Reframing climate change, part I

A big problem with climate change may be “climate change”.

I am with George Monbiot when he says that the term “climate change” does not really explain the impact of what we are doing to the earth’s atmosphere. In a recent blog, Monbiot pointed to the devastating implications that we are already seeing for global food security, water supplies and human settlement and called “climate change”:

“. . . a ridiculously neutral term for the biggest potential catastrophe humankind has ever encountered.”

Yet most UK media coverage of the issues uses what Matt Nesbitt calls the “Pandora’s Box” frame of “looming climate crisis”, with depictions of polar bears perched precariously on shrinking ice floes or famous cities under water. He suggests that

“One of the unintended consequences of this line of communication is that it plays into the hands of climate sceptics and further reinforces the partisan divide in climate change perceptions.”

Nesbitt was writing in the American context, where the issues play differently. But some UK commentators have suggested that the way that “climate change” is discussed and reported is too alarmist and deters people from taking action. The IPPR has been one of the main proponents of this point of view. [Click here and here]

This is really about different ways of framing the issues around global warming and climate change. What’s framing? Framing is really about giving people a way to think about political issues, usually with a model or structure or question. (For more details, see here, here and here).

I am still not convinced that “crisis” coverage, or a “Pandora’s Box” frame have, in themselves, pushed people away from the issue. More to the point --as I remain open to persuasion – far too little research has been done about how the British public perceives climate change: which frames they use and how their views are shaped. More people need to be engaged, peoples’ understanding deepened if we are to see real progress.

Monbiot says that a new “crisis” terminology is needed. I agree. But we must also attract new audiences make the issue seem more relevant to people. We need new and different frames, including some that connect “climate change” to problems that people already know and see as important. The concerns of both George Monbiot and those who worry about “climate porn” should be met.

Here’s one suggestion from Matt Nisbett:

“The public health frame stresses climate change’s potential to increase the incidence of infectious diseases, asthma, allergies, heat stroke, and other salient health problems, especially among the most vulnerable populations: the elderly and children.”

Sure enough, a new report warning that climate change is the biggest threat to the global health of the 21st century has been picked up in today’s Guardian.

Now, for the next challenge: applying the public health frame as an issue for the UK and people in their local communities. [UPDATE: From Comment is Free – The NHS must wake up to climate change]

Reframing climate change, part II

For years, climate realists have been concerned that, despite all the grim scientific evidence, the public is still not fully engaged with the debate or the action that will be needed to address climate change. One problem may even be the term “climate change”. Now a new report suggests that another term may shift the public’s dial. The term is, wait for it: "global warming".

Framing Science’s Matt Nisbet cites a new study that shows how using the terms "climate change" versus "global warming" has a real bearing on public perceptions. Published in the Journal Public Understanding of Science, it comes from Lorraine Whitmarsh of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and is based on a postal survey of 590 people in Portsmouth, Hampshire.

Nisbet quotes from the study’s conclusion:

""Global warming" is more often believed to have human causes and tends to be associated with ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and heat-related impacts, such as temperature increase and melting icebergs and glaciers. The term "climate change" is more readily associated with natural causes and a range of impacts. Furthermore, the term "global warming" evokes significantly more concern, and is rated as "very important" by more respondents, than the term "climate change." Finally, more people consider individual or public action to be an effective means of tackling "global warming than do so for "climate change"; while a higher proportion believe planting trees could mitigate "climate change" than it could mitigate "global warming.""

The political realities take us right back to the infamous memo produced in 2002 by the US conservative political strategist Frank Luntz. He advised the George W. Bush White House on how to neutralise global warming and the environment as political issues.

“It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming . . . . “climate change” is less frightening than “global warming.” . . . While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”

All this suggests that climate realists should stop talking about “climate change” and start talking about “global warming”.

But Drew Westen and Celinda Lake, who are experts on the emotional and neurological drivers of public opinion, see it differently. They were involved with a recent comprehensive research project for the communications gurus ecoAmerica, which aimed to find new ways to persuade people who haven’t made up their minds about climate change / global warming. Westen and Lake contend that “global warming” may sound quite positive to some Americans and that they may be less inclined to believe it every time there’s a cold spell. In any case, they say, “global warming” may be too abstract a concept for most people.

Last month, ecoAmerica produced their report Climate and Energy Reports: Our Common Future. Here’s their key suggestion:

"For climate change, leading with global warming, climate crisis or climate change tends to polarize and weaken the message. The language itself is especially problematic among swing voters. We should speak of deteriorating atmosphere and only after establishing connections with Americans’ other values
first . . .

“The best new term is “deteriorating atmosphere” or “our deteriorating atmosphere”(personalizing the term) instead of ‘global warming’ or ‘climate crisis.’”

I agree with Westen and Lake on the need to get away from jargon and on the need for progressives and client realists need to speak to people in their language, speaking to their values. The ecoAmerica report makes many good points (example: don’t talk about “renewable” and “alternative” energy; instead, talk about energy sources that run out and ones that don’t run out.) It is worth reading in full.

But their big idea, “our deteriorating atmosphere” isn’t the most catchy phrase I’ve ever heard. The respected Democrat pollster Mark Mellman has argued that it lags a long way behind public American public opinion. He cites evidence that the vast majority of Americans believe global warming is real, is happening now and constitutes a serious threat, particularly to future generations.

Likewise, four out of five people the UK are very or fairly concerned about the impact of climate change on the country. Most think that the UK is already affected. The vast majority believe that it may result in increased pollution, changing local weather and increased risk of skin cancer. Around three quarters believe that climate change is mainly or entirely a result of human behaviour. Four out of five people in the UK are very or fairly concerned about climate change. [click here] We should use these assets and build on the foundations. This isn’t the time to forget them.

So where to now? "Climate change" is a more technically accurate term but, as George Monbiot has said, it does not explain the full impact of what we are doing to the earth’s atmosphere. If the Tyndall research is correct, "global warming" is more emotive but it may not public support for the action that we all to take. But nobody has yet come up with a new term that really works. And, as Nesbit says, there is a risk trying to bring in new ones may simply annoy or polarise the public, who may feel they are being “sold to”.

There may not be a silver bullet on climate communications. So let's keep working with the terms we know, such as "climate change" and "global warming". And we need more UK-based research (polls, focus groups) about these terms, some of the options, and what they really mean to people.

The same applies to framing. UK climate realists have long used the “environmental disaster” frame. There are others on offer, most notably the “economic development” frame, which usually translates into “green jobs” and the “public health frame”, which has some value too. All of these should help to target messages and tell stories, to build support with different sections of the public and persuade people to act. Yet there is still very little research about how these frames work or fail with British people.

Most importantly, we shouldn’t pretend that any of these can be used in isolation from the evidence and arguments about climate change and global warming. Too many of the arguments over climate communications – especially those in the states – are carried out as if there is a direct choice between the science and the popular messages” / frames. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The climate realists can win on all these fronts. For some brilliant examples of how the jobs frame, the economic security frame and the climate message can work together, check out this speech by Barack Obama, urging passage of the Waxman-Markey energy bill. (hat tip: Climate Progress) Or this post by Joe Romm showing how Obama uses rhetoric and metaphor, to push his climate change messages so brilliantly.

If only there was a politician willing and able to apply those lessons in the UK.

Is climate change yesterday's media story?

The latest news on human-made climate change is grim, very grim. 2010 tied with 2005 as the planet’s warmest year on record. And the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 390 parts per million, a figure almost 40% higher than it was before we started burning fossil fuels for industrialisation.

Except that it’s not news. Or, at least, we don’t seem to hear so much about it anymore. Almost all the UK media virtually ignored the above reports.

Since 2004, Max Boykoff of the University of Colorado and Maria Mansfield of Oxford University have tracked global trends in media coverage of climate change. Their research shows a noticeable upsurge in media interest in 2006-07, followed by a gentle decline. There was a spike in coverage at the end of 2009, followed by a sharp drop for most of last year.

The trendline for Europe, which is more pronounced than most other regions, takes in coverage by The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Mirror and The Express and all their Sunday titles.

The trends matter because media coverage influences what people are most concerned about. Ipsos MORI showed in January 2007 that 19% of the public rated the environment (unprompted) as “one of the biggest issues facing Britain today”. (That was up from a tiny figure a few years previously.) In January 2011, just 7% said that environment was one of the biggest issues.

I agree with Bob Ward of the LSE’s Grantham Institute, who suggested that “climategate” – the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the UEA’s climate change unit - may have made climate scientists’ assertions too hot for some news editors to handle.

Yet the shock and trance cycle has other, more straightforward explanations. Lord Stern’s review of the economics of climate change appeared in late 2006 and the following year saw the release of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth and the publication of the IPCC’s four assessment reports on climate change. The latter took place in four stages, thereby maximising the amount of coverage that the report received. The 2009 news spike can be put down to Copenhagen and, perhaps, the attempts in the US to pass cap and trade legislation.

At the end of 2008, however, the global financial crisis, the recession and the ensuing worries about jobs shot to the top of media agendas everywhere and chloroformed their coverage of climate change. After the disappointing outcome at Copenhagen, “climate change” looked, more than ever, like a problem that was both huge and intractable. It also seemed old hat and, perhaps, a bit of a bore. Dr Boykoff’s chart shows that the media started to wake up to climate change around the end of 2010, when the Cancun conference was going on, but quickly dozed off again.

The snooze factor is really important. Matt Nisbet of American University argues that for the US media and public, climate change has lost much of its perceived dramatic qualities. He says that:

. . . journalists' coverage of climate change is driven by the need for dramatic storytelling and novel narratives. Much of the drama in news reporting generally -- and in science reporting as well -- derives from visible political conflict, personality clashes, and contested claims over risks that allow journalists to construct a “news saga” that they can cover for more than a day or week.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that climate activists and some politicians have looked for ways to inject a sense of drama back into the issue. The most noteworthy is 10:10’s “exploding schoolchildren” video last October. But that ended in disaster. Big drama = high risk.

So, where next? Nisbet suggests that the media will only look at climate change anew if they have:

a new novel storyline . . . for the issue that does not define the problem in terms of environmental impacts but rather in terms of something more proximate, localized, and relevant to the public such as human health risks.

That’s right, we’re back to reframing climate change – except that the media, rather than politicians, companies and NGOs are making the shapes. I agree that the public health frame has the potential to pick up traction with the media and the public. [click here]. Yet stories about threats to the economy, jobs and lifestyles are, surely, more likely to grab their attention, for a longer period of time. As for localised stories, floods and droughts in the UK may work in the way he suggests, with one caveat: there may still be too much uncertainty as to whether global warming is the reason for personal catastrophes.

But some interesting new frames and storylines may be emerging. Recently, Kate Galbraith of the New York Times suggested that coverage of climate change and environmental issues has evolved and become more specialised. She instanced the way reporters are subjecting politicians’ and companies’ green initiatives, as well as the challenges and quirks of new energy technologies, to more scrutiny.

In January, Andrew Revkin of Dot Earth showed how his colleagues at the New York Times have illustrated the impacts of climate change on communities and tried to show how clean energy solutions have transformed peoples’ lives in developing countries. He went on to say:

Good reporters, those always eager to get to the root causes of a problem . . . will still track climate science. But they will devote more time and effort to diving deeper on energy policy, habits and innovations — whether unraveling counterproductive subsidies, pointing out the lack of money for path-breaking research, or revealing examples of social and financial innovations percolating around the world — any one of which could make a big difference if the information gets out and around.

My views are impressionistic rather than being based on a Boykoff-type study, but I perceive that the British media’s coverage of climate change and environmental issues has evolved and matured, possibly faster than its American counterparts'. Fiona Harvey of The Guardian (and before that, the FT) has covered the “green growth” debate and the economic arguments around EU emissions reduction targets. She has also placed claims about “green jobs” and companies’ various claims to environmental virtue under scrutiny.

Last year, The Observer’s Juliet Jowitt focused on risks to the world’s biodiversity and brought out the threats they pose to future economic prosperity. She has also been known to question how low carbon energy policies will impact on consumers power bills.

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman has looked into the pro’s and con’s of electric cars, organic milk, green TVs and all kinds of “go green” consumer behaviours.

James Murray’s Business Green website is indispensable for its coverage of “green growth” and the “green economy” debate and of new UK business initiatives and innovations that will reduce our carbon footprint. The Sunday Times’ energy and environment page is largely devoted to new green technologies and their potential impacts.

John Vidal of The Guardian measures up to Andrew Revkin’s global standard. So does the BBC’s Richard Black. Black has framed the climate change in terms of national and international security risks. The Financial Times has developed the security theme for a few years now.

None of the journalists mentioned above has stopped writing about climate science or climate risks.

So, the British media has not turned off climate change. They are covering the issues in different ways. But the question remains as to whether the media’s stories will help build the political space that is needed for effective policies to tackle climate change. Perhaps that’s a job for the politicians – if the media will allow them to be heard and the politicians tell interesting stories.

Pollwatch: Lib Dems behind Labour as best party on the environment and third on economy and education

Full details of the ICM’s Guardian poll for February are now up on the company’s website. This was the survey, you may recall, that led UK Polling Report to come to the entirely plausible conclusion that the Lib Dems’ 22 per cent rating in January was a blip.

I quickly turned to the results for the question,

“Irrespective of how you yourself will vote at the next election, which political party do you think is putting forward the best policies on . . . ”

As usual, the Liberal Democrats’ best rating – 19 per cent – was on the environment. But we were one point behind Labour and one point ahead of the Conservatives. Allowing for margins of error, the three parties were level pegging, with one in five respondents saying that “none of them” had the best environmental policies.

The last time ICM asked this question (that I can find) was in September 2007. The results were Labour 24 per cent, Conservatives 20 per cent, Lib Dems 18 per cent.

All the same, this result is somewhat disappointing, especially given the government’s record over recent months, what with Heathrow, more news about missed CO2 emissions targets and ministers’ slowness to assemble a substantive green new deal.

There are a couple of possible explanations. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats are still not pushing green issues hard enough. Also, the environment is not a deal-breaker for many voters who, since the recession began, may be going into a climate trance. Just 4 per cent of respondents picked the environment as the issue that will be important in their decision on how to vote. (A comparable figure for 2007 is not available). Voters may be less inclined to look closely at any party.

The top-ranked issue was, unsurprisingly, the economy, nominated by 35 per cent of respondents. Just 10 per cent said that the Lib Dems had the best economic policies, compared to 29 per cent for the Conservatives and 23 per cent for Labour.

As for which party had the best policies for “sorting out the economic crisis”, the Conservatives held a 2 point lead over Labour. Just 9 per cent said the Lib Dems.

The big story, in my view, is Labour’s crash as the party that is seen as best at managing the economy.

But the ICM figures provide further confirmation that Vince Cable’s brilliant economic commentaries are perceived as just that: Vince Cable’s brilliant economic commentaries; wise, accurate and incisive, but above and beyond party politics and not much to do with the Liberal Democrats. The public may like and respect Vince, but that does not mean they are more inclined to support the party.

On the other issues of most concern to voters: taxation and public services; health and law and order; asylum and immigration; and education, the Lib Dems did not do much better. The Conservatives were ahead of Labour on each one, apart from health – but on education they had only a one point advantage. In September 2007, Labour was ahead in all of the top-ranking policy areas.

These sorts of polling figures need to be seen in perspective. We usually come last in this kind of poll. Most voters do not expect the Liberal Democrats to win power and may not look very closely at us or our policies, at the national level. The question facing party strategists is, just as in previous elections, how to be seen as the “best party” on the issues of most concern to voters, in constituencies where we can win.

Still, other polling agencies’ research usually gives the Lib Dems better scores on “key issues”. For instance, last September, Populus gave us 31 per cent and a clear lead as the best party on climate change (though a different set of questions and options were offered). On the environment, Ipsos MORI told a similar story.

And the party rankings could change during the general election campaign. In 2005, Populus found that, on education and health, the top two concerns for voters, the Lib Dems gained significant ground during the general election campaign and by polling day, were level pegging with the Conservatives in being perceived as the “best party”. Next time, we will need to do perform a similar feat on what is sure to be the big issue, the economy.

Another striking feature of the ICM results is, once again, the number of people saying that “none of them” have the best policies in what voters see as the top six issues. The “none of them” figures were: 21 per cent for health; 20 per cent for education; 21 per cent for law and order; 26 per cent for asylum and immigration; 22 per cent for taxation and public services – and 24 per cent for the economy.

So there is still a lot to play for. But are the Lib Dems playing it correctly?

Why voters don't go for lists of policies

Here’s a contender for my first rule of politics. If a party tries to win votes by producing a long list of policies, disappointment, if not disaster, is just around the corner.

A sad case study is the Liberal Democrats’ 2005 general election manifesto. The “ten reasons to vote Liberal Democrat” just didn’t cut the mustard.

But this is about more than just manifestos – it’s a whole approach to politics that’s going wrong for liberals and the left nearly everywhere. The leading US Democratic Party strategist James Carville said in 2006 that:

“The central Democratic problem is that we lack a narrative. You hear a Democratic speech and you hear that 'I stand for a woman's right to choose, a person's right to health care, a nationalist foreign policy, a cleaner environment.’”

Such lists just "produces a litany" of ideas that "sounds like something we're for. But it doesn't mean anything." . . .

"The damn problem is that they have far too many things spread all over the map."

Sound familiar? Now, a new article by framing guru George Lakoff and Joe Brewer, both of the Rockridge Institute, discusses “why voters aren’t motivated by a laundry list of positions on issues.”

They start by criticising:

. . . a faulty view of voting behavior – widely held by political strategists on the left – that people already know what they want. All you have to do is conduct a poll to find out where they stand on the issues, then build a platform of positions that accords with the polls, and they will vote for you. Missing from this view is the importance of cognitive policy – the ideas necessary to understand what the issues are and how they should be addressed. It is the ability to understand where a candidate is coming from that makes public support possible. Endorsement quickly follows when this understanding combines with a sense of shared values.

Brewer and Lakoff explain:

There are two kinds of policy: cognitive and material. Material policies are familiar: they outline what is to be done in the world. For example, the details of a health care plan, or a plan for getting out of Iraq. Material policies each have a cognitive dimension, often unconscious and implicit. This includes the ideas, frames, values, and modes of thought that inform the political understanding of the material policy.

They see cognitive policy as:

. . . the often-unstated ideas behind material policies . . . It is comprised of ideas, frames, and arguments. It forms the basis of what the issue is, how it is understood and what should be done about it. The material criterion is comprised of mechanisms for achieving the goals that emerge from the cognitive criteria . . .

Later on they point out that:

A major finding of the cognitive sciences is that roughly 98% of the neural activity comprising human thought is structured outside conscious awareness. It is necessary to analyze the mental structures – called frames – that bring substance to our thoughts, in order to see the critical role they play in effective policy.

So what does this mean?

. . . The [electoral] success of a policy depends on how it meets both cognitive and material criteria. Concentrating on material criteria alone can be counterproductive if a policy is either unpopular, or if it instills in the public’s mind long-term values that contradict the aims of the policy.

Brewer and Lakoff argue that US conservatives have been able to get their cognitive policies – frames - into public discourse and the public mind, so that they now seem natural to many people. But progressives haven’t been able to do cognitive policy-making and so they:

. . . try to sell policies on a case-by-case basis via “messaging,” last-minute PR for the specific policy (e.g., listing polar bears as an endangered species), rather than developing a progressive worldview that automatically makes sense of the policy and counters conservative ideas.

Their bottom line message is unsurprising, if somewhat vague:

Progressives need to learn about cognitive policy and put it to use.

I suspect that what George Lakoff calls cognitive “policies” are “perceptions”, “world-views” or even “preconceptions”. As in some of his other material, he tends to get too bogged down in the power of the conservative think tanks in American politics. Still, as with a lot of his material, there are some useful pointers for Liberal Democrats.

In my experience, when narratives and frames are talked about, Lib Dems too often revert to downloading (listing) our “values”.

What the party should do is to look much more carefully than we have done in the past at our target voters’ cognitive perceptions – their core beliefs, values, hopes and aspirations. Then think more methodically about how the party’s messages and policies can connect with them, using powerful frames and symbols.

If you think that’s too difficult or too waffly or that it’s “just not us”, you should read Nick Clegg’s speech to the spring conference in Liverpool on Sunday.

For instance, the word “liberal” has been a staple of previous leaders’ speeches. Nick used it (apart from in the name of the party) just twice and then he was talking about a “liberal Britain”. He used the word “Britain” thirty times and many of those references either showed a sense of pride in the country or called for positive change, a “better Britain” (five references).

But this was a speech that only a Liberal Democrat leader could make. It was just that Nick expressed some familiar issues in new ways. For instance:

"Our civil liberties are a hard-won inheritance from our forefathers who fought and died for our freedom."

Could the new leadership be finding a narrative and working out how to frame liberal issues, so that they strike a chord with voters? More on that soon.

Back to the future politics: the opportunities and challenges for the Lib Dems

At the end of the worst Budget week in decades, two especially grim images remain stuck in my mind. The first is the newspaper charts, courtesy of the indispensable IFS, showing that the public finances will be in a deep hole for the best part of a decade and that we face “two parliaments of pain” before public debt is brought back under control. The politics of the next decade will be defined by very tough choices on spending and taxes. 

The other is the tv clips of Britain in the 1970s, the last time an embattled Labour government faced an economic crisis and was forced to put the brakes on government spending. The country’s economic situation is not exactly the same now as it was then and neither are Alistair Darling’s remedies. The ’seventies can be too easily caricatured as one long bad hair day. Yet those grainy images of trade union demonstrations and mounting economic woes are as potent a symbol as any that this country has. The British habit of explaining politics through the use of historical myths and symbols has struck again. The “crisis” frame is set up and the political narrative of a new national decline is set to roll. You’ve had the pleasure, now pay the bills. You’ve had the party, now for the hangover. The morality tale is clear.

Barring a miracle, Labour is on course for a huge defeat at the next general election. Looking at those IFS charts, it looks as if the more valid historical parallel for Britain in the 2010s will be with the early/mid-1990s: a Conservative government presiding over cash-starved schools and health services, along with under-investment in essential infrastructure. I can't see what other conclusion that we can draw from George Osborne’s public statements so far. [click here and here]

Despite the growing expectations that the Conservatives will win the next general election and have to make the tough choices, they still have offered very few specifics about how they would make them. But they are still not being placed under any real pressure. (See this FT article though)  Martin Kettle made this point very well in Friday’s Guardian and other commentators are picking up on it too. 

The Liberal Democrats have a new opportunity: to make sure that the Tories are placed under as much scrutiny on public spending as Labour. There are some signs that party leaders are playing this version of the traditional Lib Dem tune - “a plague on both your houses”. Writing in Friday’s Independent, Vince Cable had this to say:

“Mr Cameron has had a few hours fun enjoying his party's revenge for the humiliation of Black Wednesday. But he will now have his feet held to the fire for the next year as we compete with him to replace a failed government on economic credibility and hard policy choices. Unless he tells us what the Tories would cut he is no more credible than the government front bench. Labour seem to have given up – so now it's up to the Liberal Democrats to take on the Tories and expose their subterfuge.”

With this opportunity comes a new challenge for the Liberal Democrats. One is obvious: to be more credible and robust than the Conservatives on matters of public spending. As Vince argued:

“The only way forward is to identify, explicitly, areas of government activity which will have to be cut right back.”

He offered several specific suggestions, all which I agree with, and posed some valid questions for future debate. Still, there is a bigger context, a tougher question: how the Liberal Democrats believe that a reformed (that is, decentralised) state should deliver its social policy objectives and principally, a more equal spread of opportunities. The issues involved, which have never been straightforward, will be more difficult in the new age of austerity. 

 In his Commons reply to the Budget, Nick Clegg called for:

“a national debate about what the state can and cannot afford in the future, not Whitehall salami slicing today. That is the responsible way—the honest way—to reduce spending in the years ahead and avoid painful higher taxes.”

I can't see how anyone can disagree, but then George Osborne also says he wants this sort of discussion. Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems need to say what they will bring to a national debate on the role of the state. Better still, we should lead it, otherwise a big opportunity will be lost. 

So, where does Nick want to take the great debate on the role of the state? And will the party follow?

Narrativewatch: Canada's deficit cuts are not a simple story for UK politicians

As the prime minister, David Cameron warns of the need for massive spending cuts to bring down the UK's huge public deficit, the coalition is citing the experience of Canada's Liberal government during the 1990s. In 1992, Canada had a budget deficit of 9% of GDP. By 1997, they were showing a surplus. When they were in opposition, senior Conservatives studied the Canadian experience in some detail.

At the weekend, deputy PM Nick Clegg praised the way the Canadian Liberals consulted the public over where to make cuts -

"taking the people with them".

This is a political version of what Stephen Denning calls a springboard story:

a story that enables a leap in understanding by the audience so as to grasp how an organization or community or complex system may change.

He explains:

A springboard story has an impact not so much through transferring large amounts of information, but through catalyzing understanding. It enables listeners to visualize from a story in one context what is involved in a large-scale transformation in an analogous context.

But springboard stories need to be handled with care. There's usually more to them than the politicians let on, or understand. And context is key.

Today, the FT recounts how external developments - low interest rates, a rebounding global economy and a falling Canadian dollar - helped the country's numbers to come right.

Larry Elliott of The Guardian has described some of the differences between Canada's economy then and the UK's now:

Canada was aided by the pick-up in the global economy in the 1990s, and especially the strong US expansion. Britain does not have a fast-growing US for a neighbour: it has a eurozone mired in crisis.

There are other reasons why the Canadian experience may not be exported so easily. Today, The Guardian's Heather McRobie points to some important political-cultural distinctions. She says that the Canadian government took a comprehensive approach to deficit-cutting, with a high level of co-ordination between departments. She doubts that this country's Conservative-dominated coalition government could do the same.

Neil O'Brien of Policy Exchange has stressed that the Canadian government took a consistent, "no exemptions" approach -- and devolved responsibility for finding savings to officials. The latter would be a major departure for the UK's centralised model of government. O'Brien also points out that the size of the UK deficit gives the coalition a much bigger mountain to climb than Canada faced.

Yesterday, the Daily Telegraph highlighted the downsides of what happened in Canada:

The science budget was halved, while agricultural subsidies, overseas aid and transport were also badly hit . . .

. . . As provincial governments saw their health grants slashed, thousands of nurses were sacked and hospital waiting times soared. The shortage of new buildings also led to overcrowding and higher infection rates on wards.

But a report from The Times last year gives a somewhat different perspective:

. . .the federal administration of the Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, a Conservative [sic] elected in 1993 . . . targeting the cuts carefully and calling on different departments to make very different sacrifices.

There were big cuts in fisheries (22 per cent), defence (more than 15 per cent), transport (50 per cent) and international aid (20 per cent) departments but benefits for the elderly increased by 15 per cent over six years and spending on aboriginal peoples and children rose by around 10 per cent.

[In May 2009, David Halpern of the Institute of Government developed some of these points in more detail.]

Perhaps we should be wary of the way UK commentators can cherry pick factoids from other countries' experiences (that is, tell stories). I speak from experience -- I sometimes think that New Zealand post-1984 has been used to back up every policy argument in the UK.

Here's another example. Andrew Sparrow of The Guardian has used an anecdote of how at least one hospital in Canada was blown up. But this was done under the provincial government in Alberta, which had targeted health and education spending.

Nick Clegg may have been on safer ground when he stuck to the way Canada's Liberals managed the politics of fiscal consolidation. Last year, Brian Tobin, another former Liberal minister who was involved in the Canadian deficit cutting exercise, was asked what were the lessons for the UK. His main conclusion:

"What needs to be done...is to speak frankly, openly and honestly.

"Don't try to over-simplify the issue. Don't try to put all the blame on the previous administration. Because if you're in a fiscal mess, it's often generational or structural."

This level of candour will be a new experience for UK politicians and voters. All the major parties were slated during the campaign for not being straight with people about the deficit and their plans to reduce it -- although I have to say the Liberal Democrats came off more lightly than the others.

Still, coalition ministers will need to get their narratives in order, and quickly. In today's FT, Paul Martin, who was Canada's finance minister in the 1990s, agrees that informing and consulting the public were hugely important elements in his success. But the article also points out that:

events beyond Canada's borders helped. The Mexican debt crisis broke just two months before Mr Martin was due to deliver his belt-tightening budget in early 1995. Canadians were jolted by a much-quoted Wall Street Journal editorial that described the Canadian dollar as the northern peso.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley

Pollwatch: global public less concerned with climate change than other environmental issues

The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has commented on a new Nielson survey, showing that across the world, more than two in three online consumers are concerned about climate change. That figure has hardly changed in the last four years. But people in the biggest polluting nations, the United States and China, are becoming less concerned.

The Nielson survey rams home a hard political truth: the extent to which concern about climate change is driven by consumers’ perceptions of their own interests, especially the “hip pocket nerve”. As Carrington says:

At the highly concerned end are Thailand, Mexico and Indonesia, all places with relatively limited capacity to cope with climate change and in regions expected to be hard hit [by extreme weather].

And:

At the opposite end, the least concerned, we have wealthy Norway, Australia and the UK, all places that are not yet really feeling the bite of climate change and anxious that their rich lifestyles might be affected by climate action.

Since the global economic crisis of 2008, the UK media and the public have lost interest in climate change, and focused on more immediate concerns like jobs, money and crime. The Nielsen report confirms that global “climate change” apathy has increased and goes on to provide this explanation:

The global economic recession (and its lingering effects on the job market and inflation) appears to have misplaced climate change as a big worry for many. But while half (48%) of unconcerned global online consumers cite “more urgent and serious matters in the world today” as the main reason for climate change apathy, 37 percent believe that climate change is not the result of human behavior and 23 percent believe future technologies will solve the problem.

The Nielsen survey also suggests that people are more likely to be concerned with environmental issues whose impacts they can more easily see, experience or hear about, a trend that the current climate trance has magnified.

Three out of four global consumers rated air pollution (77%) and water pollution (75%) as top concerns, both increasing six percentage points compared to 2009. The issues of pesticides, packaging waste and water shortages were all top concerns for 73 per cent of global consumers. As a result, climate change / global warming (69%) took what Nielsen calls a “back seat” to other environmental issues.

But we shouldn’t get drawn into an over-simplified politics of false environmental choices - “climate change vs. the rest”. Global consumer concern about climate change has increased, albeit marginally, since 2009. In Europe, consumer concern about climate change has jumped by 10 percentage points over that time. The interesting finding from the Nielson research is that concern with other environmental issues has grown dramatically since 2009 – pesticides (up 16 percentage points), preventing waste (up 14) and water shortages (up 13).

The contours of public opinion of environmental issues may be more subtle than they sometimes appear. The Nielsen report provides no detailed breakdown by region or country, though it notes that water pollution was the main concern for Europeans. In April-May this year, a Eurobarometer survey found that European citizens’ five top environmental concerns were, in order: man made disasters (oil spills etc); water pollution; air pollution; impact on health of chemicals -- and climate change.

For UK citizens, the top environmental concerns were (in order): climate change (1^st=); growing waste (1^st=); man made disasters; water pollution; and depletion of natural resources.

And climate change is not easily separated out from the other environmental issues described above. For instance, climate change is set to put new pressures on water availability in England; reduced water supplies increase the risk of water pollution. Better waste management should help to reduce C02 emissions.

So, what we have now is a global public concern about “the environment”, that is made of a number of issues, elements and frames, of which climate change is one of the most significant, despite the media trance of recent years.

This week's other big election

There’s another general election going on this week. My home country, New Zealand, goes to the polls tomorrow, Saturday, November 8.

There could well be a change of government. Labour’s Helen Clark has been prime minister for a full nine years. That’s three parliamentary terms, a very long time in Kiwi politics. On only one occasion since World War II has the New Zealand public given any government a fourth chance. The last three years have been tough, as economic confidence has waned and the public mood has soured. [see here, and here] The opposition National Party has worked at seeming more centre than right and got themselves an attractive, moderate new leader, John Key. [For more details, see here] The Nats have been streets ahead in the public opinion polls for more than two years.

Yet Helen Clark and Labour could still, just, hang on. New Zealand uses the mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system to choose its 121-member parliament. This is similar to the voting system used for the Scottish Parliament. All parties can win a number of seats in proportion to their share of the total (party) vote, so long as they win one or more constituency seats and/or more than five per cent of the total (party) vote. Current polls show that neither Labour nor National can win an outright majority, on their own. Both will need the support of minor and micro parties.

If they do well enough on Saturday, Labour could combine with the Progressives (current coalition partners), the Greens (who support the government on confidence issues) and, possibly, the Maori Party, and have enough seats to form a government. Since 2005, Labour has partly relied on NZ First, a populist, poujadist party whose support based is skewed towards older voters, but they seem unlikely to clear the 5 per cent hurdle this time. (For a more detailed guide to the system and this year’s arithmetic, click here.)

But the latest poll (and this one, just in) suggests that National and its allies ACT, a boutique party for market liberals, and the centrist United Future, should win a small but workable majority. Key may not need to deal with the Maori Party, but it will be tight. For more analysis of the polls, see here. For Jafapete’s prediction, see here.

A few thoughts from afar on how the parties have marketed themselves. Labour’s election policies (no, they are not a “manifesto”) are true to that party’s dominant social liberal philosophy. Helen Clark has described her personal political outlook, for a fairer New Zealand that leads the world on climate change (click here) . All of that would appeal to most UK Liberal Democrats.

Her campaign narrative is something different again. Labour has tried to make the election a question of “trust”. That’s partly about whose “values” line up with most New Zealanders’ and their claims that National has a secret, extremist agenda. [Click here for Labour’s “trust” tv spot] Put it’s mostly about Helen Clark’s leadership. Even after all these years, her strength and her competence are not in doubt and she is more popular than the party. Hence Labour’s campaign slogan, “strong, proven leadership”. Hence their efforts to stress her experience and consistency, and to slam John Key as a shallow flip flopper. [Here are Labour’s anti-Key spots on Iraq and climate change]. Hence their efforts to show that, with hardtimes looming, Helen Clark and not John Key the former international forex dealer, relates better to ordinary women and families. [see “Mary”, here.] These are all heuristics – mental shortcuts to help voters frame the issues. And it has partly worked – “trust” is an election issue. She has been out in front again as preferred PM.

National’s campaign narrative is easy to predict – that it’s time for a change. So they slam Labour’s record on law and order, education and health. Untainted by the last National government, coming from the post- baby boom generation, Key promises a “fresh” approach and tries to embody his narrative by running an energetic campaign. National’s slogan is “choose a brighter future”. This reflects the brand that the Nats are trying to build for themselves. Using Stephen Denning’s framework, they have tried to reinforce the case for change with promises to secure the future, for example in infrastructure, telecommunications, science and education. But they would not overturn much that Labour has put in place. The middle of the road Key embodies safety and reassurance.

“Securing the future” hasn’t worked all that well, as this article by the respected pundit Colin James says.

[Otago University’s] Phil Harris contrasts Labour's consistency in attacking Key as a new boy, not yet qualified to govern and vacillating on policy, with National's lack of consistency and purpose. "I have been surprised, given the resources National has, how amateurish it has been. There is not enough consistency and clarity of message." So, he says, the building-for-the-future line is not getting through.

Yet it seems that National’s basic “change the government” message has got through. Maybe the campaign made no real difference; with the public wanting something new, all National had to do was look safe. And Key has at least held his own against Helen Clark. Click here for the latest preferred prime minister poll.

A few words on the minor parties’ campaign narratives. During the campaign, the Greens have reached as high as 11 per cent in some polls. The latest polls suggest that they could win anything between 6 and 10 per cent, or between 8 and 12 seats. They had 6 in the last parliament and have gained support mostly at Labour’s expense. They have had the best campaign. The Greens have plenty of policies, on energy efficiency, waste control, “cleaning up politics” and more. Their campaign narrative is straightforward – elect more Green MPs and, as part of a Labur-led government, we can save the planet. This time, the Greens have concentrated on projecting the emotive dimension of their issues and values, to help broaden the brand. Check out this ad in particular for an astute of heuristics and symbols – imagining the future, making the party’s policies and narrative very personal.

Some Liberal Democrats may recognise ACT’s campaign narrative, if not their policies. With a change of government in the offing, they offer voters the chance to “be the difference”. The message is, use your party vote to elect more ACT MPs and they will be able to “ensure that the next National Government makes a difference”, as opposed to simply having new faces around the cabinet table. ACT promise to deliver very specific policy outcomes to their supporters. The red meat includes “zero tolerance for crime”, “three strikes and you’re out” “sensible sentencing” and “the emissions trading scheme will be dog tucker”. Assuming their leader holds his blue-ribbon constituency seat, they could have between 4 and 6 seats, on current polling. They had 2 before the election.

Other Liberal Democrats or, more likely, those involved in the Liberal Party during David Steel’s time, will be more familiar with United Future’s narrative. Click here to see their leader, Peter Dunne, explain “why you can trust us to keep the next government honest”. He pledges to work “in the interests of society as a whole” and to reject “ideological solutions”; to stand up for the “silent majority” of New Zealand families so that the “the loudest voices” from the ideological extremes do not dominate.

But United Future, on course to win 2 seats (the same as last time), is now committed to supporting a National-led government, having helped sustain Helen Clark for the last two terms. And National is more centrist than it has been for years. How can you make a moderate party more moderate? That’s where Dunne’s narrative really kicks in. He reminds voters that they can “decide what shape and form the new National-led government will take”, by giving one or other of National’s allies more sway. Dunne frames the choice as beween “a centre-right, rather than an extreme right, government”, saying that voters can have his party’s “brains” or ACT’s “jackboot” as the fulcrum of politics.

"A strong UnitedFuture presence . . . will provide a centrist moderating influence and draw National to a more compassionate middle course that will represent all New Zealanders.”

Oh, the joys of proportional voting systems.

A referendum on electoral reform? Yes, but let's think it through

It seems incredible, with these new calls for a referendum, but, in the wake of expensesgate, the cause of electoral reform is back.

The health secretary, Alan Johnson, has an article in today’s Times calling for a referendum on electoral reform for the Commons, to be held on the same day as the next general election. Mr Johnson may have various motives for coming out at this time in favour of a referendum [click here and here] but he is a long time proponent of electoral reform. Other members of the cabinet are known to agree with him.

Yesterday’s Observer supported reform, arguing that “the expenses scandal . . . has exposed the underlying illegitimacy of a parliament stuffed with complacent lifers in safe seats.” The same paper featured a letter from a variety of politicos, authors, artists, NGO leaders and others, with backgrounds across the political spectrum, demanding a binding referendum, to be included on the next general election ballot paper, on whether to adopt a more proportional electoral system. The Electoral Reform Society is running a campaign for such a vote. After years of near-silence, Liberal Democrats are back on the case.

MPs should be chosen using a proportional voting system. Not because “fair votes” would magically transform British politics or cure the nation’s ills. But it would be the key to strengthening the Commons as against the executive. We could have a parliament that better reflects the range of political viewpoints in the UK. Other countries’ experiences suggest that a change to PR would speed up (but not guarantee) the election of MPs who reflect the UK’s gender and ethnic diversity. In time, government policies may be more responsive to the needs of particular groups. That includes the poorest members of society, who tend not to vote or live in marginal constituencies.

There are good reasons for supporters of reform to welcome the new calls for a referendum, as the only democratic, legitimate and practical way of achieving change in the electoral system. On the basis of New Zealand’s experience in 1992/93 [click here and here], I have long argued that British voters would only opt for change when they were furious with politicians from both the main political parties and saw a chance to get even. People are now angry with the whole political “establishment”, and with a depth of feeling we have not seen before. Recalling the Obama administration’s mantra, “never waste a good crisis”, it’s hardly surprising that long-time electoral reformers sense a golden opportunity to achieve their aims.

But I fear that Britain's electoral reformers are, once again, going to be disappointed with these new calls for a referendum. One reason is the lack of clarity around what the public would be invited to vote on and how the choices would be arrived at.

The ERS wants “a referendum on electoral reform to appear on the ballot at the next general election”. It’s wise at this stage to call for “reform” rather than getting bogged down in the details of rival forms of proportional electoral systems.

If the referendum is to be legally binding – that is, on parliament – the ballot paper will have to give the options: first-past-the-post or a specific alternative. Supporters of reform need to know what they are campaigning for. Straight away, a basic, strategic dilemma opens up. Alan Johnson supports the “AV plus” system that was recommended by the Jenkins Commission. But the ERS officially supports the single transferable vote (STV). So do the Lib Dems. One of the main lessons from both New Zealand, and Scotland’s constitutional shake-up is that a proposed new reforms must have cross-party support. The Jenkins formula surely stands a better chance of gaining acceptance from Labour MPs and activists. It is not, however, a perfectly “proportional” system. STV meets this standard, but may be a harder sell. [For more details and a quick sample of how deeply some opinions are held, click on to Costigan Quist’s blog here and read the comments]

How to resolve this dilemma? The letter to The Observer suggests that the public would vote on whether to switch to a “more proportional electoral system [to] be drawn up by a large jury of randomly selected citizens, given the time and information to deliberate on what voting system and other changes would make Parliament more accountable to citizens.” But it would take time, perhaps many months, to complete this process, including passing the legislation required to set in train a binding referendum.

And here’s the real rub: with less than a year to go until the general election (assuming it’s held in May 2010), time is not on the reformers’ side. The outcome of a “citizens jury” may not, in the end, be credible. Tainted or not, MPs from all parties need to buy into the process and a citizens jury – still a relatively unfamiliar concept - may not be acceptable to them. Another option is to have another full-blown commission to study the options. That would take at least a year to complete. One of Alan Johnson’s strongest arguments today is that “the heavy lifting has already been done” by the Jenkins Commission. He adds that nothing has fundamentally changed (apart from the public getting much angrier with politicians) since Jenkins reported in 1998.

The New Zealand experience showed it takes a lot of time and effort to engage with a bemused public, who are more concerned with other things, and explain the merits of the alternative voting systems. The New Zealand reformers’ final victory in 1993 was the result of many years’ campaigning by a broad cross-section of political and community groups. The anti-change forces hit back, and started to close the gap in the final months before the vote. There’s no reason to suppose that this country would be any different.

Make Votes Count seems to have got its act together compared to where it was say, ten years ago. But I hope the reformers will be geared up and well enough funded for the sort of campaign that would be needed to win a referendum.

I really hope that these concerns turn out to be misplaced, that government and enough parliamentary opinion moves behind having a referendum and that Make Votes Count and its allies campaign effectively for reform. Despite being a long time supporter of STV, I’d happily campaign for “AV-plus” on the basis that it represents real progress. If no referendum is held next year, the current calls for reform need not be wasted. Once again, what is sometimes called the “progressive” side of politics is considering actively the possibilities and strategies for acheving electoral reform. A new momentum is building and that shouldn’t be allowed go to waste, as happened after Tony Blair broke his 1997 promise to have a referendum, and then shelved the Jenkins report. Let’s hope it doesn’t take ten more years for another opportunity to come around.

A masterclass in political storytelling, courtesy of Shirley Williams

I was in the hall during the great NHS debate at the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference in Sheffield last month, but have only recently tracked down and listened to a recording.

I suggest that you should too, because in the space of three minutes, Baroness Shirley Williams gave the conference a masterclass in political communications. (Click here – her speech is about 26 minutes in.)

Whether she realised it or not, Baroness Williams followed the key steps set out in Stephen Denning’s book, The Secret Language of Leadership (John Wiley and Sons, 2007). But she built on them as well.

Baroness Williams gained the audience’s attention, and not just because she is one of the party’s icons. Here’s her opening:

“Let me begin by saying, because we are being covered by the media, that nothing I am trying to do about health is intended is intended to weaken Nick [Clegg] and his fellow ministers and the coalition. I think that Nick and our fellow ministers have done a remarkable job and I very proud of them and I am very pleased to support them in every way I can. [applause]

“But we cannot be bound by those issues that have never been agreed by us and in particular where the outcome of the policy is specifically different from what we thought it was going to be.”

Baroness Williams spoke to the audience’s perceived ‘problem’ just as Denning advises. In this case, it was the NHS and Social Care Bill that departs from the terms of the coalition agreement. But Baroness Williams also provided her comrades with a sense of reassurance. Yes, Liberal Democrats, we can drop a depth charge under Nick Clegg’s bow, but without being disloyal. Right from the start, there was a simple, underlying morality: the government is not keeping faith with us, so we have a duty to keep faith with ourselves.

Denning’s second and third steps are to stimulate the desire for change and to reinforce that desire with reasons. The body of Baroness Williams’s speech encouraged the conference to do what they already wanted to do – vote down the Bill in its current form and demand big improvements. She urged the conference to reject a specific change. Yet she still applied Denning’s key principles.

Baroness Williams told a springboard story:

"There’s a long history of the private sector cherrypicking the easiest patients. What that leaves out is the most expensive patients . . .

"No names, no pack drill, but I certainly know of distinguished private hospitals in London that pass the difficult cases to the nearest NHS hospital. That would wreck the whole purpose of a health service that is supposed to be open and equal to all.

The reinforcement (which actually came before the springboard story, but so what?) came as she explained how the changes would work in practice.

"We did not expect a massive reorganisation and one which will fall within a period when many of our fellow citizens are worried about whether they will keep their jobs and how they will pay for petrol and food. This is not the moment to embark of the reorganisation of the most treasured public service in the whole of the UK.

"A combination of this reoganisation and . . . huge cuts, efficiency savings, of no less than £20 billion by the NHS over next four years, to add on to that reorganisation . . . is just beyond the imagination.”

And:

“The accountability structures of the new proposals are lousy. The GP consortia will be able to meet in private. They will not have to keep minutes. They will not have to be transparent to the public . . .”

All this may read like a list of points and arguments. But, thanks to Baroness Williams, the conference lived a bad a story: that after massive cuts and a complex reorganisation, we will be left with accountable GP constortia making decision about commissioning behind closed doors and private hospitals cherrypicking patients.

Perhaps that was the story they wanted to hear. One of the other speakers was not far wrong when he described Shirley Williams as “having the sanctity for the Lib Dems of a cross between the Queen Mother and Dame Vera Lynn”. And Liberal Democrats see themselves (ourselves) as the party of conscience and reform, the progenitors of the NHS.

Baroness Williams finished with an appeal to this self-image: the party’s story about itself. She quoted a letter from a concerned citizen and challenged the conference to:

". . . stand up and be counted . . .

. . . in so doing we will strengthen both the coalition and the identity of this party, for which have all worked for so long and with such devotion”.

Yes, the story had a happy ending: together, we can make the coalition better.

Footnote: I appreciate that Shirley Williams is one of the Liberal Democrats’ most experienced politicians and that she has long been recognised as a gifted communicator. (She was first elected as an MP more than two years before Nick Clegg was born.) But I still can’t understand why so few senior Liberal Democrats follow her example and try to use straightforward storytelling techniques to put their messages across.