Yes, you can have a political narrative but no, you can't own it

So the US presidential election moves from the gruelling primary election campaigns to a no doubt brutal general election campaign. A lot of the analysis about the Democratic contest boils down to one question: who created Barack Obama and who destroyed “frontrunner” Hillary Clinton? Looking ahead, the underyling question is: whose narrative is winning out: Barack Obama’s or John McCain’s?

Most of the debate around “what is our narrative?” still tends to gloss over one brutal truth: we don’t control our story. Nobody controls their story. One story can be drowned out by counter-stories, especially if the latter are simpler and more deeply rooted in the audiences values or prejudices. Most importantly, it is the political audiences who decide their brand perception of any politician or party. Whether it’s Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems, the voters decide how they perceive us. Their brand perception is set when they think we have(n’t) satisfied their wishes or needs.

Those perceptions are influenced by a number of factors, including media coverage. That’s what makes a new study of the US primary elections by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University especially interesting. For the third time, they are examining the “master narratives” about the candidates’ character: personality, history, leadership, and appeal. The master narratives are important. The notion that Al Gore tended to lie and exaggerate or that George Bush was a compassionate conservative proved to be powerful messages. They shaped how the press covered the 2000 race and possibly influenced the outcome.

The study suggests that Senator Obama has not an especially easy ride, nor Senator Clinton a much tougher one, from the media:

"From January 1, just before the Iowa caucuses, through March 9, following the Texas and Ohio contests, the height of the primary season, the dominant personal narratives in the media about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone, and were both twice as positive as negative, according to the study, which examined the coverage of the candidates’ character, history, leadership and appeal—apart from the electoral results and the tactics of their campaigns.

"The trajectory of the coverage, however, began to turn against Obama, and did so well before questions surfaced about his pastor Jeremiah Wright. Shortly after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate, the narrative about him began to turn more skeptical—and indeed became more negative than the coverage of Clinton herself. What’s more, an additional analysis of more general campaign topics suggests the Obama narrative became even more negative later in March, April and May."

Still, Senator Obama succeeded in projecting his desired narrative:

"The dominant personal narratives for Obama were ones he tried hardest to project, a sign that he largely succeeded in controlling his media message, particularly early on. The most common of all was the notion that he represents hope and change. This was followed by the idea that he is a charismatic leader and powerful communicator. Obama has also succeeded in getting substantial coverage that refutes one of his greatest possible vulnerabilities, the idea that his appeal is too narrow or limited to blacks and elites. These three impressions permeated the coverage of his candidacy. "

There was a catch though -- and we’ll hear a lot more about it over the coming months.

"The most prominent negative theme in the coverage about Obama was the claim that he is inexperienced."

Hillary Clinton got much or her desired narrative across too:

"Clinton had just as much success as Obama in projecting one of her most important themes in the media, the idea that she is prepared to lead the country on “Day One.” She has also had substantial success in rebutting the idea that she is difficult to like or is cold or distant, and much of that rebuttal came directly from journalists offering the rebuttal."

But her campaign had one big failing:

"The most prominent negative theme about Clinton was the idea that she represents the politics of the past."

Perhaps she faced an insurmountable obstacle as well:

"With Hillary Clinton . . . the public seemed to have developed opinions about her that ran counter to the media coverage, perhaps based on a pre-existing negative disposition to her that unfolded over the course of the campaign. "

I have previously blogged about the “two John McCains”. Sure enough:

"For McCain, one master narrative stands out above all in the coverage—that he is not a true or reliable conservative. More than five in 10 of all the assertions studied about McCain conveyed that idea, about six times as many as the number of assertions rebutting it. While this narrative—not conservative enough—might have been a problem for him in the primary race, it is harder to evaluate its implications for the general election. If McCain is seen as a maverick, someone not tied to President Bush, it will likely enhance his standing among independents and moderate swing Democrats. Yet lack of conservative credentials could also dampen turnout among some of the GOP base."

Now for the big question: in the Obama / McCain contest, when it comes to the voters, who’s winning the battle of the narratives? The answer is, neither of them.

"The analysis suggests that both Obama and McCain are heading into the general election battle with less control over their personal messages than they might like. In many ways, the coverage of the campaign has been dominated by a series of small storylines or boomlets of coverage that so far have raised unresolved questions but not yet framed an overall storyline—Obama’s friendships and core ideology, the meaning of his promise of change, McCain’s core ideology, his relationship with lobbyists, and a looming battle, largely quiet during the primaries, over the direction of the conduct of the war in Iraq. "

Now, hang on to your seat and watch the narratives and counter-stories fly.

[Thanks to Jafapete for the reference to this study.]

Nick Clegg offers new snapshots of the Liberal Democrat narrative

In The Independent’s “you ask the questions” today, Nick Clegg offers some really good snapshots of the Liberal Democrats’ developing narrative. He also shows where we have some work to do.

Try this:

“I just don't believe it's about left or right – the old divisions are breaking down, political loyalties based on class are fading away. The new divisions in British politics are about fairness, about over-centralisation, civil liberties and security, the international rule of law, environmental sustainability, and identity at a time of rapid change. Anyone who wants a fairer, greener Britain in which real change happens to our clapped out political system should vote for the Liberal Democrats. As the Government collapses and David Cameron promises nothing dressed up as everything, we're the only party offering real change.”

The last sentence is a story and Nick sets it up by framing the political choices in a liberal (and slightly wordy) way. As I have argued previously, this is surely the plotline of our story for the next general election.

We also need to explain what it is “real change” and how does it tie in with what people are feeling about the country? What does a “fairer, greener Britain” look like? Next we need a good story for that, with set up, characters, a series of happenings, a plot, a drama or conflict, emotional content and resolution.

Nick is asked what the Lib Dems are saying that’s different from the other parties. This question demands a list but he still gets in good effective stories and frames (I’ve put examples of both in bold):

“We're the only party that will cut taxes for low- and middle-income families, scrapping council tax and reducing the basic rate to 16p. We're the only party that will tax polluters. We're the only ones who've stood up to the energy companies about rising prices and fuel poverty, and the only party that will deliver fair pensions for women. We're the only party that will change the NHS so that if you can't get treated on time, the Government will pay for you to get treatment elsewhere. We're the only ones talking about the shameful neglect of mental health patients. We're the only ones committed to civil liberties, pledging to stop storing innocent people's DNA and stop fingerprinting children in school. We're the only party with a clear, rules-based foreign policy, speaking out against dodgy arms deals and human rights abuses in countries like China and Saudi Arabia.”

Addressing the allegation that he’s a Cameron clone, Nick starts with a story.

"We are roughly the same age, but that's where the similarities end. He became a foot soldier for Margaret Thatcher just as I was repelled by her bleak vision of "there's no such thing as society". "

But then:

"[Cameron] is wedded to an insular hostility to Europe, I believe we can't make sense of the modern world unless we do so together with our neighbours in Europe. I believe in a fair tax system which helps the needy, His sole firm tax commitment benefits only 6 per cent of the richest in Britain. He talks the talk on the environment, I lead a party that walks the walk . . ."

Now, let’s hear a story of when it came to the crunch on the environment and Cameron talked the talk but Nick and co walked the walk. Like in the last few days, over energy taxes, for instance . . .

Still story time for the Liberal Democrats

Last Wednesday night, I was pleased to be the guest speaker at the Islington Liberal Democrats’ pizza and politics evening. The subject was political narratives and how they work. This is the second time in six months I have spoken at such an event, so this storytelling thing may be catching on.

We had an interesting discussion, albeit with one or two diversions. Just as with the Lewisham and Beckenham North event in December, I was left with two major conclusions: (i) local party activists and campaigners seem to understand political narratives better and faster than some of the big wheels at Westminster and (ii) women seem to “get it” better and faster than men. (If I’m right, why might this be?)

Anyway, below is a slightly edited version of my speech. This serves a quick quide to my views about what makes a compelling political narrative. It’s also an update of the “Story Time for the Liberal Democrats” paper that I wrote for the Meeting the Challenge exercise in February 2006.

Neil Stockley
Edited speech notes for Islington Liberal Democrats’ Pizza and Politics evening
Wednesday, 28 May 2008


Tonight, I have a challenge for all of us.

The Liberal Democrats – the party of change – need to change ourselves.

We need to change.

We need to change the way we campaign.

We need to change the way that we speak to the voters.

I want to say to you that, as a party, we need a political narrative – or, to put it another way, a compelling storyline that encourages people to vote for us.

Too often, we give people lists of issues and policies, acting like the town criers in the square. “Fairer taxes”. “Invest an extra £2 billion for a universal personal care grant “ “Scrap tuition fees”. And, yes, “carbon neutral Britain”.

We keep describing our philosophies or values – “liberalism”, “empowerment”, “opportunity”, “freedom”, “fairness”. More lists. More rhetoric.

And, sure enough, most people keep telling the pollsters that the “Liberal Democrats are decent people but their policies probably don’t add up”, “basically a protest party with no real chance of ever winning” or “a bit of a nothing party”.

The lists and the litanies may all be valid but they aren’t helping us to get our message across.

We need to start telling people stories.

Like Labour used to.

Like the Tories are starting to.

The Liberal Democrats need what any good story has – set up, characters, a series of happenings, a plot, a drama or conflict, emotional content, resolution.

In truth, we are telling and listening to stories all the time – in the media, on TV, in our homes, our workplaces and communities.

People have used stories to communicate with each other for thousands of years.

If you don’t believe that they work in politics, look at how Senator Barack Obama has come from being the underdog to almost winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

I first noticed Barack Obama when he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

He told the story of how a black man born in Hawaii to an immigrant father – who himself was born and raised in a small village in Kenya and “went to school in a tin- roof shack” - and a white, single mother struggled with a multiracial background and a broken home, gained a world-class education and went on to become the first black man to edit the Harvard Law Review.

This is a uniquely American story of identity and hope – it plays to the way that most American people see themselves and their country. Senator Obama personally embodies the notion that new things - change – can happen in America.

He understands that you convince people, persuade people by telling a story that generates particular emotions; you do that by tapping into familiar archetypes and genres. That’s how you convey a sense of genuine feeling about the values that people hold dear. Senator Obama tells stories that engage both the heart and the head.

His are stories of hope, aspiration and opportunity – “yes, we can.”

Another, closely linked archetype is a transformation, a cleansing by rejecting the "old" and tarnished (in this case, politics) in favour of the “new”.

“There’s not a black America and a white America . . . a liberal America and a conservative America . . . there’s a United States of America”)

Senator Obama’s story is that he can end the bitter culture wars, as embodied by the Bushes and Clintons, and unite the nation around a common purpose. He promises to “make change happen” by building a "bottom-up" movement to create a momentum for reform that would draw in even Republicans.

His rhetoric uses Biblical archetypes, of salvation and liberation.

By telling stories, of change, of a different kind of politics, of “yes, we can”, Senator Obama has tapped into the values and sense of identity of the Democratic Party and, I think, the American people.

He has started where the voters are – what they think of their country and its values - and understood their stories.

Senator Obama tells stories, about widening opportunities in education, expanding access to healthcare, about cutting taxes for low income people, to explain out his vision : “with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all”.

Senator Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has emphasised her experience, her policies, her political pragmatism. By failing to tell a story, or engage with voters’ emotions, she has lost control of her story, her brand.

Now, I have some idea what you are thinking! All this talk about archetypes and embodiment is just a bit too American.

But the most successful British leaders have done them all. Churchill. Thatcher. Blair. And now, Boris Johnson! I know of no politician who has succeeded without telling a compelling story.

Let’s stick with Margaret Thatcher, for a moment. [There was a sharp intake of breath from the audience at this point]

In 1979, she came to power promising to roll back the frontiers of the state, curb the power of the unions and better reward personal endeavour and hard work. Mrs Thatcher’s story, further developed throughout her years in office, was that after the Second World War, Britain had gone into a steep decline, in which successive “weak” Conservative and “socialist” Labour governments were complicit.

By the 1970s, this story went, declining respect for institutions and traditional values, runaway inflation and state expenditure and out of control trade unions were all symptoms of the rot. But she would make Britain great again – the “great island nation” - by personally confronting these challenges and ensuring that individual effort, thrift and success were encouraged.

Mrs Thatcher saluted small businesses and indeed all private enterprise and was adamant that people had to work hard and save in order to succeed; the role of government was to ensure they could do so. Her story contained powerful appeals to the aspiring, law-abiding individuals and families, symbols of values that are rooted in the Victorian era and took hold in the middle classes during the inter-war and postwar years. These celebrate the doughty Englishman and woman who simply want to lead a quiet, prosperous life with their families, in a strong, secure community where the law is obeyed.

For eleven years, this story enabled Mrs Thatcher to gain support for her ‘big ideas’ – cutting government spending and taxes, massive changes to industrial relations and privatising state-owned businesses. Hers was a bold, optimistic story and people, especially the middle class people whose support she needed, could identify with it and see where they fitted in.

Just like Winston Churchill before her, she saw enemies abroad who had to be resisted: the Soviet Union (at least until Gorbachev came along), the Argentinean generals who invaded the Falkland Islands and, as her premiership progressed, the bureaucrats, socialists and integrationists who were supposedly rampant in the European Community.

There were enemies within, too: the trade union leaders who had brought the country to its knees in the 1970s, the Tory “wets”, Arthur Scargill and the miners and, of course, the Labour Party and the SDP-Liberal Alliance who did not share her economic and social outlook. In this way, Mrs Thatcher’s story played on another narrative that is well-worn in English society – “it’s time to stop the rot”, which may be immigrants, asylum seekers, scroungers, fat cat businessmen, dishonest politicians, yobs or delinquent teenagers. Mrs Thatcher was never in any doubt where the rot was coming from.

We can see why this story worked.

Mrs Thatcher explicitly stood by some of the deepest-held, shared values of the British people – pride in Britain and its achievements, the ability to resist external threats, individual achievement and aspiration and reward for hard work.

By standing up for Britain, against its enemies, she helped their target audiences to develop (or confirm) a sense of who they were; they could reframe their thoughts and plans for the future: the need to reverse national decline.

Her story was very easy for people to understand – there was black and white, good guys and bad guys, villains behind every problem.

In every sense, she understood her audience’s story, its way of making sense of the world.

Just like Senator Obama, Margaret Thatcher embodied her story. She came from the very ‘little England’ she so revered. The grocer’s daughter from Grantham was very industrious. Her language and rhetoric often reflected Mrs Thatcher’s ‘black-and-white’, ‘us-and-them’ way of seeing the world.

Ok, maybe Liberal Democrats don’t want to emulate Margaret Thatcher.

But no one can deny that Mrs Thatcher’s story, however flawed and divisive it was, proved to be a vital ingredient in her long-term political success, just as it was in Winston Churchill’s inspirational leadership during the Battle of Britain. The reality is that what Margaret Thatcher achieved provides some clear lessons to show what kinds of stories will strike a chord with the public. Just like Winston Churchill in 1940; Tony Blair in 1997 and, yes, Boris Johnson in 2008.

Liberal Democrats need their own story that speaks to the narrative structures – the archetypes and myths - that people already use. Bill Clinton’s former labor secretary Robert Reich has described how these work in the American setting; I have described some of what I think the UK versions are. As Mr Reich might say, if Liberal Democrats don’t tick these boxes, someone else will.

The stories don’t have to exclusionary. Tony Blair started out by practising the politics of the “big tent”. Nor are the stories inherently conservative or self in nature: during World War II, Winston Churchill played another tune – that of the strong and purposeful community.

Liberal Democrats and our predecessors have used many of these stories before. For example, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s successive Liberal leaders strongly criticised the way Labour and Conservative governments had run the country and decried both their failure to rectify Britain’s long-term economic problems. In their narrative, the threat to the nation (the rot that had to be stopped) came from the top, the two major parties.

In 1983, the SDP/Liberal Alliance pledged to defend the post-war national consensus on economic management (shared national values) against the extremist threats from both major parties – the ‘monetarist’ policies of Mrs Thatcher and a Labour Party that was firmly in the grip of Tony Benn and his followers (the enemy within). David Steel and Roy Jenkins spoke in inclusive language and looked and sounded moderate, the tribunes of centrist politics.

In 1997, Paddy Ashdown and his colleagues slammed the Major government in its dying days for being mired in political sleaze. Ashdown’s pledge to “clean up the mess in politics” was really a fresh take on “stop the rot” - at the top.

The Liberals and Liberal Democrats have often used “Punch and Judy” glove puppets to represent squabbling Labour and Conservative politicians.

If the opposition party always says that “it’s time for a change” and the governing party says “not yet” and asks for more time, the third party invites voters to cast a plague on both their houses. The difference with the Liberal Democrats is that we add in particular policies and issues. Remember in 1997 how Paddy Ashdown told people that every vote we received, every seat we won was a vote for real change. He told people what those changes were and looked and sounded like a man of action.

None of these stories meant that we forgot our principles or betrayed our values.

Likewise, I think that Nick Clegg is now starting to build on the best features of the old archetypes to build a new Liberal Democrat narrative. Remember his speech to the spring conference in March when Nick deplored:

“a (political) system that swings like a pendulum between two establishment parties . . . tired of the same old politicians, the same old fake choices, the same old feeling that nothing ever changes.”

He asked:

“. . . . Gordon Cameron. David Brown. What's the difference any more? . . .”

Just like Grimond, Steel and Ashdown, his theme - his archetype - was “stopping the rot” – the rot at the top of politics, Labour and Conservative.

This leads into a powerful message: Labour may have failed, but a switch to the Conservatives would make no real difference. That needs to be stated more directly. But the end to the story must be that the best way to secure real change is to elect more Liberal Democrats to the House of Commons. This is an updated version of our 1997 campaign narrative, but with a Labour government apparently on the way out.

So: how do we tell a distinctive Liberal Democrat story about making the difference?

Part of it is Nick’s promise to clean up politics and work for a “a new political system for the 21st century.”

As a communications theme, that’s OK, as far as it goes. But in talking about political reform, Nick is really talking about process not results. People are more interested in results, what happens.

Nick may be on stronger ground when he promises public services that are “human-sized, personal in nature, and designed for real people.” A liberal take on stopping the rot at the top can also be used to frame innovative new proposals on localism and decentralisation of power, particularly in the public services. But we need to clearer about what those are.

Then there’s Vince Cable’s promise to make “the very well off pay a bit more in capital gains and income tax so that low and middle income families get a tax cut – 4p in the pound of national income tax” and to make the green tax switch, raising revenue for our package of tax cuts elsewhere . . .

We can tie both of those into the narratives of the strong and purposeful community and the aspiring individual.

We should also tell people stories about the economy. I suspect that fiscal prudence, whilst very important, is old hat now, the last that voters expect. In a time of growing economic anxiety, and a desire for a fresh start, with new, younger leadership, Liberal Democrats should tell stories – before David Cameron does – about securing Britain’s economic future – “the great Island nation”. For instance, how we would promote the new clean and energy-saving technologies can create new jobs and wealth whilst also saving the planet.

There has been progress this year- but there is a long way to go. As well as formulating a story, we need to look at how Nick Clegg can embody it.

I want to leave you with three, closely connected points about the sorts of stories Liberal Democrats should tell.

We need to tell stories about how Labour has failed and the Conservatives would do little better (“flaky” on policies, as Vince Cable would say); the Liberal Democrats are uniquely placed to offer real change.

We need to be sure that we are telling stories about the sorts of change that people are interested in; understanding their stories, where they are coming from.

Above all, we should always tell people stories about the future.

Thank you for listening to me.

Sources

John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher; Volume One: The Grocer's Daughter. (Pimlico, 2000)

John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher; Volume Two: The Iron Lady. (Pimlico, 2003)

Stephen Denning, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (John Wiley & Sons, 2007)

Howard Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (Basic Books, 1995)

Jon Johansson, Two Titans: Muldoon, Lange & Leadership. (Dunmore Press, 2005)

Geoffrey Nunberg, Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte Drinking, Sushi Eating, New York Times Reading. Body -Piercing, Hollywood Loving, Left-Wing Freakshow (Public Affairs, 2006)

Robert Reich, “The Lost Art of Democratic Narrative," The New Republic, March 21, 2005

Annette Simmonds, The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling (Basic Books, 2006)

Sick politics

How many times have you heard the Liberal Democrats patronised or mocked as: a bit loopy; or well-meaning-but-not-quite-serious; or “limp wrested”? Remember the cartoons of Ming Campbell with a zimmer frame? There are epithets for Nick Clegg now too; I don’t need to repeat them here. And you must have noticed how Gordon Brown constantly refers to the Liberal Democrats as “the liberals”. Somehow, I don’t think he’s helpfully trying to analyse our party philosophy.

In subtle and not so subtle ways, our opponents keep trying to ridicule and undermine us. By using language and clever framing, they try to make us seem less valid, less real and less authentic – in short, not legitimate in politics.

This technique is as old as politics itself. In my experience though, the right do it better. I used to belong to the New Zealand Labour Party. Many years ago, it was led by a decent man but he had a high voice and minimal charisma. Popularly known as "Bill" Rowling, he was mocked by his main opponent as “Wallace”. In one general election campaign, a band of tories paid for newspaper adverts with cartoons showing a mouse-like caricature of Rowling caught in a trap.

The past masters at this type of politics must be the US Republicans. In the late 1980s, Newt Gingrich (later Speaker of the House) ran a political action committee that mailed a pamphlet called Language, A Key Mechanism of Control to Republicans all over the country. The booklet offered rhetorical advice to Republican candidates who wanted to “speak like Newt.”

Republicans were told to describe their opponents as “sick”, “shallow”, “pathetic” and “corrupt”. There were some generalities for Republicans to apply to themselves and their policies. These included “change”, “choice”, “commitment”, “hard work”, “moral” and “common sense”. In 1990, the pamphlet was awarded a Doublespeak Award by the National Conference of Teachers of English. But the Republicans finally won control of both Houses of Congress in 1994 and held on until after the 2006 elections.

The same tactics were later used in what David Bromwich of The Huffington Post calls the delegitimation of President Bill Clinton. It started with Whitewater and ended with the then president’s impeachment trial. The whole thing left Bill and Hillary Clinton, understandably, very bitter.

Geoffrey Nunberg has shown how George W. Bush’s presidential victories in 2000 and 2004 were a result of the Republicans’ superior skill at political framing. Nunberg and George Lakoff have shown how Republicans high-jacked the language of politics to push liberals and their values seem outside the political mainstream.

The same tactics are now being used against Senator Barack Obama. The negative frame being used is race. David Bromwich condemns none other than Bill and Hillary Clinton for joining in with the extreme Republican right. He traces what he sees as attempts by the Clintons to delegitimate Obama and then says:

"Hillary Clinton's recent careless-careful mention of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, in answer to a question about why she would stay in the Democratic race when all the numbers are against her, raised the tactics of delegitimation to a pitch as weird as anything the Clintons can have seen in the years 1997-98.

"The most disturbing element of her remark was this: that it chose to treat assassination as just one more political possibility, one of the things that happen in our politics, like hecklers, lobbyists, and forced resignations. The slovenly morale and callousness of such a released fantasy is catching. So when, a few days later, the Fox News contributor Liz Trotta was asked her opinion of Senator Clinton's statement, Trotta said: "some are reading [it] as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama...Obama. Well...both if we could!" Liz Trotta laughed as she said that. Later, she apologized, as Senator Clinton also has apologized."

Bromwich is horrified by this apparent acceptance of political violence and worries where it all will lead.

His final comments might be just a little alarmist. I’d like to think so. But make no mistake: Senator Obama will struggle against vicious attempts to frame him as too liberal and, yes, too black to be president. As with his rise from underdog to near-certain nominee, Senator Obama’s general election campaign – and the campaign to stop him - will provide a once-in-a-generation case study of how political frames and story-telling really work. Let’s hope there’s a happy ending this time.

As for what the Liberal Democrats should do about the on-going efforts to attack our legitimacy, the obvious answer is to make the charges less credible. More tough choices, fewer wish lists. More focus on results, less talk about process. More narrative, fewer litanies. Otherwise, I’m all for fighting fire with fire. Once again, Vince Cable offered up one of our best attack lines when he called Gordon Brown’s fall from grace “from Stalin to Mr Bean”. More recently, he slated the Tories as “a bit flaky” on key policy areas. We need some more of that.

(With thanks to Jafapete for the Bromwich reference.)

Securing the economic future: lessons from the Kiwi Cameron

Imagine this.

A developed, progressive democracy has a moderate Labour government. They have won a record three general elections in a row, after years of unhappy toil in opposition. The foundation of their success has been a strongly performing economy, with stable prices and low unemployment. The government has done a pretty good job of keeping its income and spending in balance. Consumer debt has been too high over the years but that hasn’t done the government too much political harm. There have been many mistakes and missteps but, all in all, the prime minister and cabinet have seemed pretty competent, especially when you look at their opponents. And, as they have often asked, who wants to have the Tories back; they were such a disaster in the 1990s. For years, the electoral “middle ground” stuck with Labour.

Stay with me . . .

In the last couple of years, however, that’s all changed. The good times are over, prices are going up, the housing market has stalled. People are feeling the pinch, worried about their finances. The PM isn’t so popular now and is regularly savaged by the media. After all these years, ministers are looking tired and becoming accident-prone. As for the Tories, they have at last found an attractive, moderate-looking leader; a new kid in town, untainted by their past failures. To help re-brand his party, the Tory leader regularly makes forays into unfamiliar issue territory and ditches unpopular or risky policies. And he is from a younger generation than the Labour PM. To many voters, he looks “fresh” but safe. The conservatives are streets ahead in the polls. A fourth Labour term looks like a big ask.

Sound familiar? Well, the country is New Zealand, the Labour prime minister is Helen Clark and the National (Tory) leader is John Key. But the parallels with the UK are clear.

Facing very similar challenges as they try to take their respective parties back into power, David Cameron and John Key are telling people very similar stories.

Let's look at it terms of the steps for storytelling set out by Stephen Denning. Both have captured the public’s attention. Cameron uses “liberal conservative” rhetoric and campaigns on un-Tory issues like the NHS, climate change and worsening social inequality. Key started out by attacking the Clark government over the alleged level of poverty in New Zealand. He has shifted ground on some policies – such as on defence – to inoculate himself against Labour attacks.

Both Cameron and Key make the case for change, charging their Labour opponents with being past it, out of touch and failing to use the good times to make economic improvements and provide for the bad times. Both still push traditional Tory issues, especially crime and policing but they use softer, subtler language than their predecessors. Both talk vaguely about strengthening families and society and doing more on the environment. Above all, both offer voters a fresh start but without big, threatening policy shocks.

Both Key and Cameron face the same effort at a counter-story from their main opponents. Gordon Brown keeps calling Cameron a “shallow salesman”; Clark depicts John Key as a lightweight, out of his depth. She and her colleagues regularly mock his policy missteps, of which there have been several. He is a novice in foreign affairs. UK Labour and Lib Dem politicians should watch to see if this works on Key.

The two Labour PMs could be on to something. Voters in both countries may want the government out, but they are less sure about the main alternative. Last week’s Politics Home survey found that Cameron is seen as more “fake” than Gordon Brown – a rare crumb of comfort for the PM. Since the local elections, much of the commentariat has been on to David Cameron to provide a clearer vision of where he would take the country. Cameron says he is part of the progressive tradition in UK politics. But we have yet to hear specific plans to enhance social mobility.

The next step for both Tory leaders is to back it all up with what Denning calls “rational arguments”. I think that means that they need coherent, credible, interesting policies, framed in ways that the public can relate to.

David Cameron might learn a few things from John Key, who seems a little further ahead on the policy front. But then he has just a few months to go till the New Zealand election, while David Cameron still has two years to close the deal. Just as the genesis of Tony Blair’s New Labour can be traced back to the way both Australia’s Bob Hawke and New Zealand’s David Lange combined hard heads and soft hearts in the 1980s.

John Key has weighed in to what one NZ columnist calls “the debate on how to turn the country's two-stroke powered broadband system into a V8”. (See his speech here). Later in the year, he promises a spectacular research, science & technology policy. As the respected NZ political commentator Colin James explained:

“It's all about who is the future. John Key reckons he is and that fast broadband to every living room is a powerful symbol -- and, moreover, that he knows about these things better than Helen Clark because he is younger.

“The electoral strategy behind the broadband big bang is to draw a picture of Key in window-shopping voters' minds as an action Prime Minister of the future and contrast that with older Helen Clark, a 1980s minister and [PM] for nine years.”

James acknowledged that this is not entirely fair to the Clark government, who have implemented a lot of policies for innovation and have plans for more.

But the Clark government are at a disadvantage here, not least because they are widely perceived - also unfairly - as being tired and out of ideas. The NZ Labour economic narrative is that they are a prudent and fair manager of prosperity and the Nats were not in the 1990s. But that seems old hat now and, as Jafapete suggests, Kiwi voters may now have banked fairness and prudence after enjoying years of both. Likewise, I think that prudent fiscal management is the least that British voters expect. The test is who can deliver it, who are better managers. Otherwise, the political contest over the economy seems to be about who will secure the economic future.

Cameron is dabbling with his own economic big picture, speaking loftily about “the post-bureaucratic era” at last year’s Google Zeitgeist conference and, earlier this month, unveiling plans to work with Rolls-Royce on policies to revitalise the manufacturing sector. I suspect that some “securing the future”-type rhetoric isn’t far off. But he’ll need to come up with some specifics too.

It would be great if Nick Clegg could beat Cameron to this message and own it. In so doing, he could play to some Liberal Democrat strengths. For instance, there can be no secure economic future unless the UK has an effective strategy to tackle climate change and, with the EU, to lead developed and fast-developing countries to do the same. Cameron seems to have no idea whatsoever about he would work with our European partners. Nick Clegg used to do it for a living and the Lib Dems should be more credible than the Tories on EU relations. Then there are the big opportunities offered by the new clean and energy-saving technologies to create new jobs and wealth whilst also saving the planet. The Lib Dems could make more of these, to carve out a distinctive niche and, yes, tell a story.

How about it?

[thanks to Jafapete for his helpful suggestions on this posting]

Nick Clegg - asset or liability? a quick update

Media reporting of the latest opinion polls has all but ignored what they said about Nick Clegg, so here are some quick observations and a couple of questions to ponder.

Nick’s main challenge remains lack of profile: people still don’t know him well enough to express an opinion. PoliticsHome’s five day rolling average tracker (1 – 8 May) tested all three leaders for a range of attributes. 28 per cent thought that Nick Clegg had “none of these”, compared to 9 per cent for David Cameron and 7 per cent for Gordon Brown.

Let’s get it this into perspective: Nick is still a new leader. The Populus survey for May found that one in four voters had no opinion of him. Ming Campbell had same sort of recognition at the same stage in his leadership. And Nick's “don’t know” figure in the Populus poll has been sliding down all year. Likewise, the PoliticsHome tracker's equivalent figure shows a 10 per cent improvement on last month.

Here’s the first question: maybe Nick Clegg’s media profile will not change until there is a big news story, in which he is uniquely placed to make a positive impact? Paddy Ashdown on Bosnia and Charles Kennedy on Iraq could be two templates. So, perhaps, are their respective general election campaigns in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

There is good news. The Populus survey showed that Nick Clegg’s leader rating had risen for the second month running, up from 4.27 to 4.52 among all voters and from 5.53 to 5.72 among Lib Dem supporters.

PoliticsHome found that, overall, the public rates him higher than Gordon Brown. Nick's strongest attributes, so far as the public were concerned, are “likeable”, “intelligent” and “normal”. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent any time in his company. He also did quite well for being seen as "moderate". But his top negative score was for being “ineffective”. On average, Nick's positive and negative scores were evenly balanced – but then they only added up to 26 per cent; the lack of profile again.

There’s an even more interesting issue. Perhaps a third party leader who is in opposition will always be seen as “ineffective”. And a lot of Nick’s positive attributes have often been attached to the Liberal Democrats and our previous leaders.

So here’s the second question: could nice, normal, intelligent and moderate – and ineffective - be what the Liberal Democrats’ brand image is really about?

If this is the story that people think and tell about us – the narrative that counts - then Nick Clegg and the party as a whole have some good themes to play to. And there’s a big, old dragon that still needs slaying: whether the Liberal Democrats are coherent, competent and strong enough to make a difference.

Lessons from London for the Lib Dems

Here’s a paradox from Thursday’s local election results.

Where voting was by first-past-the-post – that is, outside London – the Liberal Democrats won a respectable set of results, which have generally been recognised as such by the media.

Where other voting systems were used, however, it was different story. In the race for London Mayor, where supplementary voting was used, Brian Paddick won a 9.6 per cent share, 5 points down on 2004. He was squeezed in the titanic Boris / Ken clash. His campaign lacked a story. But none of that fully explains why Lib Dem supporters did not give him their first preference votes. According to an eve-of-poll YouGov survey, two out of three Lib Dem identifiers voted for Ken or Boris or other candidates. It seems that many just didn’t get that they could vote “with their conscience” with their first preference, while using the second preference more pragmatically.

In the London Assembly, which is elected using the Additional Member System [note to NZ readers: it’s very much like MMP], the Lib Dems went from five assembly members down to three Our total vote share dropped by nearly seven points, to 11 per cent. And yet constituency candidates achieved an average of 14 per cent, with none being elected.

Despite years of campaigning for fair votes, the Lib Dems still don’t seem to know how to campaign effectively when systems other than first-past-the-post are used. I believe that the party’s campaigns need to go back to basics when it comes to explaining how the voting systems work and how people can make their choices count. Our supporters can use the party list vote to elect more Lib Dems to the London Assembly. But that didn’t seem to feature in our campaign.

People can give us their party votes because they like what the Lib Dems say and do. There could be other reasons to back the party. For there was an especially stomach churning result on Thursday: the election of a British National Party (BNP) candidate to the London Assembly, off the party list.

What can the Lib Dems do about it? For a start, we could dust off some of the Australian Democrats’ old campaign materials and see what can be applied in London. In 1998, the Australian Democrats were campaigning to hold their Senate seats in a PR (STV) election. Their main rival in some states, apart from the Greens, was Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which wanted to drastically cut immigration, as well as ending multicultural policies. Once you assumed that the two parties would win the first few Senate seats, it came down to who people really wanted to hold the balance of power in the Senate. So the Democrats invited their sympathisers, plus anyone else who had no truck with Pauline Hanson, to keep her out. The slogan was “Vote Democrat to stop One Nation dividing Australia.” It worked.

The voting systems are different, but the basic arithmetic is much the same.

The Lib Dems may have an opportunity – or a duty – to try a similar tactic.