Ed Miliband’s Labour are dominating the strategic debate within politics but losing key tactical battles. Yet the answer to looking and sounding like a government in waiting at those big times is staring the party’s leadership team in the face.
The first lesson of political communications is to have a message everyone can understand and then sticking to it – message discipline in industry vernacular. The basic formula is simple. You identify the debate you want to play into. You rack your brain, or pay for polling, to arrive at an overarching ‘meta’ narrative – your top line. This one-liner positions your cause within the debate and acts as a strategic hook, upon which all other communications work can be pegged.
Nestled underneath the top line sits a number of messaging ‘pillars’. Think of them as deputies supporting their leader. They provide evidence and context so that the political battle can be fought on a number of fronts. They are tactical devises employed to substantiate the broader strategic vision.
Labour’s top line is the ‘cost of living’ crisis. It can be heard every time a Labour politician speaks and is proving fruitful. Speak to pollsters and they will tell you that the ‘cost of living’ leads the pack when you ask people what they think is the biggest problem facing British society.
Message discipline sounds simple but knowing when to deploy your ‘tactical pillars’ or rely on your strategic top line is no easy feet. Especially in an industry that has more conversations than a social media convention.
As the budget approached, I was quietly confident that Labour was in the right place from a communications perspective. The party had started the year strongly and their double-digit poll lead was deserved. The Tories were moaning and their backbenchers were busy fighting. Labour had even won back some of the ground lost on economic credibility after the other Ed ‘balls it up’ responding to the autumn statement.
To really kick on, Labour had to stick to their guns and frame all of the chancellor’s announcements as ‘cost of living’ measures. It did not matter what George Osborne said. Labour had to take credit for the political obsession with ‘hard working people’.
Yet, as Ed Miliband’s leaked speaking notes reveal, Labour was neither prepared nor self-aware enough to capitalise on their strategic superiority.
The chancellor is widely regarded in the Westminster village as ‘great at tactics, but weak on strategy’. In a confined space, he is Britain’s most cunning and talented political operator. But put him in a field of ideas and he is nothing extraordinary.
Why then did Labour’s leadership team arm Ed Miliband with little more than a list of tired tactical lines that carried less punch than Charles Kennedy’s hip flask?
From the fuel duty freeze to the support for savers, pensioners and small businesses, this was a cost of living budget. It was as if the Conservatives had borrowed Labour’s polling and pandered directly to the swing vote within they thought they could reasonably target.
That may be the prerogative of government. Stealing the opposition’s ideas is par for the course. But when they start using their entire messaging grid, shouldn’t the writing be on the wall? The ruling Coalition is out of ideas. It is time for change. As Philip Gould said, ‘winning the battle for ideas is central to everything’.
What a missed opportunity. Yes ‘tax cuts for millionaires’ scored some points in 2012 but the debate has moved on. Is that not what Labour has spent two years working on? It is time the party’s communications experts reached into their back pockets, re-read their messaging grid and gave it a spring clean. The strategy is working, but the tactics are not.
In my mind, Labour’s number one priority for the budget was to steal the headlines. The economic news was always going to be good so you have to play to your strengths. If the tactics are not there, stick to the strategy. How better than to call the chancellor’s speech a budget from a coalition government and a Conservative chancellor speaking Labour’s language?
That is the type of swagger you want from a government in waiting. It might even have grabbed a few headlines.
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The author works for a trade body and writes under the pseudonym Jack Dillon
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Photo: Louisa Thomson