Why the old ways won’t work for Labour
I will return later today to cultural theory, thinking a bit more about how it can provide a practical tool to managers and policy makers. But first something a bit more mainstream.
After a conversation about more substantive and RSA related topics, a Labour minister asked me this week: ‘what do you think of the political situation’. This is what I said.
The underlying realities are reasserting themselves. Labour has been in office for eleven years, the economy is a disaster area and the Conservatives have been pretty successful at detoxifying their brand. All this suggests a reasonably comfortable Conservative victory at the next election with Labour’s best hope being that the vagaries of the electoral system mean this doesn’t quite turn into an overall majority. While we have over the last twenty years got used to the idea that when a party regains power it keeps it for three terms, we may return to the politics of the sixties and seventies when the major parties took it in turns to fail to address the UK’s long term decline.
The Conservatives are not very coherent on the economy. Their rhetoric distances them from most economic experts and the strategies of most other countries (including Obama’s USA), but their policies differ from Labour only at the margins of the huge sums now being thrown at the crisis. But the public naturally wants someone to blame for what is happening and the successful, and perfectly legitimate, Conservative strategy is to reinforce this tendency by continually attacking the Government, even when the Opposition doesn’t have an alternative policy (as George Osborne did about ‘Bailout 2’ on Monday).
In this context the conventional politics of claim and counter claim, attack and rebuttal, won’t work for Labour. The team that helped win for Labour between 1997 and 2005 is back inside the tent but, like generals, ageing political strategists are always inclined to fight the last battle.
Instead, Labour needs a radically different communication strategy. This might for example involve an explicit refusal to engage in party politics while the economic storm is raging. Brown’s message might be: ‘I am reconciled to the likelihood of losing the next election. Neither I nor my ministers are going to waste any energy on that skirmish when the big battle is to get through this crisis’.
Along with such a strategy the Government might push to the forefront some of its more emotionally intelligent communicators; people like James Purnell, Andy Burnham and the always effective Alan Johnson.
But instead of this an insider told me the other day: ‘we are basically on election footing now and will be for the next fifteen months’. And at the Fabian conference at the weekend there was even a strange tone of triumphalism about the crisis of global finance.
If Labour tries to win on the conventional terrain of party political battling it is likely to lose badly. To reframe politics in the way necessary means boldness of strategy, directness of communication and a willingness to move beyond the tried and tested weapons of past wars. Given this, I don’t suppose Mr Cameron has too much to worry about.
Voter volatility, party fortunes and the uncertainties of 2009
Like millions of others (some though choice, some through necessity) I am on holiday for two weeks. But I will keep posting. This week a theme will be the current party political scene. Next week I hope to ask what might be the key planks of a new progressive platform, built from the ruins of free market neo-liberal hegemony.
Surprisingly perhaps, the time when a social change is actually occurring may also be when it is least discussed. There is no shortage of speculation about future trends, and soon after something significant happens we start reading its history. But during change itself we can’t see the wood for the trees.
Thus it is with voter volatility. In the seventies and eighties the gradual abandonment by voters of family and class based loyalties was a much discussed topic. Labour’s advances into the newly emerging white collar class in the sixties and the Thatcher’s capturing of the southern working class were examples of a more complex and changeable electoral map.
Finding long term trends is made more difficult by the confounding variable of short term party fortunes. Memories can be short. When I first started paying attention to politics, in the late sixties and seventies, the assumption was that Labour and Conservative took it in turns to try (and fail) to arrest Britain’s economic decline. If the current crisis turns out to be the beginning of a longer term weakening of the UK’s performance perhaps we will go back to parties taking in turns to win elections.
After 18 years of Conservative Government and, at least, twelve years of Labour rule we have fallen into the habit of assuming that party fortunes ebb and flow in long tides. So when Gordon Brown was twenty five points behind last summer there was much talk of Labour being out of power for a generation.
But there can surely be no doubting the biggest political trend of the last eighteen months; voter volatility. Very few people predicted that Gordon Brown would get the bounce that took him to the verge of an early election in September ’07, virtually no one predicted that this would be followed just a few months later by Labour plumbing unprecedented depths in opinion polls and by-elections, and absolutely no one guessed that the one thing Brown needed to get him back into electoral contention was an economic recession. At present, not only do party standings vary hugely from poll to poll but there isn’t even agreement about the direction of change. Yesterday’s Observer put much emphasis on the Brown recovery, even though the day earlier a Telegraph-commissioned poll had the Conservative lead back up to a healthy eight points.
There could be several overlapping explanations for these wild swings. It might simply be that the Parties are well matched. Voters find it hard to like Brown but want his experience and perceived solidity in a crisis; Cameron is easier to get on with but isn’t convincing when events, not his spin doctors, are setting the agenda. Could it also be that both leaders are less appealing when they are on top and more impressive when they are in fight back mode?
But these factors only matter because so many voters are so willing so often to change their preferences. In the teeth of the most severe economic downturn for eighty years, despite the persistence of social need, with a world facing monumentous choices it seems we decide our party affiliations at a similar intellectual depth – but much less pleasure – than we opted for Tom Chambers over Rachel Stevens (given that Stevens had been the long term favourite, how long before a Number Ten spin doctors dubs Gordon Brown the Tom Chambers of party politics?)
Party strategists – always required to be upbeat in their public assessments – will tell you there is something more profound taking place below the surface. Conservatives believe that the desire for change and the antipathy to Gordon Brown are the fundamentals. Labour in contrast claims Brown has been rehabilitated while Cameron is only a couple of unconvincing performances short of becoming the Conservative Neil Kinnock; ‘just not up to the job, old boy’ as a Tory relative told me correctly predicting Labour’s 1992 debacle.
Having, arguably, had only two big pendulum swing between 1979 and 2006 (in 1982/3 and 1993/4) we have had three in the last eighteen months. Who is to say there won’t be more in the next eighteen months? No one can be sure who will win the next election, and all things considered, this is pretty good news for Labour.
Welfare reform – our confused attitudes
Just because I’ve lost my job doesn’t mean I’m ‘unemployed’.
On Wednesday I asked why it is that Labour strategists believe people are becoming ever more censorious towards unemployed benefit claimants, a belief which is borne out by opinion polls. The psychology seems counter-intuitive; surely as more people lose jobs through no fault of their own, they should become more sympathetic to other unemployed people?
The answer may lie in the combination of cognitive dissonance and the proven tendency of normally-adjusted people to view themselves more positively than they view others.
Cognitive dissonance is what we experience when reality conflicts with our beliefs. The theory predicts that we are as likely to respond to such dissonance by changing our view of reality as by reforming our beliefs.
What Jonathan Haidt has called the ‘rose coloured mirror’ is the way we systematically assume we are better than other people. On a whole array of questions (for example, whether we are good drivers), the overwhelming majority of respondents – usually about 90% – claim they are ‘above average’. But this optimism does not extend to others, not even our nearest and dearest. We are good at predicting the performance and behaviour of everyone else but ourselves.
Put this together – and growing hostility to welfare claimants is neatly explained. People who have thought themselves safe in their jobs and as being ‘too good’ to end up on benefits suddenly find themselves at risk of unemployment. This causes cognitive dissonance. One way to resolve this dissonance is for them to believe that even if they do lose their jobs they will still be better than other people on benefits.
So, the more difficult it is for us objectively to distinguish ourselves from those we have previously looked down upon, the more our belief system has to maintain that distance for us.
To keep ourselves feeling good we have to think badly of others.
This is a doubly baleful aspect of our psychological makeup: first, because it is delusional and hypocritical; second, because it is ultimately self-defeating. Just like when you realise you have grown up into the kind of person you promised you would never be, there comes a point when we can no longer distance ourselves from people who share our plight. At which point our carefully cultivated disdain of others is turned on ourselves.
Obama transition advice
‘A new dawn has broken has it not?’ said Tony Blair on May 2nd 1997. Those of us who were part of the New Labour team win will find our excitement at Barack Obama’s victory tinged with poignant memories of eleven years ago and an urgent desire to warn of the perils of sky high expectations.
We already know that Barack Obama is a very special man. He has had to overcome personal and social hurdles higher than those that faced Tony Blair. And America is a very different country to the UK, with power more dispersed at the centre and in the states. But with Capitol Hill in the Democrats’ hands, and the Republicans about to enter several years of soul searching, Obama does have scope to deliver the change he promised. So what are the lessons of New Labour that the advisors to President Elect Obama should heed?
- Being in power is different to campaigning for power. Some of the best people in the fight to win office lack the patience, gravitas or personal skills to be in office. Obama will need to have some tough conversations with some good friends. The message needs to change and the way of telling it too. As former New York Governor Mario Cuomo said ‘you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose’. Labour lost goodwill when they looked like they were turning Whitehall into a second Millbank.
- Under promise and over deliver. Expectations for Obama are sky high but while everyone is hanging on his every word he has the opportunity to define success. Making grand pledges now makes for great headlines today when you don’t need them and accusations of failure when times aren’t so good. Much better to promise only what you can deliver and surprise people when the achievements outstrip the promises.
- Take the time to understand the last Government’s policies. It is the job of oppositions to traduce everything the incumbent has done. Things seem so much simpler from outside. It is vital to take the time to listen to those who have been inside Government, and can tell you why decisions were made, and which policies (however they may look from outside) might actually work. In 1997 Labour made the mistake of reversing the Conservative health reforms assuming these were inspired merely by ideology. In fact those reforms were the result of deep frustration with other change strategies, as Labour found out to its cost in term two. Iraq is the obvious area where Obama will need to make the transition from campaigning to decision making.
- Do the difficult stuff early. Tony Blair became a better domestic Prime Minister as the years passed. Unfortunately by the time he really got to grips with the job his political capital was in decline and much of the extra Government investment had already been committed. Obama needs to use the enthusiasm he now has, especially on his own side, to make hard choices.
- Don’t be seduced by the new toys. Labour ministers spent several years pulling levers in their Whitehall offices before anyone had the heart to tell them the levers weren’t actually attached to anything outside. Naturally, when you take office you want to believe you can do anything. But power isn’t like that and neither is society. President Obama needs to develop a clear understanding of the locus of his powers. In its early years Labour too often did things to people (local government, public service workers) rather than with them. As a result natural allies became disillusioned and the centre became chronically overloaded. It takes longer to persuade others to work in partnership but it is a much more realistic way of making change stick.
The reason above all why Barack Obama is such an exciting politician is his ability to engage people directly, to make them feel part of the change. This was one of the reasons his campaign was so special. He illustrated this quality – something he shares with JFK – in his brave speech about race after the Jeremiah Wright row. The new President must carry on explaining to people that real change can only come when government and people share ambitions and the responsibility for achieving them. This is transformative leadership. It is the value added great politicians bring. It is what can make Obama the brilliant campaigner into Obama the great President.
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