Inside the campaigns: 'a prolonged exhibition of insanity'
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Version 0 of 1. Marcus Roberts of the Fabian Society Labour psychology is pre-programmed to anxiety. The ghost of 1992 still haunts the party. The memory that the 1987 campaign bested the Tories but the result was still defeat. More recently the spectre of last year’s worse-than-expected showing at the European and local elections is a source of doubt for activists and staff alike. Such worrying creates an echo chamber of speculation over postal votes (no one knows anything) and canvass returns (is there ever an organiser who says ‘that’s enough support’?) which helps explain last minute jitters. Organisers tend to be better at winning elections than predicting results – and the same is doubly true for candidates. This is the backdrop to the strategic situation Labour finds itself in as the nation heads to the polls. That situation has been shaped by five years of decisions and events that have shaped voter attitudes. And it is those factors, of message, policy, organization and leadership, that will actually determine the result far more than eve of poll anxiousness. The great advantage of the final strategic approach that Team Miliband settled on is its consistency. Its bedrock is a bright red, retail offer to voters to “buy Labour” to get an energy price freeze, tax credits and a higher minimum wage. This is expressed through “only Labour” messaging that stresses the choice between a red or blue government and allows for ready-made attacks on nasty bankers, price-gouging companies and same old Tories who “can’t be trusted with the NHS”. Such policy and message energise an organizational model that is an industrial approach to turning out the Labour faithful vote (up to 35% of the electorate) through repeated door-knocks and a great many leaflets. Underpinning this is the combination of sophisticated targeting, tireless work by organisers and endless shifts by volunteers. This is the much vaunted ground game advantage that Labour will test over 18 hours of field operations in nearly 100 target seats. Related: Inside the campaigns: 'Now it's all about survival' Finally, the strategy comes together in the person and politics of Ed Miliband himself. With his passionate hatred of inequality, strong belief in the European social democratic model and faith in a large enough plurality of progressive voters Miliband has come to personify the bright red, only Labour, get out the Labour vote strategy of election 2015. This strategic consistency has been a long time coming. Should Labour prevail it will be because the combination of a favourable electoral system and a traditional approach to message, policy and organisation were sufficient. But, should the party fall short, closer examination of alternatives to the strategy will be the order of the day. The roads not taken include the era of One Nation speeches, in which for a while Labour sought to reach out to a larger swath of voters and the community organizing experiments of one-time Miliband advisor Arnie Graf. Likewise, policy and messaging forays into blue Labour territory of a politics that focuses on faith, family and flag have been set aside in favour of traditional centre-left politics. And the idea of a 40% strategy that could switch some Tories, win back non-voters and inspire new voters was rejected in favour of a narrower focus on 35% of the vote with a party machine designed to grind out the vote rather than inspire a larger movement for change. So as the dust settles after an eventual prime minister emerges, there are two key priorities for Labour. The first is for the party to properly reflect on the results and what brought them about. The second is to thank the volunteers for their extraordinary gift of time, love and labour to the party’s cause. These volunteers, though perhaps a little anxious as they head to the frontlines for the last battle, are still the best hope for a Miliband government. After the fight, Labour must honour its volunteer soldiers. Andrew Cooper, Conservative peer If it is true, as the cliché holds, that it is a sign of insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, the 2015 election campaign has been a prolonged exhibition of insanity. For months the campaigns have all been doing what election campaigns have always done. Nothing has made enough impression to change the minds of voters. At the final knockings, the polls are as deadlocked as they were at the beginning of the year. Day after day, the parties have churned out the same soundbites, framing each other in the same ways. Recycling bins in battleground constituencies are brimming with unread leaflets and direct mail repeating the same arguments in the same language. We have, now, got all the way to the end and never reached the tipping point for which, presumably, they were hoping. None of it has made a jot of difference – not the chicken suits or Ed Miliband masks, not the countdown to save the NHS or the tax cut pledges, not the exhortations that the long-term plan is working, or injunctions that a better plan is needed. The only thing that’s happened is Labour and Conservative voters – each around a third of the electorate – have become ever more determined in their support, neither able remotely to comprehend the perspective of the other, or see the appeal of the other party. The other third of the country switched off a long time ago. They already know – have always known – what the Conservatives think the risk is of a Labour government; they are equally familiar with the reasons why Labour think another Cameron government would be a disaster. They stopped dancing to those campaign tunes years ago. Many of these voters agree with both parties about the other one, which leaves them, for now, politically stateless, casting about in the political undergrowth for something better, or just authentically different. No-one knows what will be the exact complexion of the election result, other than it will be messy and produce a government that is much weaker and less stable than the last one. But some things are abundantly clear. First, British politics is badly broken – perhaps irreparably. We currently don’t have a political party that is able to appeal to a wide enough cross-section of support to win outright under the first-past-the-post system. For the fifth election running the Conservatives will fail to win more than 36% of the votes. Only Tony Blair has got Labour above that threshold since 1979. It should by now be abundantly obvious that neither Labour nor Conservatives can win just by motivating their core vote. Broadening the demographic spectrum of their appeal is an existential issue for both of them (as well as, probably, for the present electoral system). Second, old-style political campaigns don’t work any more. The spectre of politicians parroting the same scripted and stilted words and phrases is rightly viewed by voters as patronising and disingenuous; it is never going to persuade anyone of anything. And while pointing out the flaws in the plans other parties put forward will always be part of elections, if the negative messages are totally dominant, as they have been in this campaign and the previous one, many people end up not wanting to vote for anyone. The traditional communication channels of campaigns have also largely ceased to function: communicating on pieces of paper delivered by hand to people’s homes – an archaic mode – has an extremely low efficiency rate; only die-hards and blow-hards watch party election broadcasts. Third, political parties must be understood (in this era, if not always) as brands. They are defined by their values and purpose; by their character and motives. Policies are the expression of a party’s brand identity. If parties aren’t clear what their brand identity is – or if their policies and positions don’t tell a clear consistent story of their values – voters won’t be clear either. As Michael K Deaver, White House communications director to the “great communicator” Ronald Reagan, used to say, “the first rule of communication is that you have to know who you are”. Not all parties know, or agree about who they are. And once they’ve worked it out, it takes years, not months or weeks, to get across to the whole country a vivid, authentic sense of a party’s brand. Perhaps the election campaign was bound to make no difference. These are long-term challenges. Minds are changed and campaigns won over a much longer period than the weeks of the formal election period. To mash together famous refrains from Lynton Crosby and Sarah Palin, you can’t put lipstick on a pig on market day. Miranda Green, journalist The last-minute campaign dash from Land’s End to John O’Groats in Nick Clegg’s battle bus signals more than one finish for the Lib Dems. With a reduction in Commons seats certain by Friday morning, the party is also looking at the end of a run of elections where all nations and regions have finished with nice big orange splashes on the map, and the party in a promising second place in even more seats. The two constituencies which include the tip and the foot of this island may remain in Lib Dem hands this time, but the party’s competitive territory will be reduced; moreover, the need to focus strictly on a defensive strategy means this is probably the start of a period of retrenchment. The party has been forced to circle the wagons and fight to minimise losses. One or two surprise gains would boost morale, but over this weekend the party’s remaining MPs and footsoldiers will be counting the cost of moving, in the phrase coined by Paddy Ashdown in the 1990s and put into practice by Clegg, from “a party of protest to a party of power”. Arguments to head, rather than heart, have characterised the Lib Dem campaign – because the context that gives relevance to a party only edging into double figures on a good day is one of governing alliances. Clegg spent the first week pitching himself as the better candidate for deputy prime minister than a bogeyman Alex Salmond or Nigel Farage – this is an election without a likely clear winner, the argument went, but if the top dog on Friday is a rabid Tory hound or a bolshie Labour mutt, you had better vote for a moderate Lib Dem hand on the leash. In the opening fortnight, the two main parties had almost succeeded in defining this unique and freshly fractured election in the most old-fashioned terms, as two men vying to be PM with the rest as background noise. Putting the next coalition or governing pact centre stage ensured some coverage, but not enough to breathe real life into the Lib Dem “air war” of national messages. Manifesto week again saw Clegg having to define his party’s lovingly-crafted 160 pages of democratically-approved policy in terms of future deals – a centre-ground “insurance policy” with five priorities on the front page. But the final fortnight has been more promising, within limited red lines – the priorities for any post-election negotiations – became a way to talk about key policy priorities while discussing the scenarios over which we have all been obsessing. If the Lib Dems have gained any wisdom from the harsh lessons of being in government, it is to make sure they respond to voters’ priorities not their own narrow obsessions. So House of Lords reform and other typical Lib Demmery stay firmly on the inside pages of the manifesto, with the mental health pledge. But even here, the substance has ended up overshadowed by tactical moves – the final Bank Holiday weekend saw a red line discussion of the Lib Dem environment platform (an important issue for Lib Dem voters) drowned out by a loud explosion of the myth of a Tory majority being only a few seats. Behind it all is the need to appeal not to those previous supporters who abandoned the party as soon as it went into coalition with the Conservatives, but to those a chirpy Nick Clegg referred to in the leaders’ debates as “fair-minded folk” prepared to give him a hearing. Will enough of these centrist, moderate voters give him their indulgence? In a wholly unexpected boost, the fair-minded folk turned out to include leader writers at the Financial Times, the Independent, the Sunday Times, the Economist and London Evening Standard, who have recommended a tactical vote for Lib Dem incumbents or challengers, to ensure the Lib Dem tally of seats on 8 May is healthy enough to give the party a moderating role in the next government. The danger for the third party has always been not the late surge which David Steel was lampooned for anticipating, but a late squeeze as anxious voters revert to the two main parties – this happened even after Cleggmania in 2010. This time, Team Clegg are betting that anxiety about a messy outcome and overly ideological programmes from both Labour and the Tories will propel just enough of the public (and only in the right places) towards a reassuring promise of stability. |