Labour want to implement ‘Vietnamese’ rent controls spluttered one Tory opponent on the ‘World at One’. Goodness, I thought, that’s a new line. Then I realised it was a mistake, a half-remembered line to take. Still it showed the absurdity of the Tory position. Vietnamese, Venezuelan, even Venusian – the attacks bounce off because they are ludicrous.
Negative campaigning works. That’s a fact. But that doesn’t mean that every attack works. The key to going negative is finding and brutally branding a weakness in your opponent that has a resonance with the public. It has to be a true enough characterisation of your opponent and also a relevant one to voters. So, Labour calling Cameron a ‘posh boy’ fails because though he clearly is, not a single voter cares. (Which, by the way, is a good thing.) Likewise, when Tories brand Ed Miliband as a Marxist it bounces off him. Bookish? Yes. Bolshevik? No.
Even worse news for the Tories is that you only have one chance to brand your opponents. The Conservatives showed this in 1996 when they ran their ‘New Labour, New Danger’ campaign, with a poster featuring tony Blair with ‘demon eyes’. Their first misjudgement was that Tony Blair was some kind of crazy leftie – well they ken noo, as we say in Scotland. The second, was to underestimate Peter Mandelson. Traditional political management says ignore an attack, it’ll go away, responding just gives it publicity. Peter decided to fight back hard to punish the Tory error, getting the Bishop of Oxford out to condemn the posters. The result was that the Tory ad agency won an award for the campaign, and Labour won the election campaign.
Successful framing is based on letting the voters crystallise their doubts about a politician, listening to the ways they express those doubts and then playing that critique back to them in their own language. It’s not about imposing your words on them. Just because ‘red’ rhymes with ‘Ed’ doesn’t make it a critique that cuts though and connects.
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John McTernan is former political secretary at 10 Downing Street and was director of communications for former prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard. He writes The Last Word column on Progress and tweets @johnmcternan
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