Arkansas governor Bill Clinton’s famous “Man from Hope” campaign spot from 1992 and the speech by an aspiring US senator called Barack Obama to the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

Of course, neither Clinton nor Obama stopped there. They both won the presidency by telling compelling stories that demonstrated how the Democratic Party was now relevant to the needs and expectations of the electorate.

And they both told stories about the country – spelling out where they believed the United States had been, what was right and what was wrong, and where it should go next. (Obama was my political storyteller of the year in 2008 - click here.)

This is not some American hocus pocus. Remember Tony Blair’s speeches about a “new, modern Britain” and “a young country”.

Back in 1984, David Lange defeated Sir Robert Muldoon with a promise to “bring New Zealand together”. Lange’s government went on to unleash an historic whirlwind of economic change, reducing state involvement in the economy and delivering greater efficiency. In his first three years as prime minister, Lange talked New Zealanders through real, fundamental change with an inclusive message, and rhetoric that projected his personality and sense of fun. Lange embodied his words. (1) He was the first Labour prime minister since 1946 to lead his government to re-election.

And in 1999, Helen Clark took Labour back into power with her promises to restore trust and transparency in government. They were part of her narrative that a “correction” was needed in New Zealand’s economic and social course, after fifteen years of neoliberal dominance. She was re-elected twice.

In 2012, David Shearer needs his own “story of the country”. This week, he started to build it, with a speech called “a new New Zealand”, about a revitalised, clever economy and first-class education system. He may have been a bit light on policy, but the speech was a good case study in how to tell a “time for a change” story. Shearer followed the three steps in Stephen Denning’s language of leadership. (2)

First, he got people’s attention, using one of Denning’s suggested devices, a striking metaphor:

You may know that P.T. Barnum was the man who founded the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

He was a showman, he was a businessman, he was a scam artist.

Early in his career, he created an exhibit called The Happy Family.

It had just one cage, and in that cage there was a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a baby lamb.

It was a huge hit.

People would line up to see it.

And as it grew more and more popular, the newspapers would ask him what his plans were for this amazing display.

He said to them: “It’ll probably become a permanent feature - but only if the supply of lambs holds out.”

In any sense you want to put it, literal or figurative, that’s how we’re running things in New Zealand.

We’re going to keep on doing things the way we are … for as long as the supply of lambs holds out.

We’re going to go right on relying on property market bubbles and a small basket of primary produce exports to earn our living and we’re going to go on borrowing money to pay for a standard of living we can’t afford.

We owe too much. We all know that.

We earn too little. We all know that too.

Far too many of our eggs are in the one basket

Second, Shearer tried to stimulate a desire for change in his audience. I spotted three of Denning’s devices. There was a “springboard story”, in the example of how Finland took bold economic decisions twenty years ago, and is now doing better than New Zealand.

There was a trigger to a common memory story.

We were talking about making changes even before Britain joined the common market in the early 70s.

We’ve talked about added value, lamb-burgers, Knowledge Waves, and NZ Inc, and yet somehow success is still just over the horizon.

People have grown tired of hearing about it. Many of them are sceptical it’ll ever happen.

At a certain point, you have to stop talking about what you’re going to do, and start doing it.

And there was a metaphor that worked – the education “marathon”.

Third, Shearer reinforced his message with reasons. This was, admittedly, the weakest part of the story, but he outlined some specific education reforms, and said, albeit briefly, how they would work.

Don’t get me wrong. One clever speech won’t make David Shearer the prime minister. Labour’s new policy package needs to be fleshed out and deepened, which is easier said than done, and the counter stories to his “new New Zealand” are already being launched. (Here’s a good example) Shearer will need to tell more stories, with more colour and more emotional cues, the symbols and the metaphors need building and polishing. There’s a long. long way to go in this marathon. My point is that David Shearer showed this week that he understands what telling a vision story is all about.

There is a more immediate challenge. Shearer’s story of the politician is up (now to tell it to the voters) and the story of the country is under construction. One narrative is still missing: “the story of the party” – the disrupter showing prospective Labour voters that David Shearer will make the party hear them. A drastic example was Tony Blair’s exhortation to the British Labour Party to ditch the Clause IV commitment to nationalisation , along with other policy shibboleths. In 1992 and after, Bill Clinton made sure that middle America saw him as a “New Democrat”, with his “opportunity, responsibility” rhetoric and “new choices rooted in old values”, that broke with party orthodoxy.

I wonder if this is where David Shearer will come unstuck.

(1) Jon Johansson, Two Titans – Muldoon, Lange and Leadership (Dunmore Publishing, 2005) pp. 210-212

(2) Stephen Denning, The Secret Language of Leadership (John Wiley & Sons, 2007)

New study explains the drop in public concern about climate change: it's the economy, stupid

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:04:33 +0000

How can we explain the decline in public concern about climate change over the past four years?

A new study of over thirty years of public opinion data about the environment and global warming, by Lile Scruggs and Salil Benegal of the University of Connecticut, puts it down to economic insecurity caused by the Great Recession.

The alternative explanations focus on partisan politicization (in the US), biased or waning media coverage and fluctuations in short-term weather conditions. But none of these appears to drive public opinion in anything like the same way as economic worries.

I was especially interested in their examination of European countries, using the results from Eurobarometer surveys.

… [Among] European countries there is a very strong association between increases in unemployment rates and increases in sceptical opinion. A one point increase in national unemployment is associated with a 2.5 point decline in the percentage saying that warming is a serious issue, and almost a one point increase in the percentage of the country saying that warming is exaggerated or saying that it is simultaneously not serious, exaggerated, and not due to CO2 emissions. We do not find a strong association with unemployment and the percentage of people who say that carbon dioxide has a marginal impact on climate change, though the estimated effect is in the expected direction. These regression results suggest that a shift in the national unemployment rate from 5 to 9% in Europe (approximately the increase in unemployment in the United States during the time period) reduces the percentage of people reporting that global warming is a very serious problem by about 10 points.

And:

In summary, the effects of the Great Recession on public opinion about climate change were very similar in European countries and the United States. All European countries experienced declining public opinion about warming as the Great Recession has developed, and those that fared the worst economically tended to see the largest declines in opinion.

In their conclusion, the authors suggest that climate change opinion will rebound as the economy, and more specifically the job situation, improves. They add:

Both would obviously improve more quickly if planetary stewardship can become a catalyst for economic recovery and transformation, and not instinctively seen as a barrier to that goal.

As well as pushing for “green growth”, Scruggs and Benegal caution against letting environmental policy wait for public demand. They show that in the United States, some major green policy innovations have taken place in tough economic times, most notably the 1970s. It’s harder to prove a similar pattern in EU or UK environmental policy, but in the early 1990s (a recession), the scene was set for some important UK measures, for instance, the landfill tax and participation in the Kyoto Protocol. And the years since 2008, when the global financial crisis hit, have not been dull on the environmental policy front.

Interestingly, the authors use the example of the Reagan Administration in the early 1980s to show that the public may not accept efforts to cut back environmental policy in a recession.

The administration of the day may have misinterpreted low public support for progressive environmental policy as a permanent change rather than a temporary response to economic conditions.

That has some relevance for the UK today. For instance, public concern about climate change increased during 2011 and most people think that action is needed to address climate change, but don’t believe that enough is being done. George Osborne take note.

Shock! Lib Dem candidate for London Assembly has a compelling narrative

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:18:13 +0000

The following e-mail arrived in my inbox earlier today:

Dear Neil

When the votes are counted on Friday 4 May, it’ll take only a small change in votes from last time to defeat the BNP and elect myself to the London Assembly.

To make that happen and kick the BNP off the GLA we need to raise more funds for our campaign.

It will only take a small increase in the Liberal Democrat list to elect myself - and to push the BNP below the threshold for winning a seat. Any donation you can make really could make the difference between having a racist member of the BNP on the GLA - or myself, a Asian muslim woman who grew up in Tooting and has lived in London for decades.

Please help make this happen and donate today.

Thank you,

Shas Sheehan, Lib Dem London List candidate

Respect to Shas Sheehan, who has understood what the 2008 Lib Dem campaign for the GLA singularly failed to grasp, at some cost to the party. [click here, and here.] In an election using a PR list system, at which every vote can count, parties need to tell voters a clear story showing what they will “gain” by voting for them. The “gain” can be about issues and specific policies, but doesn’t have to be. In this case, the gain for Lib Dems is the chance to rid the London Assembly of the British National Party.

Shas Sheehan’s e-mail makes the narrative real by offering Lib Dem supporters a clear choice. The subject line reads: “Do you want me or the BNP?”

Her e-mail reminds me of the campaign run by the Australian Democrats in 1998. The Democrats were fighting to hold their seats, and the shared balance of the power in the Senate, in a PR (STV) election. Their main rival was Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, who promised to drastically cut immigration and axe multicultural policies, and were polling well. The Democrats exhorted their sympathisers, and anyone else who had no truck with One Nation, to keep them out. Their campaign theme was “Who do you want holding the balance of power in the Senate?” The Democrats returned four senators, One Nation returned one and Hanson herself failed to win a seat. The Democrats, with nine senators in total, held the balance of power. [Click here for some Australian Democrat campaign literature from 1998.]

Like Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem candidate for London mayor, [click here, and here], Shas Sheehan is on to the power of political narratives. But what about the Liberal Democrats at national level? They are trying hard to differentiate themselves from their Conservative coalition partners, by publicly urging George Osborne to ease the tax burden for people on low pay and make up the difference from those higher up the scale. I’ll post on that soon.

Lessons in political communications from the "Mark Zuckerberg of activism"

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:55:00 +0000

In today’s Guardian, Adam Price calls on the “dismal” European left to learn from its American counterpart. According to Price, “the real secret to progressive success” is the wisdom of Professor Marshall Ganz, of the Hauser Centre at Harvard. Price calls Ganz “the Mark Zuckerberg of activism” and says:

At the core of his teaching is the idea that leaders must build a public narrative explaining their calling, a sort of progressive elevator pitch in three parts: why they feel called to act (story of self), how this act relates to the audience (story of us) and what urgent challenge this action seeks to address (the story of now).

Price goes on:

It sounds simple (which is part of its success), but if you doubt its power take a look at a then little-known Senatorial candidate’s speech in the Boston Democratic convention in 2004. You’ll hear how a son of a Kenyan goat-herder running for [the] Senate (self) was a symbol of American meritocracy (us) threatened by the policies of the Bush White House (now).

I think Price has identified the correct framework for politics. Done properly, “the story of self” establishes the politician’s or leader’s right to be heard, as well as his or her credibility and sense of authenticity. Most importantly, they will embody and symbolise the other aspects of their narrative. Price cites Barack Obama as the best example, but he could also have mentioned:

Winston Churchill, who showed great personal courage by staying in London throughout World War II;

Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter who worked her way to the very top and, once at Number 10, toiled day and night; and

Tony Blair, who looked and sounded like a young, modern new leader in the mid 1990s and then set out modernising the Labour Party while promising a New Britain and, later, “Cool Britannia”.

There’s more to it. The Blair example shows how the “the story of us” can be “the story of the party” or “the story of the country”. The successful leader will tell both of these. The story of the party demonstrates values in action. In telling it, the leader will eschew talk about the past and show how the party can be relevant to the needs and expectations of the electorate.

The story of the country explains the leader’s vision, where s/he thinks the country has been, what’s right and wrong, and where it should go next.

Each UK party leader faces his own challenges in telling these stories. As Price says:

Flash forward to Ed Miliband and we see the source of his difficulty. Miliband has a plausibly good story of now (“responsible capitalism”), a so-so story of us (“squeezed middle”) but hardly any story of self – so we fill in the blanks with our own version: David’s brother, Gordon’s spad, or the son of England’s greatest Marxist theorist (my favourite).

David Cameron has a story of self, even if it’s one he would never have chosen (his tragic family experience). He also looks and sounds like a prime minister. And he has a strong story of now (paying down the debt). But Cameron’s story of the party is incomplete — the Conservative brand has still not been detoxified — and his story of the country (“the Big Society”) goes way over most people’s heads.

Nick Clegg has a story of the party (working with the Conservatives in the national interest; a softer heart than the Tories and a harder head than Labour). His story of self (successful career in Europe) appeals to liberals, but was derailed by the tuition fees debacle. Since the start of the year, Nick has been fighting hard to tell his own story of now, separate from the coalition’s. It’s still too early to say if the voters are buying. Beyond that, however, lies the old chestnut, a Liberal Democrat story of the country that people will understand and believe in.

Let’s see who breaks this logjam first.

It's time to reframe "green taxes"

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:41:00 +0000

Today, Business Green reports that several of the UK’s leading green entrepreneurs have written to the new energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, setting out a policy wish list for clean technologies.

Interestingly, they have also urged him to “stimulate green jobs and communicate a more compelling narrative that UK competitive advantage lies in creating a ‘sustainable green economy’”.

One demand that caught my eye was a shift in the debate on green taxes.

“We ask that you adopt the ‘polluter pays principle’ by incentivising clean purchasing behaviour with ‘green incentives’ while collecting ‘pollution taxes’,” the letter states. “The oxymoronic language of ‘green taxes’ confuses the public that renewable energy will continue to add costs to consumer bills while the converse is the case – renewable energy will actually reduce consumer bills.”

The eco-entrepreneurs are on to something. The latest British Social Attitudes survey, carried out largely in the summer of 2010 and published in December 2011, indicated that there was less support for green taxes than was the case a decade earlier. Only around a quarter of respondents said they would be willing to pay much higher prices or taxes to help the environment. Such a result is hardly surprising in these austere times.

But “green taxes” aren’t always what they seem. The Office for National Statistics defines an environmental tax as:

a tax whose base is a physical unit such as a litre of petrol, or a proxy for it, for instance a passenger flight, that has a proven specific negative impact on the environment.

This covers Landfill Tax, Aggregates Levy, Climate Change Levy, EU Emissions Trading System, Fuel Duty, VAT on Fuel Duty, Vehicle Excise Duty, Air Passenger Duty and the Renewable Energy Obligations.

But Treasury has been (slowly) working up a broader definition, focused on meeting green policy aims and effecting behaviour changes that are good for the environment. The latest draft, as provided to the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, takes in the above list but excludes fuel duty, VED, Air Passenger Duty and the Renewable Energy Obligations. It covers the Carbon Reduction Commitment and the Carbon Floor Price.

By leaving out transport measures, the Treasury’s draft definition risks making the level of environmental taxation less transparent. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has for months lumped together a selection of energy and climate change policies as “green taxes” or “green stealth taxes”, and claimed, erroneously, that such measures are responsible for recent hikes in power bills. (For Carbon Brief’s takedowns of the Mail’s allegations, click here.)

With the point of “environmental taxes” lost in this melee, we need some new frames. “Pollution taxes” is a good start. And how about “clean energy incentives”? Or a revival of the Lib Dem pledges from the 1990s to “tax bads not goods”? Any other ideas?

To convince people about climate change, you need to mention climate change

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:00 +0000

We sometimes hear suggestions that climate change advocates should stop talking about “climate change” or “global warming” and try to reframe the issues by using less alarmist phrases like “clean energy”.

I agree that horror stories, based on “Frankenstein’s monster” / “end of the world is nigh” frames and narratives, aren’t persuasive. Some climate sceptics can be won over by stressing the additional benefits of policies to cut carbon emissions, such as saving money or creating local jobs. There’s a bigger point here. We need to make sure that environment and economic policies reinforce one another.

But that’s not the same as cutting out nearly any reference to “climate change”, the preferred strategy of the Obama administration.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama mentioned “climate change” just once — compared with no mentions in the 2011 address and two the year before. But he used the terms “energy” and “clean energy” more than twenty times. “Carbon pollution” is another favourite of the Obama team.

The issues play very differently on the other side of the Atlantic. Fewer Americans than Brits acknowledge human-made climate change. People in the US take more partisan stances, with Democrats much more likely than Republicans to be climate realists. . That’s all the more reason to heed the recent comments about the president’s speech by University of Colorado Professor Max Boykoff:

[T]alking only about clean energy omits critical biological and physical factors that contribute to the warming climate. “Clean energy” doesn’t call to mind the ways we use the land and how the environment is changing. Where in the term is the notion of the climate pollution that results from clear-cutting Amazon rain forests? What about methane release in the Arctic, where global warming is exposing new areas of soil in the permafrost?

“Clean energy” also neatly bypasses any idea that we might need to curb our consumption. If the energy is clean, after all, why worry about how much we’re using — or how unequal the access to energy sources might be?

And terms such as “carbon pollution” ignore that climate change isn’t just a carbon issue. Some greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide, do not contain carbon, and not all carbon-containing emissions, such as carbon monoxide, trap heat.

He concluded:

Calling climate change by another name creates limits of its own. The way we talk about the problem affects how we deal with it. And though some new wording may deflect political heat, it can’t alter the fact that, “climate change” or not, the climate is changing.

Political storytellers to watch in 2012 (3): Boris vs. Ken, the rematch

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:21:00 +0000

Another week, another poll showing that the race for mayor of London is neck and neck. ComRes has found Conservative mayor Boris Johnson on 49% of the two party preferred vote, with Labour’s Ken Livingstone on 51%.

In 2008, the flamboyant Johnson edged out Livingstone, a controversial two-term mayor. Boris used a copybook “time for a change” narrative. The election had a subplot: Ken took the rap for the Brown government, which was moving rapidly down the popularity slide. And Tory supporters in the outer boroughs turned out to vote, to a degree not seen in 2000 or 2004.

This time, it’ll be Ken’s turn to say “time for change” and Boris will mount a strong defence, playing the old tune of incumbents, “I deserve another chance”. As The Economist put it earlier this month:

The incumbent, who is known for his chaotic charisma, has run the city competently enough. Crime has continued to fall and minor improvements have been made to public transport, including a cycle-hire scheme and the end of the hated “bendy” bus. Mr Johnson has also frozen City Hall’s take from local taxes and lobbied for more infrastructure spending and a looser immigration policy. Although he has many fewer powers than an American big-city mayor—the central government and the capital’s 32 boroughs collectively have more sway—Mr Johnson has asserted some new ones. He has turned himself into a spokesman for the City, as the financial district is known. In 2008 he sacked London’s police chief.

Boris’s record, and therefore his re-election campaign narrative, has its weak points too.

What he cannot boast is a single dominating achievement, such as the central London congestion charge that Mr Livingstone pioneered. Mr Johnson hopes that his legacy will be a commitment by the government to build a vast new airport to replace Heathrow, which is stretched and difficult to expand. Ministers are warming to the idea, but slowly.

The upshot: Ken may try to frame Boris as a “do nothing” mayor.

Meanwhile, London voters are working out their own narrative. According to the new ComRes poll, they rate Boris ahead of Ken on fighting crime, “changing London for the better”, for having the best economic vision and, by some way, for being “able to get the best deal for London from central government”.

ComRes - and YouGov - have shown Ken well ahead on transport issues, and that the recent hikes in tube fares may have dented the mayor’s popularity. Such is the background to Ken’s “fares fare” campaign, and his pledge to cut tube fares. Already, Boris is running a counter story, calling Ken’s fares promise “fraudulent”. According to ComRes, Londoners are inclined to see it as “unrealistic” – though, the pollsters add, many would vote for him all the same.

Ken also leads Boris on “understanding the needs of ordinary Londoners”, making room for a “time for a change” storyline based on personality and likeability. But after over thirty turbulent years at the forefront of London politics, Ken has built up many negatives too.

Boris has a counter story that spans policy and personality. He warns that London must not go back to the “era of waste and divisiveness” seen during his Labour rival’s tenure at City Hall. “Don’t go back, don’t take the risk” is a classic narrative for first-term incumbents who are up once more against the person or candidate that they defeated.

Back in 1977, a tv spot by Australia’s (centre-right) Liberal Party used a big red scrapbook of newspaper headlines and pictures to remind voters of the economic crises and political mayhem of the Labor government they had thrashed two years earlier. The ad had few words, just a song: “memories of you”. The Liberals won in a landslide. Boris is again using the Liberals’ campaign consultants, so they’re sure to come up with something similar, possibly for You Tube.

Ken has another frame for the contest: Labour versus Conservative, left versus right, a referendum on the Cameron government. That’s understandable, given that London leans Labour’s way in nationwide polls and elections. Both main parties have their problems but, from the new ComRes polling, it looks as if the government’s spending cuts will harm Boris more than Ed Miliband’s overall performance will drain support for Ken. Yet the Conservative vote is holding up remarkably well overall and their supporters are still well motivated.

It looks as if this one will go down to the wire.

Political storytellers to watch in 2012 (2): Alex Salmond vs. the unionists

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:59:32 +0000

After days of wrangling, Scotland is to have a still undefined referendum in 2014 on whether to quit the United Kingdom. The arguments are now well underway. So far, two contributions stand out.

Exhibit A: the New Year’s message from Alex Salmond, first minister and SNP leader, which called on the people of Scotland to live up to their country’s international reputation and history as a land of technological and scientific innovation and take control of their own destiny.

Exhibit B: Thursday’s warning from the chancellor, George Osborne, that Scotland would be far worse off economically outside the UK. Here’s the killer quote:

“The SNP is going to have to explain what its plans are for the currency of Scotland.”

Today, his Labour predecessor, Alistair Darling, has gone even further:

In an interview with the Observer, Darling says that if the Scots vote to leave the 300-year-old union and then keep sterling, adopt their own currency, or join the euro, the country will be plunged into unparalleled economic uncertainty.

“The downsides are immense, the risks are amazing, the uncertainties I just don’t think are worth gambling on, Darling said. “There are times when you should gamble and there are times when you shouldn’t.”

There you have it: two contrasting narratives. Alex Salmond traces Scotland’s journey from James Watt and John Logie Baird to an exciting future. It’s easy to understand, upbeat, inclusive (“a fairer as well as a more prosperous future”). Salmond’s story has a happy ending. He tells a story of hope.

George Osborne and Alistair Darling are also starting to tell a story (a counter-story, to be precise), but it’s all very jagged and unsettling. The ending is uncertain and more than a little worrying. Theirs is a story based on fear.

Even though we don’t know what question will finally appear on the ballot paper, Salmond’s narrative looks and sounds as if it will prevail. His passes all the tests of a compelling narrative: it’s simple, emotive and rooted firmly in history and tradition. He addresses head on questions of belonging and identity. As Peter Oborne wrote on Wednesday:

Alex Salmond, that most brilliant and attractive of modern British politicians, is capable of superbly articulating the sense of nobility, romance, mission and fierce patriotism felt by many SNP supporters. Nationalism and the cry for liberty can be an intoxicating cocktail, even at the start of the 21st century. So far his opponents have produced nothing to rival it.

But the Osborne / Darling story also sounds straightforward. Scary campaigns about money can be very powerful. So too can negative narratives. Remember last year’s no to AV referendum campaign?

Now for the really interesting part. When you unpack them, neither of these storylines is really that simple. They will not stay frozen in suspended animation. Both sides will launch counter-stories and try to move on to the other’s space. Salmond, a former high flying civil servant and RBS economist, can be a forceful advocate on financial issues like, for instance, North Sea oil revenues. But, as this week’s interview with The Economist shows, some of his stories, most notably on Scotland’s future currency, can stretch the bounds of plausibility. In reality, the economic arguments are far from straightforward and both sides may decide to soft-pedal them.

The pro-union lobby could launch its own emotion-laden appeals and raise questions of identity and national purpose, based on the shared history and achievements of the all countries of the United Kingdom; “we’re stronger together and weaker apart”. On Friday, the education secretary, Michael Gove, made a start when he asked Scotland to think if it wants to keep the pound, the NHS, some welfare benefits and to separate the British Army. But this all based on fear, not the naural foundation for a romantic narrative.

As Peter Oborne has argued, with some force, unionists (preferably Scottish) should be able to make a positive case for Britishness. I agree with him that:

Scotland has scores of gifted politicians – among them Brown, Darling, Reid, Gove, Forsyth, Rifkind, Campbell and Kennedy – who can surely make the case that it is a better and more meaningful place as part of the United Kingdom. This is not, at root, an argument about economics. It is about identity.

If ever there was a situation where some epic political storytelling is needed, this is it. Let’s see who can come up with a compelling narrative to answer the most vexed of questions in UK politics. What does it mean to be British in the twenty first century? If anyone can bring this off, they should take their place in the pantheon of great communicators.

Narrativewatch: Mitt "I like to be able to fire people" Romney

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:37:06 +0000

As I write, voting in the New Hampshire primary is still underway. With hefty leads in the NH polls, Mitt Romney is the frontrunner in the state and for the Republican presidential nomination. But Romney has handed his GOP opponents, and President Obama, a gilt-edged sword with his comment that:

“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

His statement has now been widely translated to read:

“I like to be able to fire people.”

A feeding frenzy has followed.

James Fallows explains why this is more than just another political gaffe.

He was making a reasonable point about the need for choice and competition — just as [the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee] John Kerry was making a reasonable point about the different stages of the legislative process when he said “I actually voted for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.” It was completely “unfair” to use that line against Kerry, because if you stopped to listen to his reasoning, the phrase was merely one clumsy out-of-context portion of a larger “sensible” statement about how Congressional politics works. Exactly as with Romney and “firing.”

But of course that clip hurt Kerry — in part because the Bush campaign team immediately rammed it home, and in part because it connected with an existing vulnerability or impression about Kerry. I think this moment from Romney may hurt him too, for all the “unfairness” of criticizing what he said, because it touches something so emotional and raw.

Statements like this leave a deep imprint because of the way they make us feel about the politicians who have made them. Fallows goes on:

[People] with any experience on either side of a firing know that, necessary as it might be, it is hard. Or it should be. It’s wrenching, it’s humiliating, it disrupts families, it creates shame and anger alike — notwithstanding the fact that often it absolutely has to happen. Anyone not troubled by the process — well, there is something wrong with that person. We might want such a person to do dirty work for us. … We might value him or her as a takeover specialist or at a private equity firm. But as someone we trust, as a leader? No - not any more than you can trust a military leader who is not deeply troubled when his troops are killed.

Paul Krugman cites a more critical analysis of the original statement and suggests that it shows how wealthy Romney lacks a sense of empathy with ordinary Americans.

The clip of “I like to be able to fire people” will become an indispensable symbol for his opponents’ narrative about Romney, that he is a ruthless Wall Street wrecker. The anecdote will be an essential episode in the Romney story.

This is not just an American phenomenon. Gaffes and missteps have been grafted on to a number of British politicians’ personal narrarives. Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan didn’t actually use the words “crisis? what crisis?” when he returned to strike-torn Britain from an overseas trip in January 1979. But his measured comments and laid-back demeanor played into a growing sense that he was out of touch with the escalating industrial strife, now remembered as the “winter of discontent”. Within a few months, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

The then Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith never recovered from his woeful declaration in 2003 that “the quiet man is turning up the volume”. Neither, for that matter, did Sir Menzies Campbell after his faltering first Commons outing as acting Lib Dem leader in 2006.

Even in “buttoned down” Britain, negative emotions embed gaffes and missteps in our political folklore. Remember the parliamentary expenses scandal? The insensitive way some MPs tried to explain away the moat and the duck house fuelled the public’s resentment.

It’s all further proof that, whatever they may think, politicians cannot control their own narratives.

Political storytellers to watch in 2012 (1): Barack Obama seeks re-election

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:41:07 +0000

Candidate Barack Obama was my political storyteller of the year back in 2008, my first year of blogging. But President Barack Obama has been nowhere near as gifted a communicator and, with the American economy still spluttering and the Democratic base disillusioned, he faces a tough battle for re-election in November. The election is still a long way off, but right now, the fractious and fragmented race for the Republican nomination candidates, the way it looks like a freakshow, and GOP activists’ reluctance to rally behind “moderate” contender Mitt Romney, seem to be Obama’s best hope.

Last month, however, we saw the beginnings of what may be a viable narrative for his re-election campaign. In Osawatomie, Kansas, Obama made a cogent case for an American progressivism that is anchored firmly in the political traditions of Theodore Roosevelt and FDR. It’s meat and drink to liberals like me. Still, we shouldn’t expect a replay of the uplifting “yes, we can” rhetoric of 2008. As E.J. Dionne jr. has written in a provocative and incisive article, Obama will run this time as the “conservative” candidate, who is defending ordinary Americans from the “radical” Republicans and the risks they represent. In 2008, Obama used a narrative that was all about hope. This time, he will have to rely much more on fear.

Let’s see if he can make his romantic (neo-Roosevelt) and pragmatic (right-wing “enemy within”) narratives work together, as one compelling story.

President Obama has an even more demanding challenge: his story will have to be plausible. Back in 1980, an embattled Democratic president called Jimmy Carter warned voters of the risks to economic and national security posed by Ronald Reagan, the most right wing Republican nominee since Barry Goldwater’s disastrous candidacy sixteen years earlier. By election day, however, Carter’s economic narrative – his story about his record - had all but collapsed, as inflation ran at 15.5% and the prime interest rate stood at 21%.

On the eve of poll debate, Reagan asked his famous framing questions (“are you better off than you were four years ago … ?) and suddenly surged into the lead. Carter was swept away in a landslide. His efforts to frame the election as a choice between “full opportunity for all” and “the despair of millions who would struggle for a better life” rang hollow when the reality of Carter’s own record was so uninspiring. (1)

Obama won’t be facing Ronald Reagan or anyone like him this year. He is a much better president, politician and campaigner than Jimmy Carter. Even so, what happened to Carter shows that Obama’s story about the economy must be founded on an economic recovery that looks, sounds and feels real to the American people. If he fails the basic test of credibility, Carter’s fate will be his also.

(1) See Theodore H. White, America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President 1956-1980 (Jonathan Cape, 1983), Chapter 13.

Political storytellers to watch in 2012 (1): Barack Obama seeks re-election

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:41:00 +0000

Last month, however, we saw the beginnings of what may be a viable narrative for his re-election campaign. In Osawatomie, Kansas, Obama made a cogent case for an American progressivism that is anchored firmly in the political traditions of Theodore Roosevelt and FDR. It’s meat and drink to liberals like me. But we shouldn’t expect a replay of his uplifting “yes, we can” rhetoric of 2008. As E.J. Dionne jr. has written in a provocative and incisive article, Obama will run this time as the “conservative” candidate, who is defending ordinary Americans from the “radical” Republicans and the risks they represent. In 2008, Obama used a narrative that was all about hope. This time, he will have to rely much more on fear.

Let’s see if he can make his romantic (neo-Roosevelt) and pragmatic (right-wing “enemy within”) narratives work together, as one compelling story.

(1) See Theodore H. White, America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President 1956-1980 (Jonathan Cape, 1983), Chapter 13.

Narrativewatch: Nick Clegg's "Happy New Year" message

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:15:00 +0000

via youtube.com

Nick Clegg’s Happy New Year Message arrived in my inbox today.

The message says a lot about what’s right with the Liberal Democrats’ policies in government.

It also says a lot about what’s wrong with the party’s communications.

Nick says:

We have had to make some very difficult decisions, but they’ve been the right ones for the long term good of our country.
But [the] economic rescue mission is not over yet. That’s why, thanks to the Liberal Democrats, the Coalition has been helping people get through these difficult times with measures to make life fairer and easier.

Sadly, the message is then struck by that old curse of progressive parties the world over – the laundry list of policies.

It lacks a narrative, a story, that links any of the policies together. Nor is there a story that explains in human terms how any one of the policies will make peoples lives better.

If you think I’m being too tough, see if you can identify in the message any of the following elements of a compelling political narrative:

• characters, especially heroes;
• events with a causality between them – one leads to the other;
• unanticipated action that sets up a problem or challenge;
• a realisation or insight by the political hero, leading to a transformation (or at least the promise of a transformation), usually for a group of people;
• an evocation of an emotional reaction, like hope or fear;
• an effort to address the sense of individual and group identity;
• the use of familiar, well-known national or historical stories;
• the offer of a sense of hope or reassurance, a “happy ending”.

Or, if you think this doesn’t matter, see how many of the messages or the “back up” policies you remember in a day’s time, after one reading or viewing. Then try it out on a couple of other people.

As the veteran US Democratic political consultants James Carville and Paul Begala once said:

“Facts tell, but stories sell … If you’re not communicating in stories, you’re not communicating.”

Narrativewatch: Nick Clegg's "Happy New Year" message

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:11:00 +0000

via youtube.com

Nick Clegg’s Happy New Year Message arrived in my inbox today.

The message says a lot about what’s right with the Liberal Democrats’ policies in government.

It also says a lot about what’s wrong with the party’s communications.

Nick says:

We have had to make some very difficult decisions, but they’ve been the right ones for the long term good of our country.

But [the] economic rescue mission is not over yet. That’s why, thanks to the Liberal Democrats, the Coalition has been helping people get through these difficult times with measures to make life fairer and easier.

Sadly, the message is then struck by that old curse of progressive parties the world over – the laundry list of policies.

It lacks a narrative, a story, that links any of the policies together. Nor is there a story that explains in human terms how any one of the policies will make peoples lives better.

If you think I’m being too tough, see if you can identify in the message any of the following elements of a compelling political narrative:

As the veteran US Democratic political consultants James Carville and Paul Begala once said:

“Facts tell, but stories sell … If you’re not communicating in stories, you’re not communicating.”

Narrativewatch: Brian Paddick on crime and policing

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:52:41 +0000

Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat candidate for London mayor, has just produced a short video film about how he would cut crime and improve policing in London, based on his years of experience in the Metropolitan Police.

The film provides a great “who I am” story when Paddick recounts his own experiences as a young police sergeant in the Brixton riots of 1981.

He goes on to use four of Richard Maxwell’s five elements of persuasion – passion (good delivery), a hero (guess who), an obstacle (riots in Brixton) and, crucially, a moment of awareness:

I realized that what should have been citizens in uniform, the police acting on behalf of the local community, had become an army of occupation.

What I learned then and will never forget is the importance of listening to local people and acting what you want not imposing what you want on them.

He then recounts how, 20 years later, he returned to Brixton and:

I got the police and the community working together, standing up against the gangs and the criminals.

What’s not quite there, however, is the final step, the transformation for the future that Paddick promises to achieve. He does not tell a springboard story that enables us, the listeners, to apply the lessons of Brixton to the London riots of 2011 and create in our minds a new, Liberal Democrat story. I’m not sure if Paddick believes that the two episodes had the same basic causes, or whether he thinks that what he did in Brixton in the early 2000s could stop the latest riots from happening again.

Likewise, the connection between Paddick’s experiences in Brixton and the well-worn, three-part Lib Dem crime and policing policy – more empowerment of local police, “tough payback sentences” and les use of prison sentences – is not clear. Remember, this triad is not the party’s policy on riots.

But let’s not be too harsh. Springboard stories are the hardest ones to tell, especially in politics. The candidate and his team should be able to smooth off these rough edges and apply some narrative varnish in time for the campaign proper. And Paddick’s “who I am” / moment of clarity, along with his earlier mea culpa, mark him out as one of the party’s most promising storytellers.

Liberal Democrat members of the government should watch and learn.