Policies – when they really don’t matter

Another day, another disastrous poll for Labour, this time in The Guardian (which today also includes a fascinating article on Gordon Brown’s style of government). It’s not that the Westminster government is embroiled in John Major-style chaos, it’s just that most voters are giving a “Yea, whatever” response whenever Mr Brown or any of his ministers say anything. That’s why the Prime Minister is in such deep trouble. Global initiatives to bring down the price of oil, locking up terrorist suspects, action to tackle struggling schools, increasing social mobility are all surely popular, but the government is not engaging people, because basically they want Labour out.

As a senior strategist for a struggling party (the SNP in the run up to the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections) this is all quite familiar to me. I remember the BBC conducting a poll at the start of the 2003 campaign asking voters to rank policies in terms of importance. Voters were not told which policies came from which party. In the event, our key pledges – such as class sizes, nurses pay, halting private involvement in public services – came top. But ultimately  that didn’t matter. The voters may have liked our policies but at that stage they didn’t much like us – and didn’t (yet) want us in government. 

Sometimes parties just have to accept something that goes against the political DNA – there are occasions when the public mood is such that there is not much a single party or leader can do. Parties usually overestimate their ability to shape change and need to come to terms with that reality.

But, as the SNP showed in 2007, circumstances can change relatively quickly.  What this means is that parties need to put themselves in a position where they can take advantage of those changed circumstances. In the SNP’s case this meant focusing almost always on the positive,  having a popular leader and  devising messages that resonated. Interestingly the SNP did not  talk explicitly  about change in 2007 – the slogan was ”It’s time”, not “It’s time for change.” This allowed the party to add positive messages to the end of the slogan  – It’s time to: cut class sizes, axe the council tax, bring our troops home from Iraq etc.

So for Labour what this means is: elect a new leader, stop short-term positioning and try to find a positive reason to vote for you.  But remember – don’t assume any of this will do the trick.