I take slight issue with you saying that these things reach only a small portion of the electorate; the fact is that ecampaigning is no substitute for traditional letterbox leaflet bashing but a significant percentage of Britain is online in some way….its going to get bigger…..

It always baffels me how underused the web is as a progressive resource…it links us to the world and that should suit internationalism right down to the ground….interventions and developments in this area are always to be welcomed…

Ah, so I am liberal after all. It’s good to be back!

I am “doing it” and what you call the “workaday” stuff as well. And I think you’ll find you are not alone on the latter.

My point is that in all our communications, we need to have something interesting to say (duhh!) and it needs to add up to something coherent. For years and years now, a lot of “workaday” campaigning amd message spreading has been done. Whilst I would never knock that (partly because I do some), we as a party still don’t have a brand or a story, so people don’t have a quick way of understanding . . . wait for it, what we stand for.

On the ground campaigning helps to build a brand, or not, as the case may be. What people learn from TV matters more in the longer term. But we mere mortals could have much more impact if we were clearer what the “story” was.

So let’s not con ourselves into making a false choice of “narrative” vs. “campaigning” vs. “policy”. It’s all part of the same thing – getting our message across.

Hm, I think yellow is cool actually, in that offbeat way. We get to have Yellow Submarine as our song for a start.

Neil S: “Talk to people? Yes, of course. But it’s time to start telling them compelling stories and frame Lib Dem issues in ways that will work for us.”

Sounds great! Go and do it! Much though I enjoy having long conversations agonising about branding and message, my point here was rather more workaday: let’s all go and put a good word in for ourselves in whatever way seems best to us, and see if any encouraging stories arise from it. It would be so much more effective if I wasn’t the only one out there doing it.

And on that note I’m glad Laurence has turned up because he is a prime example of a liberal mouthpiece that clearly needs to be turned onto an unsuspecting world. Once he gets rid of certain silly database-related notion, of course

The London mayoral election could bring us out in force. People will use their second votes for Paddick even if they don’t put him in first place. The vitriol of the Hate Mail, Scum and like-”minded” organs isn’t going to wash in this century.

By the way, although an advanced, progressive person probably shouldn’t be letting himself be swayed by this, you’re really pretty

http://hh-asquith.blogspot.com/2008/03/this-should-be-speech.html

People communicate best by telling stories – with characters, a beginning, a middle and an end and, most importantly, a moral point.

The most powerful political narratives – stories – use some kind of archetype or myth to provide the point. Look at Barack Obama, offering Democratic voters some kind of release, or salvation. His stories are essentially Biblical in character.

Remember Margaret Thatcher, who told stories of enemies within (miners) and across the water (the Soviet Union). So did Queen Elizabeth I.

You say that

“We don’t have to “decontaminate” our brand, or “get back in touch” with our core vote. All we have to do is talk to people, and we’re good at that.”

Well, kind of. We don’t have to decontaminate our brand because we don’t really have one. The task is to create a Liberal Democrat brand. The engine for any successful brand is a story.

Talk to people? Yes, of course. But it’s time to start telling them compelling stories and frame Lib Dem issues in ways that will work for us.

That’s what the Tories are now trying to do by going on about “the family” all the time.

Nick Clegg is starting to find some frames for our policies; for instance, a “better Britain”.

But there’s a long way to go.