Nick Clegg speaks on the environment

On Monday night, I went along to the Green Alliance annual debate and heard Nick Clegg give his first major speech on the environment as Liberal Democrat leader.

Although much of the policy content was familiar to Liberal Democrat ears, he signalled some important new directions. On funding adaptation measures in developing countries, Nick went further and into more detail than the party has done in the past. He also made a connection between the need for robust climate change strategies – where the Lib Dems scored very highly in last year’s Green Standard Report - and policies to protect the natural environment, where we didn’t.

But it was on the politics on the environment that the evening was most interesting. Nick drew attention to the fact that, despite all the debate and bad news about climate change, just 7 per cent of the British population sees the environment as a major issue.

Nick discussed how to build support for the bold measures needed to mitigate climate change.

"We need to demonstrate that we are all in this together, that Government, business and individuals can trust one another to play their part in the war against climate change [and] that Britain can respond with a green blitz spirit. So let’s do just that. Let’s apportion responsibility and let’s make clear what we expect from one another.

"Today I’m launching a consultation on a Charter for Climate Change: a covenant between government, industry and individuals; a charter that will affirm that each of us has the right to enjoy a clean and secure environment [and] that makes clear the responsibility of every agency, company and person to do their bit.

"That’s the way to bring about a movement for green action: to mainstream environmental action in our society.

"When we learn to trust one another, green ideas will bloom because it’s not the scale of the problem that’s in doubt, but our ability to tackle it."

First, let’s be clear about what a new green leviathan can and can’t deliver. The debate about what to do about climate change is, as with all big policy issues, about money. Who pays? When, why and how do they pay? When should taxes, regulations or other policies be used and how should they be set? For instance, households account for about a quarter of UK carbon emissions and new, politically difficult measures are needed to encourage more environmentally friendly behaviours, Only strong political leadership, delivering a sound policy framework that effects market and individual behaviours, can provide that.

And if a covenant on climate change is going to achieve anything, it will need to be backed up by a multi-party political agreement. A couple of years ago, previous attempts to reach such agreement have failed, in part because the Conservatives would not commit on green taxes.

Still, Nick is surely correct about the extent of public apathy and distrust. A covenant could help to make a green programme stick, by establishing at least broad agreement about how each major group of society and which sectors of the economy are expected to make sacrifices and the sorts of policies should be used. Citizens paying environmental taxes, for example, need to be assured that they will receive something in return and that it’s not just another way for the government to raise revenue. Consumers paying higher prices for higher carbon goods and services need to be assured that everyone is paying their fair share. The compact is worth trying.

What this comes down to is the need to frame climate change and the policies needed to tackle it so that the public will engage with them. There can’t be trust, responsibility or understanding if people aren’t thinking and acting, let alone talking in the same conceptual space. For understandable reasons, UK political discourse tends to frame climate change debate around fear of an impending catastrophe. All of the parties now use this frame, even if it is tempered by economic and political considerations. But a recent, well-researched piece by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times suggests that will not work.

In using the metaphor of a “green blitz spirit”, Nick used a different frame: war and the need for common endeavour. This ties in with the “enemy over the water” archetype that has underpinned successful political narratives in British history. On climate change though, people need to see a threat and agree that they can resist and win.

After looking at the latest evidence, the Framing Science weblog observed that:

The challenge is to define the "old" story of global warming in ways that make it personally relevant to segments of the public currently tuning out the issue.

On Monday, especially during the Q&A, Nick argued that green issues are still predominantly a concern of the better-off groups in society.

So there is an interesting challenge for those discussing his climate change covenant: making it seem relevant and owned by all of us.

"Fairness" revisited

I am sceptical about the value of “fairness” as a political message for the Liberal Democrats. (See my previous blog on this)

I have long suspected that when many people tell pollsters or focus group meisters that they are concerned about a lack of “fairness”, they are not really talking about social equality or pensions or human rights .

This is underlined by some Newsnight polling that has been done as part of BBC2’s unfortunately named White Season.

A majority of white working class Britons feel nobody speaks for people like them, a BBC survey has suggested.

Some 58% said they felt unrepresented compared with 46% of white middle class respondents to a Newsnight poll.

White working classes were also negative about the past decade with 62% saying life had generally become worse in the UK.

Now for some specifics:

Of the working class people questioned 71% believe crime has got worse over the last decade, compared with 66% of middle class people.

On housing, 80% of the working class say that people like them can no longer afford to buy homes in the area they live. A smaller majority - 68% - of middle class people believed they had been priced out of the local housing market.

Overall 62% of the white working classes believe that life in Britain has generally got worse over the last decade compared with 51% of middle class white people.

For this large group, “fairness” may really about resentment.

Nobody should really need to ask what that’s about.

When asked whether they thought immigration into Britain, on the whole, was a good or bad thing for the country the survey suggests that opinion was divided between people from different social groups.

Some 52% of the white working class people questioned thought immigration was a bad thing (42% thought it was a good thing), while just 33% of white middle class people thought it bad (62% thought it a good thing).

When asked whether they thought new immigrants had put their jobs at risk the survey suggests that more than twice as many white working class people (27%) compared with middle class (13%) people thought it had.

No, I’m not suggesting that the Liberal Democrats should lift policies from the BNP. But we misread “fairness” and, like all the parties, under-estimate the feelings behind these findings at our peril.

Let's hope the conference is better than the slogan

"A new politics for Britain", the official slogan for the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference, has been bugging me for weeks.

A slogan is supposed to leave the brand’s key message in the mind of the target audience. But this one breaks nearly all the rules. It isn’t memorable. Nor is it campaignable. How many FOCUS leaflets will this appear on?!

It doesn’t impart positive feelings for the party. One reason is that it uses the dreaded word “politics”.

This slogan isn’t particularly original: I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before and David Cameron is saying it too, though not as a slogan. Many voters, if they every see it, will say “so what” or “oh yeah”?

Then we have to ask ourselves, what does “a new politics for Britain” really mean? It may be about the Liberal Democrats’ proposals for reforming UK governance. But we worked out years ago that while those may be right, they don’t have much political impact.

Promising a better sort of politics slams into a big wall: you are talking about how you do politics rather than the results; means not ends. We know what most people are more interested in. As the American pollster and strategist Frank Luntz says:

“Political messages should emphasise bottom line results, not process.”
[Words that Work (2007)]

I can’t see how the slogan fits into a strategy to strengthen the Lib Dem brand or tell a story about us. The party does not seem to be majoring on political reform as a big issue (see above). Maybe that will change at the conference. And yet the main policy paper to be discussed is about health.

My real concern though is about the party may still be stuck trying to sell a “product” rather than engaging with what the voters are thinking about and feeling and, in big, almost emotional terms, what they want and expect from the Liberal Democrats. If we’re serious about having a political narrative that works, we need to listen to Stephen Denning, the guru of storytelling.

If leaders are going to have any success in prompting the audience to discover [a] new story and imagine a different kind of future, they first need to understand the current story that their listeners are living.
[The Secret Language of Leadership (2007)]

By this standard, a conference slogan of years past, “putting people first”, might be a better bet. So might “free, fair and green”, which is saying something.

Or have I missed something?

Waiting for the Obama-a-likes

The rise and rise of Senator Barack Obama is an epic event in the history of political marketing. Politicos everywhere should watch and learn.

Why?

Because a party 's appeal - its brand and narrative - sinks or swims with its leader.

And that's because it comes down to telling a story that clicks with what the people listening to it – the voters – are thinking and feeling. Engaging the emotions, especially hope and fear, are what it’s really about.

Someone has to tell the story and make the connection. That's usually the party leader. It all comes together when s/he embodies it and lends the story a sense of authenticity.

During World War II, Winston Churchill called on the British people to have courage and make sacrifices. He stayed in London during the blitz and exposed himself to the risk of physical danger. He visited bombsites in east London and elsewhere.

Margaret Thatcher spoke to England’s aspirational and provincial middle classes and preached the values of hard work and personal discipline as the path to national recovery. The grocer’s daughter from Grantham worked all hours

In the mid-1990s, Tony Blair offered middle England a fresh start, a clear break from the Conservatives and Old Labour. He looked and dressed just like the people he was speaking to.

So too with Senator Obama, the candidate of “hope” and change”. As I have said before, he offers Democratic voters the promise of renewal, a break from the past. Through his personal story, he embodies the notion that positive change can happen in America. Yesterday, E.J. Dionne jr. argued that Senator Obama is a “yes, we can” candidate who is so powerful because, just like Ronald Reagan in 1980, he gives all sorts of voters a sense of historic opportunity. They can change the political weather.

The Obama story is catching on.

Try this from New Zealand’s left-wing political pundit Chris Trotter. This week, he catalogued what he sees as the NZ public’s anxieties this election year and then said:

For months they’ve been waiting for [Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark] to acknowledge their unease, and, if possible, offer an accurate diagnosis of it.

They have waited in vain.

Miss Clark is no Bill Clinton: she cannot look her supporters in the eye and say, "I feel your pain".

At heart, the prime minister is a diligent and rather uninspiring policy wonk, who has never really understood that politics is not about the head, but the heart.

The voters are simply not in the market for "tonnes of policy". What they're in the market for are tonnes of empathy.

. . .

In their affinity for political managerialism, Helen and Hillary[Clinton] are alike. But, do [National Party leader John] Key's speeches echo our own electorate's hunger for "Hope" and "Change" in the way Barack Obama's echo America's?

Yes, in a strange way they do. Mr Key may not be as effective a speaker as Mr Obama, but his personal political narrative (poor boy raised by a solo mum, who transcends his humble origins to achieve remarkable success) is strikingly similar – and so is the way voters have loaded their deep longing for fresh explanations and new beginnings on to the young challenger's shoulders.

Chris Trotter may be a bit hard on Helen Clark, who has led her party for fourteen years and read the public mood well enough to win three general elections. The NZ electorate may want to see some policy substance from the opposition. So, I am sure, will the British. (Not as lists, though.) Both may be really after some new, younger faces at the top rather than a rendezvous with destiny.

The interesting point he makes is that a party of the centre-right may be about to take over the powerful themes of “hope” and “change”. It's easier when you have been out of power for nearly nine years, The NZ National Party also has a leader with a compelling personal story that could make their promise of an aspirational, centrist politics seem more real to floating voters.

Will it work in the UK? For “Helen Clark” in the piece above, you can easily read “Gordon Brown”. The Conservatives know that the public are deeply disgruntled after ten years of Labour and are talk about “change” at every available opportunity. (The Tory pamphlets coming through my door are even called “Change”.) But David Cameron is no Barack Obama and his origins were far from humble. Athough he is their most appealing leader in years, the Conservatives cannot quite define what David Cameron embodies and how it will click with the public mood. That's one reason they don't have a compelling narrative. Not yet.

She's lost control

Yesterday, Salena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review had this to say:

Part of the reason Clinton is not winning is that her political narrative has been defined by everyone else. In a large sense, her "brand" is not her own.

When an advertiser or strategist is selling something, whether a product or a candidate, brand is important. Think of it as a little index card in the brain that conjures up one or two images that define what or who a product or person is.

The initial image of Hillary is not that she is not Barack Obama, but is part of Bill Clinton.

"The question for Hillary is, what can she put on that index card in voters' brains that is going to make a difference for her in the stretch?" wonders media strategist John Brabender, who makes his living branding candidates, mostly Republicans.

I think this comment highlights two interesting points. First, there are the linkages between a “brand” and a “narrative” or “story”. They are really just different aspects of what Salena Zito’s “little index card”. A story is the engine by a brand which is communicated and brought to life so that people can understand it, both on the rational and emotional levels. The Democratic primaries have reinforced the basic reality that a political narrative is not about listing off policies or values -- “I am a liberal etc.” It’s about marketing and branding and works when a candidate tells stories that engage with the emotions and expectations of the voters, so as to define him or herself. S/he must also embody those stories. Senator Obama has understood this. His next challenge, however, is to outweigh all the counter-stories.

The other is that Senator Clinton has not been an effective storyteller. This point was well made by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post ten days ago. It was also made by Stephen Denning – a sage of storytelling – last October!! He compared Senator Clinton, then the Democrats’ frontrunner with Al Gore, their nominee in 2000, and observed:

As a good student who does her homework and is articulate in debates, Hillary has not found a way to make herself likable. She has been unable to communicate what sort of a person she really is and what she really believes in.

Like Gore, Hillary generally makes her case through abstract arguments, discussing and analyzing problems and proposing solutions. This leaves an audience dazed rather than inspired. It fails to engage them at an emotional level. Like Gore in 2000, she tends to sound mechanistic and bureaucratic.

Although it’s possible that the Republicans will be so utterly divided and inept that Hillary may win anyway, don’t count on it.

The lesson of 2000 is that a presidential candidate who doesn’t how to connect with the electorate, is vulnerable and likely to squander the most powerful rational advantages. She may be defeated even by an improbable candidate with no national or international experience.

Reframing Barack Obama

The anti-Barack backlash has started.

Respected economic commentator Robert Samuelson laments the “Obama delusion”. He critiques Senator Obama’s policy planks and concludes:

[Obama] has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue --immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policiesthat evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the press corps -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- has treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

Alongside Obama the lightweight is Obama the leftie. Try this from George Bush's former top adviser Karl Rove.

Perhaps in response to criticisms that have been building in recent days, Mr. Obama pivoted Tuesday from his usual incantations. He dropped the pretense of being a candidate of inspiring but undescribed "post-partisan" change. Until now, Mr. Obama has been making appeals to the center, saying, for example, that we are not red or blue states, but the United States. But in his Houston speech, he used the opportunity of 45 (long) minutes on national TV to advocate a distinctly non-centrist, even proudly left-wing, agenda. By doing so, he opened himself to new and damaging contrasts and lines of criticism . . .


In recent days, courtesy of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Mr. Obama has invoked the Declaration of Independence, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Franklin Roosevelt to show the power of words. But there is a critical difference between Mr. Obama's rhetoric and that of Jefferson, King and FDR. In each instance, their words were used to advance large, specific purposes -- establishing a new nation based on inalienable rights; achieving equal rights and a color-blind society; giving people confidence to endure a Great Depression. For Mr. Obama, words are merely a means to hide a left-leaning agenda behind the cloak of centrist rhetoric. That garment has now been torn. As voters see what his agenda is, his opponents can now far more effectively question his authenticity, credibility, record and fitness to be leader of the free world.

The road to the presidency just got steeper for Barack Obama, and all because he pivoted on Tuesday night.

Watch these counter-stories over the next few days and weeks. Similar efforts wrecked previous Democratic candidates’ presidential bids. And what is happening to Senator Obama is a valuable case study. These counter-stories – especially Rove’s efforts – can work because they’re simple and appeal to existing voter preconceptions.

Senator Obama can beat them - if he challenges the basic premises with bold, decisive moves to turn some Democratic orthodoxies on their heads and appeal to the centre of the American electorate. Remember how Bill Clinton did that in 1992. If he doesn’t, all that will remain of Senator Obama is his rhetoric.

[Thanks to the excellent Framing Science blog for these references]

Is it too late for Nick Clegg to offer a "fresh" face?

We all know that people are pissed off with the way things are going. Voters in the US, the UK and elsewhere keep telling pollsters that their countries are on the wrong track. But they don’t necessarily want big policy changes. The voters are finding their own solution (as they inevitably do): get in some new faces at the top, without risking policy shocks. They are also more and more interested in leaders from a new generation who are untainted by old arguments and who carry less political baggage than what’s already on offer. Senator Barack Obama, with his offer of a fresh break from the baby boomers' culture wars, is the latest example.

My home country New Zealand has a general election later this year. After three terms, the incumbent Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark (57) faces an uphill struggle (but she will fight like hell) against the centre-right National Party’s John Key (46), an MP since 2002 who became his party’s leader in late 2006. The veteran NZ political pundit Colin James says:

. . . "fresh" is John Key's critical advantage.

Clark has been more than 14 years and two months Labour leader, now longest serving by some accounts. She was an MP 27 years ago, a minister 21 years ago and Deputy Prime Minister 19 years ago. She is long in the political tooth.

Key is still new. He has not accumulated enemies as Clark has. He promises a "fresh start". The potency of that slogan is in its plausibility.

Key is not promising a change of direction. He has signed up to most of Labour'smajor policy positions. His "fresh start" for young people predisposed to crime two weeks back consisted mainly of more vigorous action on programmes already in place.

Instead of a new direction, Key's "fresh start" promises fresh energy in the current direction: some amendments and over time discernible leans but nothing dramatic or unsettling.

Key is able to do that plausibly because, unlike his predecessor and his opponent, he is not defined by the debates of the past . . .

James explains what those were and then says:

Key can plausibly present himself as offering "fresh" politics. He can imply he has answers to the "crisis" he says besets us without proposing radical policy change, simply because he is of a new political cohort. He can even take large political risks. . . He can walk where Clark cannot.

In case UK readers haven’t worked it out yet:

There are loose parallels in United States presidential candidate Barack Obama, British Tory leader David Cameron and Kevin Rudd in Australia.

At the age of 41, inexperienced in office and all but unknown before 2005, Cameron, in his own way and in this political environment, seems to tick a lot of same boxes as Key and Obama.

Nick Clegg is also 41 and still a new face at Westminster. But he came to his party’s leadership two years after Cameron. The new generation of voters already had someone new to identify with. So a “fresh face” won’t quite be enough.

Has he arrived too late? Not necessarily. The last time voters were getting very weary of a government, in 1997, the Lib Dems invited them to make a real difference and it worked. I think that could work next time. But offering a genuinely fresh start means taking large but calculated political risks and walking where Brown and Cameron cannot.