Neil Stockley

Moving back

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:07:00 +0000

I have returned to Blogger as Posterous seems to be dying on its feet following the acquisition by Twitter.

For my posts from December 2011 to June 2012, please go here: http://neilstockley.posterous.com/.

I will import my back catalogue when Posterous lets me!

Moving house

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:48:00 +0000

From today, this blog will not be updated, but it will remain available as an archive.

I prefer the look of posterous and find it easier to use.

If you wish to keep up with my writings, you can find me on http://neilstockley.posterous.com/.

Why Liberal Democrats should watch New Zealand's government-making

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:46:00 +0000

The vast majority of Liberal Democrats support the coalition with the Conservatives, even if they have deep reservations about some of the government’s policies. But I still hear suggestions that it may have been wiser to enter an agreement to support the Conservatives on votes of confidence and supply, presumably in return for some kind of shared policy agenda. Such a deal, the argument goes, would enable the Lib Dems to preserve more of their independence and identity, avoid being held accountable for decisions with which they disagree, and gain credit for particular policy gains. This is, of course, an option for future hung parliaments. (Over the last day or so, I have seen some tweets arguing that, in light of David Cameron’s refusal to sign the new EU treaty on fiscal union, the Lib Dems should switch to a confidence and supply arrangement sooner rather than later.)

It wouldn't remove all the potential threats from working with larger parties, however. My home country, New Zealand, has used the mixed member proportional system (MMP) at each general election since 1996. No party has won a parliamentary majority on its own – though prime minister John Key’s (centre right) National Party almost managed it in the general election on 26 November. As a result, the country has seen various types of governing arrangement involving third and minor parties. But look how the minor parties have fared.

In 1996, New Zealand First (conservative-populist) won 13.3 per cent of the party vote and went into coalition with National. New Zealand First later split and crashed to 4.3 per cent in 1999.
Following the 1999 election, the (left-leaning) Alliance, with 7.7 percent of the party vote, formed a minority coalition government with Labour (social democrats / social liberals). The Alliance subsequently split into two parties – the Alliance (“bolsheviks”) and Progressives (“mensheviks”). The Alliance won just 1.3 per cent of the vote in 2002.
After the 2002 election, the Progressives formed a minority coalition government with Labour. They went from 1.7 per cent in 2002 to 1.2 per cent in 2005 and 0.9 per cent in 2008.
Having won 6.7 per cent of the party vote in 2002, United Future (centrist) pledged to support Labour on matters of confidence and supply, in return to specific policy commitments. In 2005, their vote slumped to 2.7 per cent and, after they signed another confidence and supply arrangement with Labour, 0.9 per cent and one constituency seat in 2008. Then, they entered into a confidence and supply deal with the incoming National government. At this year’s election, United Future held their one seat, because of the long-serving MP’s exemplary constituency record -- and also because of a less than subtle endorsement from Key who suspected, correctly as it turned out, that he may again need a few support partners.

NZ First won 5.7 per cent in 2005 and entered into a confidence and supply agreement with Labour. In 2008, they won 4.1 per cent, below the 5 per cent threshold and because they won no constituency seats, ended up with no MPs.
After the 2008 election, (market liberal) ACT’s five MPs entered into a confidence and supply agreement with National, which contained some of their policy priorities. This year, the party won just 1.07 per cent of the vote and their sole successful candidate only won his constituency seat after a controversial endorsement from Key. The party now seems to exist on life support.
Less predictably, the Maori Party also made a confidence and supply deal with the new National government in 2008, to secure of their policy agenda. But the party split and, after campaigning on the basis of what it achieved in alliance with National, dropped from 5 seats in 2008 down to 3 this year, and lost nearly half its share of the vote.

Well, so much for the myth that PR systems enable the tail to wag the dog! As the veteran political commentator Colin James once said, the tails just keep getting smaller.

Earlier this year, Tim Bale, a political scientist at Sussex University, described what has happened to the New Zealand parties as the “black widow effect”:

The large spider, after having lured the small spider into a trap, does not kill it but lets it escape, at the price of leaving part of itself behind.

Some of the minor parties have been accomplices in their own near-destruction. During the 2008-11 parliament, ACT was racked by splits, scandals, a leadership coup and ended up with none of its sitting MPs seeking re-election. Even so, Bale’s description is all too accurate. The minor parties were all overshadowed by whichever major party they worked with, and were held responsible for the government’s perceived shortcomings. The black widow effect struck, regardless of whether minor parties had entered into a fully fledged coalition or a confidence and supply agreement complete with disputes processes and provisions for agreements to differ with the senior partner.

And, whenever realpolitik pushes and opportunity knocks, they will do deals. With 59 seats in the 121-member parliament, Key needs to assemble a durable majority. This week, ACT and United Future both concluded confidence and supply agreements with National, as well as signing up to National’s “action plan”. The two single MP parties both did well. ACT’s John Banks has scored some spectacular policy wins for his shattered party, including a legal cap on future government spending and a commitment to establish charter schools that compete with existing schools, with funding on a per child basis. He will be a minister outside cabinet. (For the full agreement, click here.)

Peter Dunne of United Future has secured Key’s agreement to progress flexible superannuation and some outdoor recreation issues. He will remain a minister outside cabinet. (For the full agreement, click here.) Both agreements are drafted so as to clearly brand the minor parties’ priorities. But then, so were the parties’ agreements with National in 2008. Once again, the support parties will need to market their policy wins and show potential voters that they have made a difference -- just as they would if their MPs were in cabinet, uner a UK-style coalition.

Key still needs more third party insurance, in case ACT implodes or his own backbenchers become rebellious. The obvious option is the Maori Party, which has unfinished policy business. But the bruised party is thinking carefully how it will work with National this time around. Over the past few days, it has been holding some 20 hui (assemblies) around the country to consider the options: memorandum of understanding (a commitment to work together on specific policy issues; confidence and supply; “relationship agreement” with confidence and supply – and opposition. Overlain with all this has been talk of a partial leadership coup. And there has been plenty of advice on hand about what sort of bargain they should strike.

We’ll soon see where the Maori Party ends up, but a new confidence and supply deal is on the cards. I’m not sure their process for deciding what to do in a hung parliament would be very helpful to the Lib Dems. Where the Maori Party holds hui to thrash out the options, the Lib Dems could use regional conferences -- if they wished. But what seems to work in New Zealand may not be so easily transposed to the UK. New Zealanders now take prolonged post-election negotiations between parties in their strides partly because, apart from what happened in 1996, it’s been clear on election night who will be the prime minister. Based on the experience of 2010, British markets, media and voters demand a much quicker settlement.

Finally, compare the fates of New Zealand’s black widowed parties with that of the Greens. In 2002 and 2005, they promised to abstain on votes of confidence and supply, and effectively gave the Labour-led government a majority. They did ok, scoring 5.3 per cent in 2005 and 6.7 per cent in 2008. In the 2008-11 parliament, the Greens had a “memorandum of understanding” with the National government, to take forward shared policy initiatives, for which the small party was able to take credit. After running a highly successful campaign, the Greens went on to break the 10 per cent barrier at this election, their best showing ever.

The Greens, having spent years on the opposition benches, courted suburban voters with a "green growth" programme and kept a narrow opening to working with National, in an attempt to gain more credibility, more seats and more leverage. They may have another “memorandum of understanding” with Key, but getting any closer to National, when they don’t really need to, would split the party and fracture its support base. The Greens will surely have their time in the sun as the indispensable junior coalition partner in the next Labour-led government. The black widow effect may well strike them too, later on. But they’ll take the chance if it comes. After all, political parties exist to gain power and make a difference.

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Narrativewatch: NZ Labour Party turns Grimond's law on its head

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:47:00 +0000

According to legend, Jo Grimond, leader of the British Liberal Party from 1956 to 1967, once said there were really only three campaign themes. The opposition always said it was “time for a change”. The government always replied, “give us more time”. The third party was left inviting voters to cast “a plague on both your houses” – a protest vote.

Sure enough, in the run up to New Zealand’s general election, to be held this Saturday, National, the lead party in the governing centre-right coalition, has used a “more of the same” narrative, in a soft-focus, reassuring kind of campaign.

But Grimond led his party a generation ago, in an era of two party politics, under first past the post voting. New Zealand in 2011 is political light years away from his political world. One basic difference: my home country uses the mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system. The opposition Labour Party, who started the campaign as much as 20 points behind in the opinion polls, have defied Grimond’s maxim. Their campaign has told many stories, but none of them is really about change.

Take their widely praised campaign opening broadcast. The 20 minute documentary style video re-told the party’s myths, using black and white archive footage to highlight Labour’s beginnings on the West Coast and the achievements of the first Labour government. Free milk in schools, free healthcare, thousands of state home . . . it was all there. (Hey, I was raised on these stories!) The grainy images were a series of cues designed to spark myths (stories) in the minds of the audience. The video was a political version what Annette Simmons calls “values in action” stories. A record is so much powerful than rhetoric.

Labour politicians set out to embody the party’s narrative about itself. Party leader Phil Goff and his 87 year old father Bruce tell the story of how, after the death of Goff's grandfather, a boost in the widow's pension helped the family to survive.

Other Labour MPs told personal, “who I am” stories. Damien O’Connor is well anchored in the West Coast Labour tradition. Jacinda Ardern took us on a drive through her home town of Murupara, a shadow of its former self after the big economic gales of the 1980s and 1990s.(I wonder if someone in Labour’s advertising agency has watched John Major’s famous 1992 drive through Brixton?) And Stuart Nash is the grandson of former Labour prime minister and icon Sir Walter Nash.

But there were no “vision” stories. The video canvassed Labour's plans for a capital gains tax, tax free first $5000 of income, and retaining state owned assets, but on the whole it was policy light.

This is, after all, a party that does not seriously expect to win the election. Labour has been in the polling doldrums since they lost office in 2008. Earlier this week, Roy Morgan found that 49.5% of voters said that New Zealand was heading in the right direction and 31% said it’s heading in the wrong direction.

Even if there is little appetite for change, Labour wants to be a credible contender in 2014. This time, the best way to avoid a wipeout is to shore up and bring out the core vote. Hence the invocation of the party’s myths and legends.

Labour has plenty of policies. They have promised to raise the pension age and to make KiwiSaver compulsory. These are bold and, in many ways, risky stances, but then the party had nothing to lose. And remember, “attracting attention” is the first of Stephen Denning’s key steps for inspiring action.

Labour has not been able to move on to Denning’s next two steps – “stimulate desire for change” and “back it up it with reasons”. Before making the case for the Labour alternative, they needed to tell voters why the National-led government should be sent packing after just one term. The ad attacking National’s economic record contain some killer stats – but they are lists, not stories, and are less memorable as a result. (For a devastatingly effective “case for change” advert from New Zealand’s political history, click here.) Moreover, the tea tape argument – what did National Party PM John Key really say, and why wouldn’t he release the tape – dominated the penultimate weak of the campaign and deprived Labour of media oxygen.

In the final week, with its poll ratings hardly moving, Labour has gone back to its on-going theme – “stop asset sales” - and tried to turn the election into a referendum on National’s unpopular plan to partly privatise four state-owned energy companies and Air New Zealand. That sounds to me like an appeal to cast a protest vote. Labour’s closing broadcast is really another list of policies. And what's with the academic telling everyone how to think?

I'll finish with a brief comment about the Greens, the third party. At the general elections since 1999, between six and nine Green Party MPs have been returned, but they have always sat on the opposition benches. This time, however, the Greens seek greater influence in the new parliament, using a smart new campaign pitch that promises "jobs that work for our environment, our economy and our people . . . for a richer New Zealand”. You’ve got it: it's a positive narrative, about change, rather than a "plague on both your houses".

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Pollwatch: David Cameron's "blame Europe" strategy - a quick postscript

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:27:00 +0000

via noiseofthecrowd.com

Leo Barasi has provided some useful context for the Cameron-Osborne "blame Europe" narrative on the economy. Their "blame Labour for the cuts" narrative still has some way to go. But half the country now holds the coalition responsible for the cuts, at least in part. Time for a new story . . .

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Narrativewatch: David Cameron's 'blame Europe' strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:03:00 +0000

In the second third of this parliament, the one now beginning, and whose opening will be marked by Osborne's autumn economic statement on 29 November, Britain's economic woes will be laid rather less at Labour's door and rather more at that of the eurozone. That's why Cameron and Osborne are now constructing a very obvious narrative of continental European failure, from which Britain is thankfully (as they depict it) exempt, but which nevertheless continues to put the UK economy at risk.

In some ways, blaming Europe is not as easy as blaming Labour. Labour is a stationary target, and both coalition parties can unite in dumping on it. Europe, by contrast, is a moving target that divides the coalition parties and emphasises their differences. But the political beauty for the Conservatives of blaming Europe is big. It goes down well with Tory activists. It allows Cameron and Osborne to frame their engagement with the EU as candid friends and it chimes with public opinion. And in particular it provides a ready-made and not entirely specious excuse for the failure of the government's economic strategy in the first third of the parliament.

via guardian.co.uk

In today's Guardian, Martin Kettle has a very perceptive article about the Cameron-Osborne narrative that "Europe is to blame" for Britain's economic woes.

Kettle's analysis picks up on the main purposes of political narratives. He brings out how they work.

First, narratives provide an account and an explanation for current problems, complete with heroes and, more importantly, fall guys and villains.

Second, they enable listeners to frame options for the future and work out what they need to do next -- in this case, to keep giving the coalition, or more importantly, the Conservative component, the benefit of the doubt.

"Blame Europe" has many of the properties of a successful narrative. It's easy to grasp and not completely implausible. And it plays to an emotional reflex that is very familiar to a large section - almost certainly a majority - of the British public.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats will have a hard time grappling with this narrative. Labour's best bet will be to pin the blame for Britain's economic problems on Cameron and Osborne and to argue that they have not kept us out of the Eurozone crisis.

Nick Clegg will have little choice but to blame the former Labour government -- unless he wants to recast his party's storylines about the EU. But will the public have moved on by 2015?

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Reframing climate change: talking about insurance instead of apocalypse

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:33:00 +0000

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, has called on “the environmental movement” to rethink the way it engages with climate scepticism. He told Business Green that following years of "pious alarmism”, green NGOs and businesses should develop a more "prosaic" argument for action on climate change based around its costs and benefits. He went on to say that climate hawks should equate action to cut emissions with the insurance that households and businesses buy but rarely use.

"[People] spend money on house insurance and car insurance and life insurance, and, if what is overwhelmingly likely to happen and your car is not broken into or your house does not burn down or you don't die, it is money poured down the drain," he said.

"Even if you are a climate change sceptic, you surely think the chances of manmade global warming happening are probably a bit higher than your house burning down tomorrow.

"So you do not have to believe all the worst case scenarios on climate change to think it is worth doing what we do as a family and spend a bit of money and make a few changes just to ensure that something catastrophic does not happen."

Matthew Taylor’s criticisms of some green campaigners struck a chord with me. I agree with him that the “insurance frame” is a very useful way of neutralising “climate sceptics” or, more likely, engaging with “climate neutrals”.

But let's not get too carried away. The “insurance frame” will not, on its own, build the political space needed for measures of the magnitude needed to meet the UK’s existing climate targets. These include, for example, securing £200bn of private sector investment in energy infrastructure by 2020; substantially decarbonising electricity by 2030; and increasing investment in renewable power generation.

Over the next few years, the government and climate hawks will need to advocate and defend low carbon policies against a backdrop of rising power prices and tighter household budgets.

Prosaic arguments won’t cut it.

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Narrativewatch: NZ National Party promises more of the same

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:09:00 +0000

As New Zealand’s general election campaign rolls into its second week, John Pagani argues that the following comment by the National Party prime minister, John Key, sums up what the choice is all about.

Mr Key says don't expect a change in style from a second-term National government, should he win a second term.

''I think in a lot of ways it will have a very similar look and feel to it...."

John Pagani says:

It's a consistent message for a conservative party.

He then makes a more telling point, through gritted teeth I am sure:

The right track/wrong track polls all say most people think the country is on roughly the right path. So, it's going fabulously well, vote John Key and National for more of the same.

That's a neat summary of how a governing party’s election narrative works, whether they are of the moderate right or the moderate left. “Re-elect us, and we’ll finish the job”, the government says. Translation: give us a fresh mandate, so that we can keep on doing the good things that you like, providing strong and competent government. More of the same. Don’t risk a change.

National’s first campaign spot is exhibit A. Here are the words:

Despite one of the toughest periods in New Zealand’s history we’re starting to see the promising signs of recovery. Make no mistake, this year we have a very clear choice to make. John Key and National: building a brighter future.

Notice though how the pictures add an edgier sub-message: a contrast between the National-led government with the “risk” presented by the main opposition party (Labour), who are miles behind in the opinion polls. (For a good analysis of the images used and the text’s emphasis on “John Key and National”, click here). And, after all, it’s barely three years since Kiwi voters sent a long serving Labour government packing.

As John Pagani suggests, this sort of narrative works when most voters are basically happy with the state of the country and with the government’s performance and are not inclined to try the main alternative.

Voters are much more likely to give an incumbent government “another go” after one term than when they have been around a bit longer. Tony Blair’s re-election in 2001 was a good example. So was Helen Clark’s successful 2002 bid for a second term.

They both found seeking a third mandate a much trickier proposition. Both Blair and Clark (just) made it over the line in 2005 and in so doing, showed that the quest for a third term separates the strategists from the dilettantes, the political storytellers from the followers of old playbooks and, let’s be honest, the deserving from the undeserving. “Don’t throw it all away” will fall on deaf ears when most voters are tiring of the government, especially if the opposition has started to regain some credibility.

The governing party usually offers new policies that are more popular than the alternatives on offer. Helen Clark’s promise in 2005 to scrap interest rates on loans for full time and low income students was one example. They should also be bolder and more robust. Sir Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” energy programme back in 1981 enabled him to win the jobs argument but ended in disaster – after he had secured a third term.

OK, I’m getting ahead of the current New Zealand situation. For now, it looks as if Key will win, and, just maybe, with an overall majority, by using a “more of the same” narrative, which is itself embodied by a safe and risk-free, if not dull, campaign.

So, where does that leave Labour? Pagani says:

Oppositions represent change.

He’s right about that. The main opposition party usually tells voters that “it’s time for a change”. But that’s not quite the story Labour is telling this time. More on that soon.

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Narrativewatch: Paul Keating's "higher calling"

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:30:00 +0000

The former Australian prime minister, Paul Keating, recently gave a must-read newspaper interview. There were many interesting insights, but the media picked up on his observation that Australia’s current Labor government lacks a narrative.

"The failure of the Rudd and Gillard administrations is the lack of an over-arching story, the lack of a compelling story . . .

"I'm happy that Labor took us through this dreadful financial crisis so competently. But they are not in the business of teaching. And governments, to succeed with change, must be in the business of educating the community.

"Our Labor governments have failed to conceptualise the changes. We need a framework . . . “

He went on:

"I think the Australian people are very conscientious. During the 1980s and 1990s we proved they will respond conscientiously to necessary reforms. They mightn't like them but they'll accept them. But reforms have to be presented in a digestible format.

"I know that in the age of the internet, opinion and perpetual static it is difficult to get the message over. I accept that. But the big messages have their own momentum. If we get the story of transition right then other things will find their place."

I agree with Keating on where the Gillard government is going wrong. But I was more interested in his take on the most basic argument about the essence of political communications. More than that, he discussed the purpose of leadership in democratic societies.

Should leaders act in accordance with their core values and try to shift public attitudes, in support of big changes and hard choices? Or should they follow the basic contours of public opinion and avoid unpopular and difficult decisions? Leaders taking the latter course may give themselves a better chance of staying in power and, just possibly, strengthening their ability to “do the right thing” in the longer term.

Keating’s answer was as romantic as it was unambiguous:

"You need a higher calling or some inner system of belief - here I mention Kant and the inner command that tells you what is true, what is right, what is good. The inner command must be the divining construct in what you do.”

And:

“In the end, everyone in political life gets carried out - the only relevant question is whether the pallbearers will be crying."

I am a long time admirer of Paul Keating and the verve with which he approaches politics. I agree with him that politics should be about big ideas and grand visions, rather than simply following fads and focus groups. Political leaders should have core beliefs, deep passions and big agendas.

But what Keating calls the “higher calling” or, in other times, the “big picture”, is not necessarily the same thing as the “narrative”. I see the “narrative” as the means by which leaders market themselves and seek electoral popularity. Having gained power, democratic leaders use narratives in order to persuade people to follow them in a particular direction; more likely, to accept change.

Both types of narrative must be a story, with people, events and something unanticipated. They must also evoke an emotional reaction in their audiences.

In his seminal book Leading Minds, Howard Gardner studied a number of successful leaders from a range of fields. He concluded:

“A leader must have a central story or message. The story is more likely to be effective in a large and heterogenous group if it can speak directly to the untutored mind – the mind that develops naturally in the early lives of children with the need for formal tutelage. Stories ought to address the sense of individual and group identity, the “we” and the “they” thought that sense may actually be expanded or restricted by the story. They should not only provide background, but should help group members to frame future options.” (1)

Later, he observed:

“Leaders benefit from the ability to build on stories that are already known – for example, those drawn from religion or history or those that have already been circulated within an institution – and to synthesise them in new ways, as Martin Luther King Jr was able to do.” (2)

Gardner also argued that there would be tensions between inclusionary and exclusionary stories. He stressed that leaders must embody their narratives to maximise the chances of success. Recall, for instance, Churchill’s refusal to leave London during World War II.

I have argued previously that, whist all politicians and parties have narratives, they can exercise only limited control over them, a point that Keating acknowledges, above. Moreover, politicians are most successful when they speak to the stories that are in the minds of their target electorates – the public’s core values, Gardner’s “stories that are already known” – as well as their current anxieties and concerns about the future. [For some examples, click here and here.]

At the same time, a successful narrative must be based firmly on a clear, coherent set of ideas. Michael Deaver once said that one of the biggest lessons he learned from working with Ronald Reagan was that:

“You've got to know who you are before you can communicate it.”

Keating’s political career, with its spectacular highs and lows, demonstrated all of these points. He never wanted for visions and higher callings and, with Bob Hawke, sold difficult economic changes to the Australian public by levelling with people, getting out and selling their policies and, yes, telling stories.

Hawke was an effective prime minister who projected himself as a national leader, an embodiment of Australianness. But Keating was the master of personal persuasion, using anecdotes and easy-to-understand illustrations, to show people the merits of policy changes.

In 1992, Keating, now prime minister, developed the theme of Australian national identity with his landmark Redfern Park speech on Aboriginal reconciliation. The following year, he delivered his moving eulogy for the unknown Australian soldier.

Through all those years, he showed how “romantic” political narratives and those more concerned with political marketing can work in tandem, and how they work against and supersede one another.

And, lest we forget, Keating’s government was decisively defeated in 1996. He had been around too long, and seemed out of touch and remote from public concerns. The Australian electorate lost interest in his “big picture” and Keating’s narrative was no longer theirs.

Still, I’d prefer that kind of finish to a leadership with no vision at all.

(1) Howard Gardner, Leading Minds (Harper Collins, 1995) p 290
(2) p.291

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Narrativewatch: David Cameron, Winston Churchill and the bulldog

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:05:00 +0000

David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference has had a mixed reception from political commentators.

I thought the most interesting bit came at the very end of the speech.

We can be a country where people look back on their life and say: I've worked hard, I've raised a family, I'm part of a community and all along it was worth my while. We're too far away from that today but we can get there.

It's not complicated, but not easy either - because nothing worthwhile is easily won. But you know, we've been told we were finished before.

They said when we lost an Empire that we couldn't find a role. But we found a role, took on communism and helped bring down the Berlin Wall.

They called our economy the sick man of Europe. But we came back and turned this country into a beacon of enterprise.

No, Britain never had the biggest population, the largest land mass, the richest resources, but we had the spirit. Remember: it's not the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog. Overcoming challenge, confounding the sceptics, reinventing ourselves, this is what we do. It's called leadership.

James Kirkup of the Daily Telegraph quickly saw what kind of story the PM was pitching.

I don’t think you have to be a historian to get the impression that Mr Cameron would like you to think about British bulldogs, Sir Winston Churchill and the war.

. . . . Mr Cameron is pitching himself as the man to lead us into the battle to come. Quietly, he’s recasting himself, changing his role from sunshine kid to economic war leader.

As James Kirkup suggests, that’s quite a hard transition to make.

What’s more, in starting to tell a Churchillian narrative, David Cameron has taken on a big challenge.

Let’s recall the basic elements of Churchill’s wartime narrative. In his new book, All Hell Let Loose: the World at War (1939-45), Max Hastings says:

It is hard to imagine that Britain would have continued to defy Hitler after June 1940 in the absence of Winston Churchill, who constructed a brilliant and narrowly plausible narrative for the British people, first about what they might do, and later to persuade them of what they have done.

Harking back to the Spanish Armada and invoking the myth of the “strong island nation”, Churchill declared that “we shall never surrender . . . we will fight them on the beaches”. The goal – “victory at all costs” - was never in doubt and nearly everyone had a part to play in the war effort. By contrast, beyond getting rid of the public deficit, David Cameron’s strategy for winning the economic war and building a strong economy, is much harder to pin down

In 1940, Churchill could rally the British public and tell them “what they might do” because it always obvious who the enemy was – a real nation with a powerful military force and a demonic leader. In 2011, it is not so clear who or what Mr Cameron wants to lead Britain and prevail against.

All through World War II, Winston Churchill told another, parallel story – that of the strong and purposeful community, fighting together, making equal sacrifices and winning together. According to the latest data from Ipsos MORI, seven voters in ten perceive that the coalition government’s plans to reduce the national deficit will hit poor people hardest. People don’t think that “we’re all in this together”. The “strong community” archetype does not look like one that David Cameron can easily deploy.

None of this means that David Cameron should give up on trying to be an economic war leader. He and his colleague may yet devise a strategy that the public can rally behind. In any case, fast-moving events could leave them with little choice. For now, however, these words from the PM’s closing proration may be the most instructive:

Overcoming challenge, confounding the sceptics, reinventing ourselves, this is what we do. It's called leadership

David Cameron will find that he has more personal credibility on these counts than by trying to call Churchill, Henry V and the bulldog into action. He could re-tell and apply the stories from his own political life to illustrate what his type of leadership is about. In this respect, Cameron could take after Churchill who, lest we forget, embodied his own narrative by staying in London during the blitz, thereby exposing himself to the risk of physical danger.

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Narrativewatch: learning from Theresa May and the cat

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:00:00 +0000

"Facts tell, but stories sell . . . If you're not communicating in stories, you're not communicating.”

James Carville and Paul Begala, US political consultants

Politicians like to tell stories. Anecdotes turn abstract concepts and political arguments into credible situations and events that people can understand quickly. Anecdotes work best when they’re about people. People relate and react to other people, their highs and lows, their triumphs and their tragedies, their achievements and their failings. When people act, or when things happen to them, we can feel love, hate, joy, happiness, sadness, pity, longing or resentment.

In politics, strong anecdotes prove points and prop up prejudices. So, Ronald Reagan, the master storyteller, told Americans about the scandal of the “welfare queen” from Chicago’s south side. He told stories about farmers, preachers, people living in small-town America and, as Dan Rather has written, the payoff usually carried a political wallop. Reagan also told the story of the WWII bomber pilot on a doomed plane who refused to parachute because a wounded young gunner couldn’t evacuate. OK, the last one came from an old war movie, but Reagan kept on telling it anyway.

Less memorably, Tony Blair sometimes peppered his party conference speeches with brief, oblique anecdotes to show that his government was delivering.

Which brings us to yesterday’s speech to the Conservative Party conference by Theresa May, the home secretary. She provided an excruciating example of how anecdotes can go badly wrong in politics. To illustrate the supposed lunacies of the Human Rights Act, a bête noire of Conservative conference goers, Mrs May cited the example of:

"the illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because—and I am not making this up—he had a pet cat."

The trouble was, she had her facts wrong. The justice secretary, Ken Clarke, all but disowned her claim, in public and on camera. Then, a spokesman for the judiciary said that the case she referred to involved a Bolivian man whose appeal against deportation was based on a relationship with a British woman of some years' standing. As part of his evidence to a court, he cited his joint ownership of a cat, to demonstrate the seriousness of the relationship. The basis for the home secretary’s comment appears to have been an immigration judge's light-hearted remark about a cat no longer having to fear adapting to Bolivian mice, which was quickly seized on by right-wing newspapers.

The liberal media has hardly been able to contain its glee, especially as daily coverage of the conference rapidly became dominated by the May – Clarke, er, “catfight”. [Click here, here, here, here and here.]

The Guardian went in for the kill:

It was an undignified episode. Doubtless some lowly speechwriter has already been handed a glass of whisky and a loaded revolver for embarrassing the home secretary. But it is Mrs May's misjudgement that matters in the end. At the very least, the woman who once bravely coined that phrase about "the nasty party" ought to learn her own lesson. She should be confronting her party's prejudices, not flattering them.

Political differences aside, I suggest there is another, simpler lesson for all politicians and their speechwriters – don’t ever rely on anecdotes unless you can be absolutely certain they are 100% fireproof.

Ronald Reagan got away with his story about the fictitious fighter pilot, but he lived in a different political culture, in a different time, and had established a conspiracy of fiction with his constituencies. The UK’s trip- them-up media culture won’t allow top politicians any such leeway. But then, the powerful and those who aspire to lead us should be held to account for the claims they make.

Remember how, in 2000, Gordon Brown, the then chancellor, used Oxford University’s decision to exclude Laura Spence to highlight the bias in the university system against working-class applicants. He was soon shown not to have been in full possession of the facts. Later, successive Conservative leaders, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, both made claims that specific people had been poorly treated by the NHS, only to see the stories fall apart.

And, right back in 1992, Labour’s general election campaign became bogged down in the war of Jennifer’s Ear -- though that argument was also about the ethics of involving a (named) young girl in a political campaign.

Mrs May is not the first politician to be discover the downside of a faulty anecdote. I’m sure she won’t be the last.

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Narrativewatch: the coalition government tries to woo women

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:35:00 +0000

Today, The Guardian’s astute political correspondent, Allegra Stratton, has an interesting article about the coalition’s new attempts to reposition itself with women voters. The need is clear. Last month, an Ipsos MORI poll found that men were more dissatisfied than satisfied with the government, by a margin of 21%. Among women, the figure was 33%.

But what to do about it? Allegra Stratton picks up on the distinction between a narrative based mostly on ‘values’ and one based more on ‘policy’ and suggests that the government wants to try a bit of both, but without backtracking on the debt reduction strategy – the heart of its programme.

[There] will be a process of reintroducing the PM to women. In Downing Street they like a story about Bill Clinton reaching out to soccer moms – in this case he banned tobacco advertising next to schools. Tobacco advertising is already banned in the UK but you get the point. One option here is to ban cynical advertising aggressively targeted at children.

Watch out for these and other issues: expect Cameron to criminalise forced marriages sometime soon. That's also why you will hear the prime minister close the conference by talking about something his coalition partners, the Lib Dems, opened their conference with: that gay couples would be able to marry, not just enter civil partnerships. Cameron will remind the country why the policy is important to him, and what social mores are important to him.

Some of his own female MPs think this doesn't cut the mustard and hanker for more substantial overtures. No 10 aides will point out that the theme of the autumn – a clampdown on the something for nothing culture – is something women want. They caution that the debate about scrapping the 50p tax rate must also be seen in the light of how it will play with women – again, badly. "It matters to women that the top 10% are paying a heavy chunk of tax. We have to really underline 'we're all in it together'," one adviser said.

There’s more. Opinion polls show that women are more downbeat than men about the economy and focus groups suggest that they are more likely to be worried about cuts in government spending. The government’s problems with women are more fundamental than the strategists seem to acknowledge. (For further analysis and comment, click here and here. But note also this backgrounder from Ipsos MORI.)

Allegra Stratton concludes:

The great face-off between Cameron and women is uncharted politics: a strategy testing heavily the personality and personality of the prime minister himself.

I’d go even further than that. The government is trying to ‘change the subject’ with women, and invite them to look past its core narrative, that above all, the deficit must be all but wiped out during the life of this parliament.

I doubt that any government in modern times has pulled off such a political feat. If his emerging "gender gap" strategy succeeds, David Cameron will be one of the greatest political communicators this country has ever seen. The coalition’s efforts to woo back women voters provide a narrative case study that is going to be well worth watching.

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Ed Miliband's narrative failure

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:53:00 +0000

Every year, the media and the political class get themselves well and truly worked up about party leaders’ conference speeches.

They seem to forget that most voters hardly notice these performances. The party activists have almost always forgotten them by the time they get home. There are usually sound reasons why this is so.

Still, a leader’s conference speech provides the scribes with a quick and easy barometer of how well a party leader is performing. With luck, they and the activists will pick up some clear signposts as to where the leader wants to take the party next. More likely, the speeches typify how badly a leader is performing. Remember Iain Duncan Smith’s cringe-making declaration to the 2003 Conservative conference that “the quiet man is turning up the volume”.

Yesterday’s speech by Ed Miliband mattered, because he desperately needed to define his vision for the Labour Party and for Britain and, with dismal personal poll ratings, to present himself as a credible prime minister. The consensus in today’s media is that, not to put too fine a point on it, the speech was a dog. (See, for instance, Paul Waugh of PoliticsHome, Andrew Gimson in the Daily Telegraph, and Michael White in The Guardian.)

Some of the commentary is too harsh. Yesterday, Ed Miliband explained how he will try to reposition Labour. He sided with the "wealth creators" against the "asset strippers". There was a good, Clintonesque pitch to the “squeezed middle” -- "the people who don't make a fuss, who don't hack phones, loot shops, fiddle their expenses or earn telephone number salaries at the banks". Ed Miliband spoke of a tough, new stance on public spending. And it was back to Beveridge – yes, what Beveridge actually said- with talk of rewarding responsible people who work hard and contribute to society with higher housing priority and better benefit entitlements.

But there was no narrative. (If you want to know how I define a political narrative, and why I think it matters, click here, and here.) Ed Miliband says he knows what he wants – an end to the “something for nothing society” and a new type of social democratic prospectus. His ambitious speech tried to map out a long term project, to remake Britain’s economy, along continental “social market” lines.

The Economist’s Bagehot columnist says:

Well, those bold ideas were in the speech, if you knew to listen for them. But somewhere along the line, Mr Miliband seems to have lost the will to explain what he was up to, out loud and in full. . .

And:

These are bold ideas [on industry policy and taxes and dividends], and it would have been helpful if Mr Miliband could have spelled out more clearly what he really intends to do . . .

. . . There were a host of other areas in which Mr Miliband started to say something clear and bold, only to dive for the safety of waffle.

He’s quite correct. Much of the content was very tentative, and the Labour leader shied away from making specific ideas and proposals, and from telling stories about how they would work for people. You can’t have a story without an ending and in political narratives, the people listening want the ending to be a happy one. Ed Miliband showed yesterday that political marketing is not as divorced from belief-systems and policies and it may sometimes seem.

The second, admittedly more tentative, explanation for the speech’s failure concerns political values. Bagehot makes another interesting observation:

. . . Mr Miliband's speech was intended to hold up a mirror to the British public, and explain to them how their own existing values were his values. [This] sounded like a belief that the centre-ground of British politics had shifted towards Mr Miliband, merely described a different way.

The result was a lot of painful straddling . . .

. . . This was a left wing speech, in many ways, but sounded like a right wing speech a surprising amount of the time.

I have argued many times that politicians’ narratives only work when they speak clearly to the values of the people they are trying to convince. Bill Clinton’s much misunderstood “triangulation” is a good example. Bagehot may be right about Ed Miliband’s assumption, but the centre ground may not have shifted in quite the way that the Labour leader may think. That’s a discussion for another day.

There’s a more immediate challenge for the Labour leader. Ed Miliband didn’t sound completely confident yesterday about whose values he was speaking to - the values of the people in the hall, or those of the people watching tv at home. The end result was a sense of fuzziness, something a “defining narrative” can never suffer from.

The way Ed Miliband sounds, and the voters’ sense of him, brings us to the third and most brutal explanation of why his attempt at presenting a narrative didn’t come off. The public and the media simply don’t take him seriously. Last week saw the release of new research commissioned by the former Tory party treasurer Lord Ashcroft. The words focus groups used to describe David Cameron were "determined", "competent" and "ruthless". The word they volunteered for Ed Miliband was "weird".

In today’s Guardian, Jonathan Freedland says:

Put simply, my fear is that you can make all the speeches and policy statements you like – carefully devising a strategy on this and crafting a narrative on that – but what matters more are shallow considerations of looks, demeanour, speech patterns and biography. That, in short, it is personality, not policy, that counts . . .

. . . [This] is the problem for Ed Miliband. He is a decent, clever man but he does not look the part. He looks too young; he looks more like the speechwriter than the speechgiver, an adviser to the leader rather than the leader. That could change; he might grow into the role over the next three-and-a-half years.

Ed Miliband may know what he stands for, what he wants to do. But the counter-story about him is much, much more powerful and keeps on overwhelming the Labour leader's halting attempts to explain who is and what he is about. And, although Jonathan Freedland wants to cling on to hope, the counter story shows no sign of changing.

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"Competence with a conscience" - how well is Nick Clegg's narrative working?

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:52:00 +0000

“Competence with a conscience” sounds like a good, comfortable narrative for the Liberal Democrats. But the voters don’t seem to be buying it.

Nick Clegg’s narrative to market the Liberal Democrats and our role in government was summed up in his speech at the National Liberal Club in May. The speech marked the first anniversary of the coalition’s formation.

At the next election, we will say that we are demonstrably more credible on the economy than Labour, and more committed at heart to fairness than the Conservatives. I am confident that by showing we can combine economic soundness with social justice – competence with a conscience – we will be an even more formidable political force in the future.

These themes are elucidated in Nick’s foreword to the Facing the Future paper, to be considered by the party conference this week.

For the conference season, Populus has produced its latest findings on how the parties are perceived by voters. The results aren’t exactly encouraging for the Liberal Democrats. A useful summary comes from Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report:

Historically these Populus questions tended to show that the Lib Dems had the positive party image. That is no longer the case. They have the least positive score on every measure except being for ordinary people [with 45% agreeing it applies to the Lib Dems], where they at least beat the Tories [with 30% agreeing].

This is very important – and very worrying. In the run-up to the last general election, the image of “being for ordinary people not the best off” was, with a reputation for being honest, one of the party’s most positive brand assets.

We have often heard the argument that being in coalition would make the party more credible to voters. Once they saw us delivering in government and taking the hard decisions, voters would take the Liberal Democrats more seriously – the “competence” part of Nick’s desired brand. But Anthony Wells explains:

On having a good team of leaders [the [Lib Dems] are on 31% (down 13 since last year), on sharing peoples’ values they are on 36% (down 5), on being honest they are at 35% (down 6), on competence they are at 31% (down 10), on party united they are at 27% (down 13), on having clear ideas they are at 31% (down 11). In most cases the party’s ratings had already dropped sharply last year following their decision to enter the coalition – these falls are on top of that.

Then, Wells rams the point home:

In summary, go back a couple of years and people tended to give the Lib Dems the benefit of the doubt, there was a tendency for people to assume they were good, honest and caring people (even if other polls also suggested people rather doubted their policies would work or they had any chance of actually winning). That positive party image took a knock after the removal of Charles Kennedy, but was on its way to recovery by 2009. Since then it has fallen through the floor.

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The comeback cop: Brian Paddick's ground-breaking mea culpa story

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:34:00 +0000

Congratulations to Brian Paddick, who will be the Liberal Democrat candidate for London mayor in 2012. He is being re-used as a candidate, despite his poor campaign in 2008, when Paddick’s slogan, “a policeman, not a politician”, turned out to be all too true.

Now, in winning the Lib Dem nomination, Paddick has performed an epic feat in political storytelling. Announcing his candidacy back in June, Paddick gave us this carefully crafted mea culpa:

The 2008 campaign was a bitter and bruising experience. I had just left the police over the shooting by armed officers of the innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell. It was a case of ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’. I was an uptight, politically naïve ex-police officer with no experience of party campaigning or working with activists. I got a lot wrong.

The campaign slogan then was ‘Serious about London’ . . . but I was far too serious about everything. I was terrified of Punch and Judy, of Paxman and Sopel and I had unrealistic expectations of what to expect from the party. I was, quite frankly, a bit of a pain! Towards the end, particularly in the televised debates with Comedy and Tragedy, critics said I performed well, but we need a candidate who gets it right from the start. Crucially I know my enemies from last time, up close and personal! . . .

Then, Paddick developed his theme of the “new me”.

. . . So what is going to be different? A few weeks ago I was in the office of a London MP who commented on how much I had changed since 2008. I am much happier, more relaxed, more realistic and more experienced now – I have even been spotted smiling in photographs! I have spent the last three years campaigning with ordinary members, delivering ‘Good Mornings’, knocking on doors, talking to voters, addressing rallies and speaking at fundraisers. I have attended every Federal Conference since 2008 and either spoken in debates or contributed from the floor. I know the Party now. I didn’t know the Party then

I didn’t go to any of the hustings, but by a number of reliable accounts, Paddick embodied his narrative but seeming cheerier and more focussed and confident than before.

Annette Simmons has explained how “mea culpa” stories work:

When you tell a “mea culpa” story about your own mistakes first, it cheats your adversaries of the opportunity to discredit your intentions and polishes your reputation at the same time.(1)

Until Paddick’s flash of genius, the best example I knew of a “mea culpa” story in politics was the one told by Bill Clinton - the original “comeback kid” - in 1982. Two years earlier, Arkansas voters had evicted the wunderkind from the governor’s mansion. They were angry with Clinton for putting up car licence fees and for seeming out-of-touch and inaccessible. No less than the rest of America, Arkansas was racked by an economic woes and a growing sense of unease in 1980. The state’s voters were hugely disgruntled with Jimmy Carter’s administration and the political toxins spilled over to Democrats in general.

Five months before polling day, several hundred Cuban refugees broke out of their resettlement camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Not long before the election, Clinton agreed to pardon dozens of violent criminals. The Republican candidate exploited these developments to associate Clinton with a sense of disorder and disarray – and his friend in the White House.

Early in 1982, Clinton was back, seeking once again the Democratic nomination for governor. At the urging of his campaign guru Dick Morris, Clinton made two campaign adverts, one apologising for the car license fees hike and the other apologising for pardoning the violent crims.

In his biography of Bill Clinton, David Maraniss wrote that:

In the end, Clinton managed to say that he was sorry without saying that he was sorry. He did by using down-home Arkansas language. When he was growing up, Clinton said, his daddy never had to whip him twice for the same thing. If the voters gave him another chance, he said he would never make the same mistakes again. He had learned that he could not lead without listening . . .

. . . What the public saw was that Clinton was chastened. Political observers had never seen anything like it – someone announcing for governor via a thirty-second commercial, and doing so with an apology. But the strategy was apparent: By admitting his mistakes and seeking absolution before the first tough question of the race could be asked, Clinton was able to say that criticisms of his previous actions were irrelevant.(2)

As we know now, Clinton was restored to the governor’s mansion in November 1982, after bitter primary and general election campaigns. The “mea culpa” ads bombed at first, but they eventually immunised Clinton against his opponents’ attacks.

Paddick’s “mea culpa” is in a different league again. Clinton was implicitly apologising for forgetting about the people who had elected him, and for making the wrong decisions. Annette Simmons’ suggested uses of “mea culpa” stories recall occasions in which people didn’t follow their values and principles, or when they failed to take up a challenge or to seize an opportunity. But Paddick was saying sorry (sort of) for not even being competent as a candidate when he last had the chance. Astonishing.

Still, failed ex-candidates and empty suits may want to think carefully before trying this one at home. The narrowness of Paddick’s victory suggests that other factors, such as the opportunities afforded him by “hackgate” and the August riots, were decisive too. Liberal Democrat selection campaigns for London mayor are strange beasts, as the party seeks out a mega-campaigner who can rally the troops and pull in more assembly members by his/her coat-tails. This time, the dynamics were mixed up even more by the entry into the race of the former Montgomeryshire MP, Lembit Opik. (In defeat, Opik had his own "comeback narrative" in which he compared himself to Nelson Mandela, but that’s just too dreadful to discuss in detail.)

For now, I’m left wondering once again why Liberal Democrats are so skilled at telling stories to win internal party elections [click here], but so poor at telling stories to “people out there”. Maybe Brian Paddick’s campaign for 2012 will confound me again.

(1) Annette Simmons, Whoever Tells the Best Story WINS (Amacom, 2007) p.70

(2) David Maraniss, First in His Class: a Biography of Bill Clinton (Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 398-399

Pollwatch: global public less concerned with climate change than other environmental issues

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:35:00 +0000

The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has commented on a new Nielson survey, showing that across the world, more than two in three online consumers are concerned about climate change. That figure has hardly changed in the last four years. But people in the biggest polluting nations, the United States and China, are becoming less concerned.

The Nielson survey rams home a hard political truth: the extent to which concern about climate change is driven by consumers’ perceptions of their own interests, especially the “hip pocket nerve”. As Carrington says:

At the highly concerned end are Thailand, Mexico and Indonesia, all places with relatively limited capacity to cope with climate change and in regions expected to be hard hit [by extreme weather].

And:

At the opposite end, the least concerned, we have wealthy Norway, Australia and the UK, all places that are not yet really feeling the bite of climate change and anxious that their rich lifestyles might be affected by climate action.

Since the global economic crisis of 2008, the UK media and the public have lost interest in climate change, and focused on more immediate concerns like jobs, money and crime. The Nielsen report confirms that global “climate change” apathy has increased and goes on to provide this explanation:

The global economic recession (and its lingering effects on the job market and inflation) appears to have misplaced climate change as a big worry for many. But while half (48%) of unconcerned global online consumers cite “more urgent and serious matters in the world today” as the main reason for climate change apathy, 37 percent believe that climate change is not the result of human behavior and 23 percent believe future technologies will solve the problem.

The Nielsen survey also suggests that people are more likely to be concerned with environmental issues whose impacts they can more easily see, experience or hear about, a trend that the current climate trance has magnified.

Three out of four global consumers rated air pollution (77%) and water pollution (75%) as top concerns, both increasing six percentage points compared to 2009. The issues of pesticides, packaging waste and water shortages were all top concerns for 73 per cent of global consumers. As a result, climate change / global warming (69%) took what Nielsen calls a “back seat” to other environmental issues.

But we shouldn’t get drawn into an over-simplified politics of false environmental choices - “climate change vs. the rest”. Global consumer concern about climate change has increased, albeit marginally, since 2009. In Europe, consumer concern about climate change has jumped by 10 percentage points over that time. The interesting finding from the Nielson research is that concern with other environmental issues has grown dramatically since 2009 – pesticides (up 16 percentage points), preventing waste (up 14) and water shortages (up 13).

The contours of public opinion of environmental issues may be more subtle than they sometimes appear. The Nielsen report provides no detailed breakdown by region or country, though it notes that water pollution was the main concern for Europeans. In April-May this year, a Eurobarometer survey found that European citizens’ five top environmental concerns were, in order: man made disasters (oil spills etc); water pollution; air pollution; impact on health of chemicals -- and climate change.

For UK citizens, the top environmental concerns were (in order): climate change (1^st=); growing waste (1^st=); man made disasters; water pollution; and depletion of natural resources.

And climate change is not easily separated out from the other environmental issues described above. For instance, climate change is set to put new pressures on water availability in England; reduced water supplies increase the risk of water pollution. Better waste management should help to reduce C02 emissions.

So, what we have now is a global public concern about “the environment”, that is made of a number of issues, elements and frames, of which climate change is one of the most significant, despite the media trance of recent years.

Media bias, rising power bills spell trouble for clean energy

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:16:00 +0000

The UK media continues its climate trance. Latest figures from the Centre for Science and Policy Research at the University of Colorado show that the downturn in media coverage of climate change has carried on through 2011.

It may be more useful to see the climate change debate in the context of energy policy. I have previously suggested that UK media coverage of climate change has evolved over the last couple of years. The focus is now more on energy technologies than the latest bad news about rising global temperatures. Yet the media’s interest in energy innovation may not be a new thing. Last month, Matt Nisbet pointed to a forthcoming study that provides the first cross-national comparisons of how energy policy has been covered and debated in the news. Apparently, the study shows that from 1991 to 2006, the focus in the UK and Finland has been on energy technologies, especially nuclear build.

And whether it’s a new fad or an old theme, the media’s interest in energy technologies may not be good news for supporters of renewables. Duncan Clark of The Guardian recently reported on a study by the Public Interest Research Centre (PRIC). The PIRC study found that in July 2009, more than half of the coverage of renewable energy in the mainstream press was negative. He argues that such media bias matters

… in a country where planning obstacles are a major barrier to new renewable energy installations [and] where fairly small numbers of "antis" can block or delay major installations, every negative story or piece of misinformation counts.

And:

As Pirc researcher Tim Holmes points out in his introduction, press coverage is important because it can influence not only "what people perceive and believe" but also "what politicians think they believe". Indeed, politicians take the temperature of public opinion partly through the barometer of the press, and consistently negative coverage of renewables will doubtless "limit the perception of political space and impetus for political action", as Holmes puts it.

Let’s not get too carried away. The media is not a quasi-magical device that tells most people what to think, most of the time. Energy Issues 2009, carried out for Ofgem by Ipsos MORI, said:

The various forms of renewable energy are most popular with the British public as sources of electricity, led by hydro power, and fossil fuels are the least popular, though nuclear energy is apparently viewed more similarly to a fossil fuel method. Tidal power, wave power, offshore wind energy and large-scale solar power are also very popular. Wind farms on land are somewhat less popular, but still ahead of the various methods that involve combustion. Most favoured of these is biomass, followed by gas. Nuclear energy is less likely to be preferred than any other form except coal, which is bottom of the ranking.

Earlier this year, the Understanding Risk /MORI poll showed that solar power, wind power, hydroelectric and biomass are the most popular energy sources, well ahead of coal, nuclear and oil. (Click here for the analysis by Climate Sock.)

But things may be about to change. Hardly a week goes by without one of the major energy companies announcing a big rise in consumer bills. They blame a surge in wholesale gas prices, not always convincingly.

Some government policies that are designed to boost low carbon energy sources, including renewables, are loaded on to consumers’ energy bills. The extent to which those policies push up power bills is already being grossly exaggerated by the Daily Mail, and others. DECC says that the policies add 4% to the average gas price and 14% to the average electricity price. Last year, DECC estimated that domestic retail gas prices would be 18% higher and retail electricity prices 33% higher in 2020 as a result of energy and climate change policies. But energy efficiency measures may blunt the policies’ impact on consumer bills.

The government’s planned reforms to the electricity market will also have an impact, with DECC arguing they will cause a net reduction in energy bills. (To be sure, those reforms are designed to support a range of low carbon energy sources, including nuclear.) Later this year, the government is due to publish a new assessment of how energy and climate change policies will affect consumers' power bills.

But we all know how perceptions can trump reality. And over the next few years, the public’s pro-renewable instincts will come up against greater concerns about the rising cost of living, especially higher energy bills. A recent Populus poll found that 87 per cent of 2,000 respondents were "very” or “somewhat” concerned about rising gas and electricity prices. Energy costs are nearly twice as important to the public as the NHS, unemployment and public sector cuts, which have all received far greater attention from the media.

If a biased media chisels away at public support for renewables, with energy prices are rising and household budgets under acute pressure, the government may feel under pressure to do a U-turn on its clean energy policies.

Do DECC ministers and the renewable energy lobby know how they are going to handle the coming backlash?

Narrativewatch: How Britain's political classes see what they want to see in this week's mayhem.

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:32:00 +0000

To see this post, click here.

Obama, the debt deal and the tragedy of Generation Jones

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:50:00 +0000

To read this post, click here.

Abbott vs Blanchett: Australia's battle of climate frames

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:09:00 +0000

There’s a new front in Australia’s climate wars – the battle of the frames.

Actress Cate Blanchett has appeared in a TV advert to urge her fellow Australians to back the Gillard government’s proposed carbon tax.

But Tony Abbott, leader of the Liberal Party (that’s conservative in Australia) weighed in with this comment:

"People who are worth $53m have a right to be heard – but their voice should not be heard ahead of the ordinary working people of this country."

And this:

"You do not give special weight to celebrities . . .

''You do not give special weight to people who live half the year in Hollywood where there is no carbon tax.”

Abbott was using the “people vs. the elites” frame that has worked powerfully in the US. He set out to cast Cate Blanchett as a symbol of wealthy left-liberal elites who say they want action on climate change but are out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of “ordinary people”. It all comes down, once again, to “who pays?”.

Cate Blanchett has come back with a double-frame of her own – “fighting pollution” and “protecting children”.

'Everyone will benefit if we protect the environment. There is a societal cost of increased pollution and that's what I'm passionate about as a mother. That's where it gets me in the gut,'' she said. ''I can't look my children in the face if I'm not trying to do something in my small way and to urge other people.''

The fact that Cate Blanchett is a mother of three adds an authenticity to her statements. In speaking out, she embodies her narrative.

But the real impact of the row may be to shift attention away from the advert’s message and on to personalities. So Cate Blanchett has tried to frame the argument around protecting the environment.

And she made an interesting aside:

''I understand that if you use the word tax, people are rightly and understandably concerned about their standards of living.”

The UK’s coalition government is bringing in a carbon tax too. They and climate hawks in this country should be relieved that the tax is officially called a “floor price for carbon” and will work within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The frame may blunt some of the attacks that are surely coming.

Footnote: Check out this new article from The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly about the updated 2011 Garnaut report on climate change. Kelly says:

Garnaut repudiates every basis on which Tony Abbott relies for his campaign against the expected multi-party compromise to put Australia on the historic path to a carbon price.

And:

Garnaut's conclusion is unmistakable – [Prime Minister Julia] Gillard is advancing the national interest while Abbott is reviving a regressive past of sectional interests.

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Political narratives - a few basics

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:48:00 +0000

If you're like me you hear the term 'narrative' all over the place these days: "What's the political narrative?" "We need a compelling narrative." "Their narrative is unclear or even non-existent." I'm certain most people have little idea what is really meant by the term.

That pertinent observation comes from Shawn Callahan of Anecdote. He has written a great post that clears up much of the confusion around what a narrative is.

Replying to an article by John Hagel, Shawn says:

A narrative must have a narrative structure. That is, it is told as a story . . . For example, John comes close to giving us narrative structure when describing the Christian narrative when he says, "people are born in sin but have an opportunity for redemption through a Savior." This is a statement rather than the narrative but anyone familiar with Christian ways will immediately fill in this statement with the stories that help us make sense of it. The narrative version of this statement is simply "people are born in sin but THEN have an opportunity for redemption through a Savior." Two events connected. Without the 'then' it's not a narrative. Narratives, like stories, are made from events. Their connections infer causality.

These observations are very relevant to politics. To make a political narrative stick, you need a causality, a ‘then’. “Free, fair and green” is not a narrative. It’s a (bad) slogan. So is “muscular liberalism”. Don’t get me started again on “alarm clock Britain”.

“Liberal Democrats believe in healthcare available to all, free at point of delivery, based on clinical need, not ability to pay”

is not a narrative either. It’s a statement of belief.

Here’s an outline of what an accompanying narrative would look like.

In March 2011, the Liberal Democrat spring conference voted overwhelmingly for more accountability and openness in commissioning, to reject turning the health service into for safeguards against cherry-picking by private sector providers… and against the undermining of local NHS services. Then, Nick Clegg insisted on scrapping the requirement that Monitor, the NHS regulator, compels hospitals to compete with each other. Clegg has since put himself on collision course with the Tory health secretary, Andrew Lansley by saying that a clause in the health and social care bill encouraging "any qualified provider" to take over services from the NHS should be radically rethought or dropped.

Tell that story according to your political tastes. Nick Clegg the fearless fighter for the NHS, a liberal creation. Or Nick Clegg, the potential wrecker of the coalition.

After explaining the difference between a description of the narrative (which is a statement) and the narrative itself, Shawn goes on to stress:

Narratives require a narrative structure. Story structure provides a narrative with its power.

He reminds us about the key elements of a story:

Stories are not merely about plots and action. Stories are about people, events and something unanticipated (Jerome Bruner). Jay Callahan, the celebrated professional storyteller, puts it another way: stories are about people, events and trouble. You just can't have a story without characters.

My Nick Clegg / NHS example has characters – the deputy PM, the Lib Dem conference and the health secretary. The events were the Lib Dem spring conferences and Nick Clegg’s subsequent demands to change the NHS reforms.

Other political narratives have been based on characters, “good” versus “bad”. Ronald Reagan versus the evil empire. Margaret Thatcher versus the Argentinean generals and, later, the miners. Tony Blair versus Gordon Brown - -though most people had trouble working out who was the “good” and who was the “bad”. “The west” versus Al Queda.

In each case, something important and quite unanticipated, if not troublesome, took place. Reagan held summits with Gorbachev and called on the Soviet Union to “tear down this wall”. Thatcher had the Falklands War and the miners strike. Blair vs. Brown seemed like an unending psychodrama, yet there it had many signposts and highlights along the way. 9/11 and the killing of Osama Bin Laden were two ends of an especially grim story arc.

But there are four important features that mark political narratives out from business and other narratives. First, the story and the events must affect people and their world views. They must evoke an emotional reaction. The emotions are usually either hope or fear. They can also be compassion, empathy, patriotism, loyalty and other feelings of identity and belonging, anger, contempt or nostalgia.

Second, political storytellers should explain the world to their listeners and enable them to understand their place within it, to reframe their plans for the future. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem,” said Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address.

Margaret Thatcher blamed previous Labour and Tory governments for their lax fiscal and monetary policies, as well as the trade union leaders who had brought the country to its knees, for Britain’s economic woes. Her narrative was about standing up for Britain, its people and its aspirations, and against their enemies, both within and without. The characters and how people felt about them were always clear. So was the underlying morality.

During the 2010 general election campaign, Nick Clegg struck a chord when he decried “the old politics” and blamed “the old parties” for letting Britain down. He, too, was telling a morality tale. But he was also singing new versions of old tunes by David Steel and Paddy Ashdown.

Third, a true political storyteller will give people hope – or at least, reassurance about themselves and their future. S/he will explain what happens next and why and how the story will have a happy ending or, at least, a next stage that is good. There may not be an “unanticipated (past) event” but the clever political storyteller will make this future story bigger, better and, above all, more plausible than a simple recitation of their election promises. Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” tv spot in 1984 is still hard to beat. But Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can change” rhetoric from 2008 is up there too.

Fourth, politicians need to remember who owns the narrative. It’s not them. Here’s one of Shawn’s most acute insights:

Narratives emerge from a combination of events and people deciding what aspects of those events they want to retell; what gets amplified. It's much like history really, an emergent process. Regardless of what we do narrative patterns will emerge and only when we are mindful of these narrative patterns will we are able to choose those patterns to nurture and the ones to disrupt. Nurturing comes from retelling stories. Disruption happens when new stories are triggered that counter the narrative. If the disruption is big enough (think Egypt) then a new narrative is born.

Politicians try to tell stories about themselves, but they are invariably overwhelmed by the stories that other people – the media especially – say about them. It’s unhappy for some of us, but Nick Clegg is a classic example. He was the hero of the 2010 campaign and now, the political villain of 2011. I wonder what kind of “disruption” will create a new narrative for him.

Learning from the AV result

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:34:00 +0000

The debate over what went wrong with the Yes to AV campaign is bubbling along.

Given that the “Noes” had it, by 68% to 32%, the quality of the campaign was but one of the reasons why AV went down. (Tom Clark of The Guardian has provided a good summary of the ten main reasons, even though the ordering and emphasis will be debated for a long time.) Nobody expects to ever see another referendum on AV in this country, but discussions about “what went wrong” are neither irrelevant nor academic. But the dismal failure of the Yes campaign carries a valuable lesson for future political reformers.

Tom Clark’s article is a good place to start. Two points in particular struck a chord with me:

[The] no campaign got down, dirty and deceitful in the best traditions of the party of which it had became a wholly owned subsidiary. Made-up costs were attached to made-up voting machines, and posters proclaimed that these would be paid by soldiers making the ultimate sacrifice. After an infant's need for a maternity unit failed to shift the polls sufficiently, a sick baby in intensive care was deployed instead. The cynical message was that because hospitals matter democracy doesn't, and so you'd better vote no or else the little one gets it.

But sour grapes are no substitute for hard analysis. He goes on:

[The] wet yes campaign, on the other hand, entirely failed to meet fire with fire. The wrong celebrities (Eddie Izzard) were marshalled by worthy functionaries who looked like they would be most at home arguing in favour of a Financial Times editorial about joining the euro . . . In a political culture that rewards those who pitch themselves against the system, for all the semi-comprehensible suggestions that AV would make politicians work harder, the campaign looked like the work of a metropolitan elite. More use should have been made of self-interested yes-mavericks, such as Ukip's Nigel Farrage, to summon up a rabble army.

The Yes campaign seemed to be engaged in a worthy discussion and too often, they were having it with like-minded people. Meanwhile, the No campaign, who saw where their interests lay, were waging total war.

Their contrasting approaches were typified by two broadcasts that played on BBC1. Take a look at this video from the Yes campaign. I can’t see a logical argument that explains how AV could have averted the expenses scandal. (And which MPs are lazy?) Worse, it fails to tell a simple story, that explains how AV would be the solution to voters’ disillusionment with politicians. For all the loud hailers, the video does little to engage in any meaningful with way with viewers’ emotions or concerns about politics. .

Next, check out this No broadcast, which is full of simple (simplistic?) stories. They aim for the heart at least as much as the head. The campaign may have been dishonest, but it played successfully to Conservative and Labour voters’ suspicions and resentment of the coalition and voters’ fear of the supposed complexity of AV. Here’s the rub: they got away with it. They won.

These stories didn’t come out of thin air. In his fascinating account of the campaign, Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome has explained how the “No” team used market research to focus and hone its messages:

Cost, Complexity and Clegg.

It would interesting to see an account from the Yes campaign of how their messages were created.

The strategy and the messaging are not just a concern for political geeks and future PhD students. There was no proportional voting system on the ballot paper, but both the “yes” and “no” campaign carried on as if it was. Both camps wanted to have a big argument about basic views of politics. A more pluralistic politics versus “winner takes all”. “Letting more people have a say” versus “giving my side all the power”. “More representative politics” versus “strong government”. Hope versus fear. Even though it would have meant a modest change in the way we elect MPs, AV became the totem for these bigger political arguments.

The drivers of the AV campaign are going to be with us for a long time. I’m sure it won’t be long till we see the same basic arguments again over another reform issue, with many of the same protagonists on either side.

Let’s try to avoid making the same mistakes again.

Footnote: Just in case you think I am having a case of “after hindsight”, please take a look at this post, from July 2010. Point 4 predicted that the “No” campaign would fight rough. This post, from last October, analysed some research findings on the most effective arguments both for and against AV.

Up and down with climate change | Political Climate

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Thu, 05 May 2011 12:19:00 +0000

via politicalclimate.net

In yet another interesting post, Political Climate have picked up on the UK and world media’s current lack of interest in climate change. They place the “trance” in the context of Anthony Downs’ “issue attention cycle”, in which problems suddenly leap into prominence, remain there for a short time, and then – though they are still largely unresolved – gradually fade from public attention.

I have added a comment, suggesting that the public may now be more interested in related environmental / energy issues and that media coverage of climate change may also be evolving and becoming more specialised.

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Sorting the good arguments for AV from the bad (revised and updated)

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:17:00 +0000

I will be voting “Yes” to AV on 5 May.

But in some ways I will be doing so in spite rather than because of the case that has been put forward by the “Yes” campaign.

For a start, I’m not convinced that AV would make “lazy MPs” work any harder. Nor is there any evidence that the 2010 expenses scandal would have been averted under AV. The causes of the scandal were relatively low pay for MPs, generous expenses, a lack of openness, and old-fashioned greed in too many cases. They could have surfaced under any electoral system.

Another argument is that the current voting system allows too many MPs to stay in safe seats year after year, thereby breeding complacency and arrogance in our politics – one source of the expenses scandals.

Let’s look at the evidence. We are being offered the same “optional AV” system as is used in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland. Voting in Australia is compulsory, making valid comparisons a little tenuous, but following the March 2011 state election in NSW, 55 of the 93 seats in the state parliament (59%) are “safe”; that is, a two-party swing of 10% of more is required for them to change parties.

According to the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), 44% of seats in the UK House of Commons currently fall into this category.

OK, last month’s NSW election saw an electoral landslide of historic proportions, that made a lot of conservative coalition candidates much bigger margins than they would otherwise have enjoyed. Still, before the 2011 election, 44% of the seats in the NSW parliament were considered “safe”.

And in Australia’s Federal House of Representatives, which is elected using the non-optional form of AV, 40% of the seats are now “safe”.

In short, the evidence that AV would end the safe seat syndrome is hardly overwhelming.

So, why change to AV?

First, even though AV is not a “proportional” voting system, it would be fairer to third parties and independent candidates than first past the post (FPTP). The ABC’s elections expert Antony Green has shown that in NSW and Queensland, middle ground independent and minor party candidates have better chances of winning under AV rules than under FPTP. They can still win from first place, and have new opportunities to win from second place on preferences. But candidates from the extremes of politics find it harder to win under AV because they need to achieve a majority of support after the distribution of preferences, not just a majority on first tally of votes.

As the Financial Times said in its leader (26 April 2011):

The real appeal of AV, and why Britain should vote for change, lies in the fact that it is more sympathetic to smaller parties. FPTP, a winner-takes-all system, may have served Britain well for many years because its politics used to split naturally into two big teams. They no longer do. At last year’s general election, the Conservative and Labour parties won just 65 per cent of the vote.

And, it must be added, 86 per cent of the seats in the Commons.

The FT went on to explain how the current system drives voters to vote tactically:

Under FPTP there are no prizes for coming second. So voters who do not think their favourite candidate can win often cast ballots for other representatives with stronger hopes of success. FPTP thus tends to drive voters towards two big parties and under-rewards smaller blocs for the votes that they win . . .

. . . AV would allow voters to register their support for their first-choice party, however slim its hopes of success appeared. Smaller parties should have their true levels of popular support recognised at the ballot box. Theresults should be less unfair to the Lib Dems, in particular.

The elegant words of Roy Jenkins sum up the second part of the case for AV:

[AV] would increase voter choice in the sense that it would enable voters to express their second and sometimes third or fourth preferences, and thus free them from a bifurcating choice between realistic and ideological commitment or, as it sometimes is called, voting tactically.

Third, AV would enhance the democratic legitimacy of the House of Commons. Under first past the post, MPs are often elected with the support of only a minority of people voting in their constituencies. At the 2010 election, two out of three MPs were elected without the support of the majority of voters. In other words, most MPs cannot claim to speak for the majority of their constituents.

Under AV, each MP would have had to reach 50 per cent of the vote in order to win. They would need to reach out across party lines to win the support of a majority of voters. As a long time observer of Australian politics, I don’t buy the argument that AV would make election campaigns nicer and more cuddly. But candidates would, most likely, work harder and MPs would be more representative of the people they are meant to serve.

No, AV is not a miracle cure for the ills of British politics. But it would make for a politics that are better than what we have now.

FT.com / Comment / Editorial - A better choice of voting system

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Stockley) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:33:00 +0000

The real appeal of AV, and why Britain should vote for change, lies in the fact that it is more sympathetic to smaller parties. FPTP, a winner-takes-all system, may have served Britain well for many years because its politics used to split naturally into two big teams. They no longer do. At last year’s general election, the Conservative and Labour parties won just 65 per cent of the vote.

via ft.com

This level-headed leader in today's FT sums up the main reasons why I am voting yes.

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