There have been a couple of posts recently on where campaigning ideas should come from and whether those campaigns can be directed centrally, first from Scott Hill and then from Robin McGhee And another, which I refuse to link to because it does not appear to publish comments, mocked us for our backwardness in brand management.
Campaigning and not policy is the life blood of Liberal Democrat politics. A policy however right or valuable is inanimate. A campaign establishes connections and energizes movement. That is perhaps why you cannot chose for Liberal Democrats THE campaign they should be waging in March in 2012 or in any other month for that matter. That was the lesson I learnt when an acting Chief Executive of ALDC in the late 1980s.
So, when the Party did appallingly in the 1988 Euro-election (5%), I invited forty of the best campaigners in the Party to a weekend in Hebden Bridge to devise a series of campaigns. Not a single campaign, no, eighteen I think were devised over the weekend, written up during the week, printed and put on sale by Friday. Paul Burstow, then an ALDC field officer, came up with the overarching theme and title of the ‘pack’ that rapidly sold out at the ’88 Brighton Conference. He said, “How about Putting People First”. We groaned at the lack of novelty, but he was right.
What also was right was our belief that we should not seek to identify a single campaign and expect the Party at large to take it up. It was fascinating to see (from the copies of the actual campaigns sent to HB) how and when each campaign was used. They had a life of their own – a life that gained force from communities in which they were conducted. Some were obviously put away for another day and cropped up months later when they suited the particular campaigners in their particular communities. This is why we like to choose our campaigns for ourselves. It is our interpretation of active citizenship: ‘I am a citizen, therefore, I campaign.’
We also think that helping others learn to be more effective campaigners helps the community as a whole. The act of being involved in a campaign transforms experience forever. It is the equivalent of giving someone a fishing rod and teaching them how to fish. I fear today too many are dependent on aid flights from ALDC or the Campaigns Department.
This is another reason why we would not want to be a party that campaigns on X in the month of Y, each and every time someone blows a whistle. The moment campaigning becomes just an election technique it loses much of its real worth. It is therefore the drive to campaign as much as the quality of the campaigning resources that matters and there are so many issues to campaign on at the moment which we just aren’t ‘fighting’ – I say fighting, because campaigning is a forceful activity – that’s why it’s called a campaign. It is also why I am suspicious of those who want a central brand for the Liberal Democrats. Such people think in terms of commercial product or service and that’s a trap for an institution as gloriously diverse as ours. “How do you brand a Party like Maria?”
Our essence is not actually capable of being described as if it were a beer or an insurance company. That is not to deny we have a brand and that we need to develop its power as a communications device to win further support for our campaigns. It is just that I don’t think these people can ‘get’ us and so want to change us to fit their preconceptions.Our essence is, I think, about the relationships our campaigners have with their communities and constituencies. That is the source of its diversity.
Part of that relationship is the independent-mindedness and sense of anti-establishment that is in our natures, such unfitting material for management gurus. And it is the palpable belief we show in the communities we belong to and our values, the wider adoption of which, we believe would enhance the quality of life, the liberties and the life chances enjoyed by those in our communities.
But that is no good for government, I hear you say? Why not? What is wrong with a government that is anti-establishment – one that campaigns against all abuses of power, even its own? How can you stay on message? Well, that is our message. But you don’t have a brand enforcement department? That is our message too. You say one thing here and another there? Because they are different places.
Our brand is the sweat of our campaigners’ efforts. The confusion and loss of support occurs when campaigners take office and think they need to rebrand themselves.
* Bill le Breton is a former Chair and President of ALDC and a member of the 1997 and 2001 General Election teams
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19 Comments
There is some value in this. At the same time, there are some issues. A campaign mentality has proven frequently problematic in the past few years, because people start fighting when they should be talking and finding solutions.
The best definition I ever heard of a brand was, “A compelling promise, reliably honoured”.
So, although I agree with the approach to campaigning, I think the Lib Dems have a big problem in that to the public at large it’s not at all clear what the promise is. Insiders will, of course, say “liberalism” but then find great difficulty in agreeing what this means in practice – almost every possible interpretation has its supporters. The Party’s preferred approach seems to be to sweep the resulting difficulties under the carpet and not talk about them. However, we have always been happy to have lots of policies because they can be done on an a la carte basis even if consistency is very iffy. Contrast this with Thatcher. Love her or loath her you always knew almost before she opened her mouth where she would stand on any issue which stood the Tories in good stead through the 1980s and subsequently.
When it comes to the honouring part of the definition all Labour has to do at the next election is say “tuition fees”.
LibDems should identify with our campaigning brand?
Partly, yes, because the campaigning spirit is inspiring about the possibilities for a better world. Campaigning gives expression to ideals. Its where politics starts.
But partly no also. Because a party of government can’t hold itself hostage. Power requires pragmatism in the face of events. It’s where politics leads if you’re successful.
I want the LibDem brand to be associated with success, so how can I disagree? It’s just about finding a good balance!
“The confusion and loss of support occurs when campaigners take office and think they need to rebrand themselves.”
No – the confusion and loss of support comes when campaigners take office and then realise they have no coherent programme to implement.
Yes, campaigning is important, but only in the context of a clear philosophy. And in a world when the pizza flyers through our front doors have glossy production values, we need a clear and well-designed image.
That’s probably not a very smart move for Labour, because when they try to imply they are more likely to honour their promises, all anybody has to do is say “tuition fees”.
LDs get to say “Tories wanted unlimited fees, economy was screwed up, and we did the best we could under the circumstances”, and deep down everybody knows it’s true – even the ones who think “the best we could” was less than competent.
Labour’s excuse is… non-existent. They promised not to increase fees and then did it because they lied and wanted to put up fees, and everybody knows that too, even Labour supporters.
“LDs get to say “Tories wanted unlimited fees, economy was screwed up, and we did the best we could under the circumstances”,”
Considering that the Lib Dems made an unconditional promise in writing – that’s when they were standing for election, of course – to vote against any increase in tuition fees, that’s a pretty feeble excuse for Lib Dems having voted to treble tuition fees!
Thanks for reading and commenting
Andrew, I happen to think that the ‘cut and thrust’ of campaigning does lead to solutions. It is a dynamic process in pursuit of change. The campaigner is unlikely to get 100% of what s/he is campaigning for, but it is ultimately a market place for ideas and solutions – it’s a power struggle that does forge better solutions and can help people take and use the power that others have usurped from them.
My beef with the way we use the coalition is that we don’t use our position to demand that we ‘test’ ideas in our communities first through our community campaigners. And then to use the legitimacy that would come through our campaigns to press our tested solutions on to our coalition partners.
Or approach has been managerial rather than democratic.
Liberal Eye, your definition of a brand as ‘a compelling promise, reliably honoured’ is very helpful. Seen from the side of the citizen, rather than from the campaigner, it would be expressed as ‘a compelling expectation’ which only remains compelling if ‘reliably obtained’. Using these two notions we can examine some of the issues raised here by others.
Tabman: what do you do with those pizza flyers? I always resisted the slick leaflet for a campaigning politician. Why? Because part of the ‘expectation’ (see above) of a fellow citizen is that the campaigner is running that campaign from their own home. They know when someone is trying to manipulate them. What it triggers in their mind is ‘duck houses’.
So, a handmade look to material ‘speaks volumes’. Because the medium is the message, it connects better and delivers more. This is equally true for new tech media. You know a corporate tweet from an authentic one.
Failing to deliver the expected or the promised destroys trust. Thus (Chris and Andrew) Tuition Fees was the Perrier moment for the Party. It was the moment a swathe of our supporters lost trust in ‘the brand’, lost confidence in our ‘reliability’. Most of our high impact communications since has confirmed that lack of reliability for delivering or honouring the ‘promise’ or what they thought we stood for.
The Party strategists don’t really mind this, because their strategy has always been that there is a new core vote out there that must be won, and that (what they saw as) appealing for tactical ‘lent’ votes was limiting progress in reaching that new core.
To me what mattered always was helping people believe in our solutions and believe in us as the best team for getting them put into action. Did it matter that before voting for us they voted for someone else? Once they voted for the first time we had a chance of deserving their continuing support.
This, then, was our ‘promise’: Putting them first. Doing things differently. Helping them take and use their power (which others had stolen from them). Thousands of councillors have done this and about a hundred MPs. Their sweat was the brand.
That is why I say that those leading the Party have tried to rebrand us and like New Coke, this lost believers and gained nothing.
“Considering that the Lib Dems made an unconditional promise in writing”
Pur-lease!
Labour is the party of the ‘dodgy dossier’ – they took the country to war on the basis of lies.
It is far worse to look back in hindsight and have claimed to legislate to prevent fees than to have signed the NUS pledge – and remember more Labour MPs signed it than LibDems, despite the fact they’ve forgotten it came in two parts. Because isn’t the result almost exactly the ‘fairer alternative’ called for by the NUS?
So, not only has Labour shown it is irresponsible, impotent and self-defeating, they’re doubly dishonest in pretending they could have avoided facing the issue had the election result been different.
Why should anyone place extra value their judgement? Those are people who consistently got things wrong, demonstrated by the regular crises they created, and they trying to tell us the opposite!
As ever a thoughtful article Bill. Our problem seems to be that too many of our campaigners have been switched off by the performance of our Leadership in Government. We have been self neutered. Yes we need to get our local act together but………
Don’t you also think it ironic that “agovernment that is anti-establishment- one that campaigns against all abuses of poewer , even its own” includes principal disciple Paul Burstow who is regularly seen following Lansley aroud wearing a big grin?
“Pur-lease!
Labour is the party of the ‘dodgy dossier’ – they took the country to war on the basis of lies.
[snip]”
Of course that’s a legitimate criticism of Labour, but it’s not a defence of the Lib Dems, and it doesn’t make Andrew Suffield’s statement any more accurate,
If “We’re not as bad as Labour” is the best people can come up with, the Lib Dem brand really is in trouble.
Chris,
yes, but that was only half of what I wrote.
The NUS pledge was written in a peculiar way, and it’s only after reading it several times that you can start to understand the criticisms of the LibDems are below the belt. The NUS called for a graduate tax, and that is effectively what they got.
The opposition chose impotence by emphasising the first part of the pledge, whereas the LibDems chose relevance by emphasising the second part. In politics nothing is worse than impotence.
Ideally the first and second parts should not be exclusive, but the election result made that impossible. And as democrats we defer to the public.
So you may interpret what I’m saying as “we’re not as bad as Labour” – but I’m actually saying “we’re giving the public what the public wants,” for better or worse.
I think the public could have higher aspirations if it were more realistic about how to achieve it, but our system and method of election doesn’t help this.
“The NUS pledge was written in a peculiar way, and it’s only after reading it several times that you can start to understand the criticisms of the LibDems are below the belt. The NUS called for a graduate tax, and that is effectively what they got.”
The criticisms are not below the belt in the slightest.
The MPs made a pledge to vote against an increase in tuition fees, and then they voted to triple the limit on fees. How could it be any clearer?
As for this being effectively a graduate tax, it’s no more a graduate tax than the old system was. Admittedly the threshold for repayment has been raised somewhat (though not by anywhere near as much as the government initially tried to make out). But the main reason it looks more like a tax is that fees have been raised so much that most people will have to continue paying for the full term!
It’s just no good claiming that the Lib Dems have somehow honoured the spirit of the pledge, when several billion pounds of funding have been cut from government spending and will come from graduate repayment s instead. There is no way that that honours the spirit of a pledge to oppose an increase in fees.
I think one aspect that has been missed so far in this discussion is the extent of the tolerance levels of political parties amongst voters.
To explain – what does it take for a traditional Labour voter not to vote Labour or a traditional Tory voter not to vote Tory? Then compare that against a Lib Dem voter not to vote Lib Dem. My view of Lib Dem voters is that they are far more critical of us and that we have to demonstrate higher standards than the other parties. We have earned our votes in the past because our brand was that we were different, had stronger values and work hard. The tuition fees issue hurt us because we failed to demonstrate the high standards that we set and they expected from us.
Here in South Wales, it is a source of amazement that Labour still gets returned regardless of their record and attitude towards the local community. In the 2010 General Election one of the Newport Labour MPs in the acceptance speech following the declaration said “This is the icing on the cake. Despite everything, we still won”. The message was clear. We can screw up the economy, run the Welsh Government miserably and yet you still vote us in.
The notion that a party in government has to break its campaign promises is a very bad one to promote, even moreso for a party that only stands a chance of governing in coalition. It tells the voters “if we lose, we won’t have the power to deliver our promises; if we win, we won’t have the freedom to deliver our promises”. Who in their right mind would vote for that?
The promise to vote against tuition fees should have been an easy one to keep for the Lib Dems, both in opposition and in government. The road to rebuilding trust between the electorate and the party is going to be very long and very hard. At the moment, I believe the plan is to begin that journey in the autumn of 2014 under a new leader and outside the coalition, but I don’t think nine months is going to be long enough.
@McClusky
Viewing the internal balance of each party Miliband’s position is the most insecure.
It seems perverse then that he has recently been stronger in ruling out any future coalition with LibDems with or without Clegg at the helm – he’s given the conditions for his departure by gambling his stake on an overall majority.
And I don’t think the public can look at the record and have trust in that!
@Oranjepan
Nick Clegg ruled out a coalition in February 2010 (saying if there was a hung parliament, the LDs would only support individual policies, not take ministerial briefs). David Cameron absolutely ruled out a coalition just four days before the last general election (saying that he would form a minority administration and dare the Lib Dems to bring it down). If Clegg and Cameron ruling out coalition didn’t set any conditions for their departure, why would doing so set conditions for Miliband? But personally, I don’t think a coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems would be possible in 2015, as it would almost certainly require the Lib Dems to repeal things they’ve done whilst in coalition with the Tories in the current Parliament.
Even assuming Clegg is gone (and I’m 100% convinced he will persuade David Cameron to appoint him to the UK’s seat on the EU Commission in September 2014, allowing him a dignified and positive exit from domestic politics and the LD leadership), the next leader is surely going to be someone who has served in this government and would be hard-pressed to repudiate things he has just done. Labour will be able to get away with reversing former policies because they will have been in Opposition for five years, but the Lib Dems won’t have that luxury. I think a confidence and supply arrangement would be more likely than a formal coalition in the event of another Hung Parliament.
“Failing to deliver the expected or the promised destroys trust. … The Party strategists don’t really mind this, because their strategy has always been that there is a new core vote out there that must be won, and that (what they saw as) appealing for tactical ‘lent’ votes was limiting progress in reaching that new core. … That is why I say that those leading the Party have tried to rebrand us and like New Coke, this lost believers and gained nothing.”
Quite so. It used to be a maxim of marketing that a brand’s most likely future customers were it’s past customers (unless it had lost their trust by failing to deliver on its promises). So a strategy of ditching past customers and going in search of “a new demographic” (as someone put it on a less thoughtful post) is very high risk or, in “Yes Minister” terms, “very courageous”.
@Nick (not Clegg)
“Party strategists don’t really mind this, because their strategy has always been that there is a new core vote out there that must be won”
That’s not it in the slightest, you’re providing an orthodox conservative analysis that politics is based on tribalism and identity politics – but donkeys don’t get elected wearing a LibDem rosette!
If you’re a LibDem you know every votes must be won, and this should be obvious from all the critical comments from supporters. Your theory simply doesn’t fit any of the facts.
@McClusky
You paint a sketchy picture – do you forget the escalating debt crisis in the first half of 2010? By all accounts Brown was not fully open about the seriousness of the hole he’d dug while he still controlled the flow of information, so judgements made in that false light could not be expected to stand even as more details emerged.
Miliband’s position is very different on two key points. Firstly the country isn’t in the midst of a financial crisis and secondly because he has consistently personalised his attacks, including pointing to the cabinet during his response to yesterday’s budget.
It’s a quandry for Labour, an overall majority is unlikely, but the leader is against hedging his bets.
Anyway, this is a complete sideshow for LibDems because we’re not looking at becoming the biggest party for a couple of elections yet.
“Anyway, this is a complete sideshow for LibDems because we’re not looking at becoming the biggest party for a couple of elections yet.”
Just as well!!!