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| Labour must learn to speak human, whatever its policies | Labour must learn to speak human, whatever its policies |
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| Long before Labour lost the election, it lost the war of metaphor. The origins of the defeat go back at least to the long summer of 2010, when the Conservatives returned to power and promptly took control of the national conversation. Instantly they unleashed a series of simple metaphors to explain what had just happened, and the roles they and the Labour party had played in the story. The simplest and most important, repeated for years to come, was: “We’re clearing up the mess we inherited.” | Long before Labour lost the election, it lost the war of metaphor. The origins of the defeat go back at least to the long summer of 2010, when the Conservatives returned to power and promptly took control of the national conversation. Instantly they unleashed a series of simple metaphors to explain what had just happened, and the roles they and the Labour party had played in the story. The simplest and most important, repeated for years to come, was: “We’re clearing up the mess we inherited.” |
| The mess in question was the hole in the public finances, and it was caused by Labour because “the last government ‘maxed out’ the nation’s credit card”. If Labour criticised any aspect of economic policy, they were “an arsonist having the cheek to criticise the fireman”. Labour did not deserve the public’s votes. They had “driven the car into the ditch: why on earth would we give them back the keys?”. Labour had proved themselves fiscally incapable. They had failed “to mend the roof when the sun was shining”. The Tories, by contrast, were determined to “balance the books”, so that “we live within our means”. | The mess in question was the hole in the public finances, and it was caused by Labour because “the last government ‘maxed out’ the nation’s credit card”. If Labour criticised any aspect of economic policy, they were “an arsonist having the cheek to criticise the fireman”. Labour did not deserve the public’s votes. They had “driven the car into the ditch: why on earth would we give them back the keys?”. Labour had proved themselves fiscally incapable. They had failed “to mend the roof when the sun was shining”. The Tories, by contrast, were determined to “balance the books”, so that “we live within our means”. |
| Every one of these simple, plain phrases was repeated so often and with such discipline that they settled into the collective cerebral cortex, until they seemed less like statements of political opinion than of received wisdom, even common sense. | Every one of these simple, plain phrases was repeated so often and with such discipline that they settled into the collective cerebral cortex, until they seemed less like statements of political opinion than of received wisdom, even common sense. |
| And what did Labour come up with in the same period? Ed Miliband spoke of the “squeezed middle” for a while. There was that speech about “predators v producers”. And he temporarily nicked the Conservatives’ own “one nation” slogan. But none of those lodged in the public mind in quite the same way. And there was certainly no metaphorical reply to the mess, the credit card, the roof or the ditch: no memorable, easily understood response to the charge that Labour’s incontinent spending, rather than the global crash, had ballooned the deficit. | And what did Labour come up with in the same period? Ed Miliband spoke of the “squeezed middle” for a while. There was that speech about “predators v producers”. And he temporarily nicked the Conservatives’ own “one nation” slogan. But none of those lodged in the public mind in quite the same way. And there was certainly no metaphorical reply to the mess, the credit card, the roof or the ditch: no memorable, easily understood response to the charge that Labour’s incontinent spending, rather than the global crash, had ballooned the deficit. |
| This week the Guardian has been running a series of essays on the questions Labour will have to answer if it is to make a plausible bid for power in 2020. Whatever responses the party settles on, it will need to find a way to communicate those effectively. But this goes deeper than mere presentation. Indeed, it amounts to a further question in its own right: how should Labour talk to the people it seeks to govern? | This week the Guardian has been running a series of essays on the questions Labour will have to answer if it is to make a plausible bid for power in 2020. Whatever responses the party settles on, it will need to find a way to communicate those effectively. But this goes deeper than mere presentation. Indeed, it amounts to a further question in its own right: how should Labour talk to the people it seeks to govern? |
| Any answer has to begin with the nature of Labour’s current trouble. Conversations with shadow ministers, former speechwriters and others confirm that no matter how bad you think Labour’s communications problem is, it’s even worse. “Labour loves abstract nouns,” says the pollster James Morris, who has advised the party: “inequality, fairness, aspiration, opportunity”. | Any answer has to begin with the nature of Labour’s current trouble. Conversations with shadow ministers, former speechwriters and others confirm that no matter how bad you think Labour’s communications problem is, it’s even worse. “Labour loves abstract nouns,” says the pollster James Morris, who has advised the party: “inequality, fairness, aspiration, opportunity”. |
| Perhaps such language came naturally to Miliband’s rather academic inner circle. But to regular people, those are not just dry and disembodied terms, says Morris: they are unintelligible. Focus groups simply didn’t understand what Labour was talking about. | Perhaps such language came naturally to Miliband’s rather academic inner circle. But to regular people, those are not just dry and disembodied terms, says Morris: they are unintelligible. Focus groups simply didn’t understand what Labour was talking about. |
| This wasn’t a fault peculiar to Team Miliband. It is a defect that repeatedly surfaces in parties of the left. Witness the research of US scholar Drew Westen, whose book The Political Brain showed how Democratic candidates constantly construct arguments of reason – marshalling stats, numbers and policy detail – while Republicans appeal instead to emotion, to moral instinct and gut feeling. In those contests, the right always wins. Because the political brain is an emotional brain. | This wasn’t a fault peculiar to Team Miliband. It is a defect that repeatedly surfaces in parties of the left. Witness the research of US scholar Drew Westen, whose book The Political Brain showed how Democratic candidates constantly construct arguments of reason – marshalling stats, numbers and policy detail – while Republicans appeal instead to emotion, to moral instinct and gut feeling. In those contests, the right always wins. Because the political brain is an emotional brain. |
| So Miliband’s debt ratios and GDP figures were bound to lose against George Osborne’s roof or ditch. The latter deploys metaphors you can picture. Miliband, like John Kerry, Al Gore or Michael Dukakis before him, relied on abstract ideas that never quite settle in your head. | So Miliband’s debt ratios and GDP figures were bound to lose against George Osborne’s roof or ditch. The latter deploys metaphors you can picture. Miliband, like John Kerry, Al Gore or Michael Dukakis before him, relied on abstract ideas that never quite settle in your head. |
| This isn’t solely because the left keeps on anointing nerds and wonks as candidates for high office. Sometimes the left case is inherently harder to make. Take the fiscal argument. While comparing the nation’s finances to a household budget is clear and simple (you shouldn’t spend more than you have), the Keynesian counter-argument (that you should spend more when there’s less money around), is maddeningly counterintuitive. Keynes himself never found a snappy way of putting it: “the paradox of thrift” is not exactly made for a bumper sticker. | This isn’t solely because the left keeps on anointing nerds and wonks as candidates for high office. Sometimes the left case is inherently harder to make. Take the fiscal argument. While comparing the nation’s finances to a household budget is clear and simple (you shouldn’t spend more than you have), the Keynesian counter-argument (that you should spend more when there’s less money around), is maddeningly counterintuitive. Keynes himself never found a snappy way of putting it: “the paradox of thrift” is not exactly made for a bumper sticker. |
| The British context, with a press that almost uniformly leans to the right, exacerbates the problem: Conservatives have a megaphone amplifying their message; Labour does not. Still, the party does not help itself. For one thing, it has a curious habit of accentuating the negative. Why, for example, call it the “mansion tax”? Why did the the name focus on the means – taxing mansions – rather than the end, namely giving more money to the NHS? Surely they should have talked about a “nurses’ fund”. Instead Labour focused on the pain rather than the gain. | The British context, with a press that almost uniformly leans to the right, exacerbates the problem: Conservatives have a megaphone amplifying their message; Labour does not. Still, the party does not help itself. For one thing, it has a curious habit of accentuating the negative. Why, for example, call it the “mansion tax”? Why did the the name focus on the means – taxing mansions – rather than the end, namely giving more money to the NHS? Surely they should have talked about a “nurses’ fund”. Instead Labour focused on the pain rather than the gain. |
| Nor can it be a coincidence that the current generation of Labour politicians boasts so few sparkling speakers. Too many of today’s frontline figures talk in tired, predigested phrases: “Britain’s hardworking families” must be exhausted through overuse. | Nor can it be a coincidence that the current generation of Labour politicians boasts so few sparkling speakers. Too many of today’s frontline figures talk in tired, predigested phrases: “Britain’s hardworking families” must be exhausted through overuse. |
| Every one of the Tories' simple, plain phrases was repeated so often they settled into the collective cerebral cortex | Every one of the Tories' simple, plain phrases was repeated so often they settled into the collective cerebral cortex |
| There is no Labour equivalent of Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage – someone who seems to be voicing their own inner thoughts unfiltered. They don’t have a counterpart to Michael Gove, who along with Johnson seems to revel in the English language: perhaps that’s because politicians of the left fear using a vocabulary that might mark them out as elitist. But this egalitarian impulse results in utilitarian language, dead on arrival. | There is no Labour equivalent of Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage – someone who seems to be voicing their own inner thoughts unfiltered. They don’t have a counterpart to Michael Gove, who along with Johnson seems to revel in the English language: perhaps that’s because politicians of the left fear using a vocabulary that might mark them out as elitist. But this egalitarian impulse results in utilitarian language, dead on arrival. |
| A solution would begin with Labour mastering an emotional rather than rational idiom, and speaking in a language people actually use. But it must also attend to both the message and messenger. The former has to be clear. (A phrase like “compulsory jobs guarantee” never took off because it expressed a hopeless fudge, a policy that was meant simultaneously to sound tough and tender.) Perhaps even more important, it must be authentic. | A solution would begin with Labour mastering an emotional rather than rational idiom, and speaking in a language people actually use. But it must also attend to both the message and messenger. The former has to be clear. (A phrase like “compulsory jobs guarantee” never took off because it expressed a hopeless fudge, a policy that was meant simultaneously to sound tough and tender.) Perhaps even more important, it must be authentic. |
| This is where the messenger matters most. No matter how good the message, it will ring hollow if it sounds fake or forced. If Labour in 2020 decides it has to adopt a hawkish position on, say, the public finances or immigration, it won’t work if it merely looks like a tactical concession to the electorate. Labour, and especially its leader, will have to look as if they mean it. | This is where the messenger matters most. No matter how good the message, it will ring hollow if it sounds fake or forced. If Labour in 2020 decides it has to adopt a hawkish position on, say, the public finances or immigration, it won’t work if it merely looks like a tactical concession to the electorate. Labour, and especially its leader, will have to look as if they mean it. |
| David Cameron could shift the Tories’ standing on the NHS because of his own family experience with the health service. Tony Blair won voters over because he didn’t seem to be repudiating Labour’s past solely as a matter of electoral repositioning. As he used to joke, “It’s worse than you think: I actually believe this stuff.” | David Cameron could shift the Tories’ standing on the NHS because of his own family experience with the health service. Tony Blair won voters over because he didn’t seem to be repudiating Labour’s past solely as a matter of electoral repositioning. As he used to joke, “It’s worse than you think: I actually believe this stuff.” |
| Come 2020, Labour will need a clear, simple story to tell about itself and the country – the way it did in 1945 and 1997. And it will have to have a leader who both can tell that story and somehow embody it. It sounds straightforward, but if the past is any guide it will be anything but easy. | Come 2020, Labour will need a clear, simple story to tell about itself and the country – the way it did in 1945 and 1997. And it will have to have a leader who both can tell that story and somehow embody it. It sounds straightforward, but if the past is any guide it will be anything but easy. |