I suppose being slagged off by Political Scrapbook is another one of those rites of passage...

Well they say all publicity is good publicity

And I've never been called a party hack before.

But Political Scrapbook REALLY didn't like my piece in the New Statesman last Monday.

Ho hum.

An Ed Miliband Communications 101

One of my more popular pieces appeared in the New Statesman yesterday. Lots of comment - unusually, for once generally supportive. And worth popping over to the original for the photo alone.

But if you can't be bothered, here's the piece...

Have a listen to the opening few seconds of Ed Miliband’s 5 Live interviewfrom earlier this week and you learn everything you need to know about his communication problems. And he doesn’t even have to open his mouth.

Firstly, Ed, or those around him, likes to look clever. Academic. Statesmanlike. How fabulous the phrase “Patriotic Industrial Activism" must have looked on paper, how grandiose, the words of an intellectual.

There is a place for such language. It’s usually in some sort of scholarly paper. It’s not mid morning on 5 Live.

Secondly, how long would it take you to answer that question, to explain "Patriotic Industrial Activism" in plain English? Personally, I would have said “Buy British". Slightly facile perhaps, a little over simplistic -- but nevertheless, plain English.

Ed takes 53 seconds to answer. After which, frankly, most people were none the wiser.

I’ve a funny feeling that Ed and the folk around him feel that giving succinct answers using everyday language may be patronising listeners, selling them short. They’re wrong. To my mind it’s language that’s been Ed Miliband’s biggest obstacle in connecting with the public.

David Cameron totally gets this. I’m often struck by Cameron’s use of everyday language to get his message home.

A great example was when he was informing the House of Commons that he had authorised the use of force in Libya, through air strikes. Can there be any more serious subject on which a prime minister addresses the House? I suspect Ed would have said something like “I have judged that it would be prescient at this juncture to intervene to avoid further humanitarian distress."

Cameron didn’t. He said “We’ve acted in the nick of time".

There is a certain irony in the old Etonian using the language we all use on a daily basis to connect with the population at large (in order to downplay his not-of-our-world ness), while the leader of the Labour Party feels the need to talk like a university professor, nervous that otherwise folk won’t think he’s up to the job.

We know Ed isn’t a natural communicator -- who will ever forget his interviews on the public service sector strikes -- but it’s his inability to touch a common nerve that is at the root of so many of his problems. All the abuse he gets throughout the rest of the interview has almost nothing to do with policy, positioning or belief. It’s all based on an assessment that people don’t think he gets it, or isn’t up to the job.

They are not rejecting his intellectual position -- they’re not getting that far.

Most people would grasp the basic tenet of his argument if he said “Buy British". They’re probably not going to spend a great deal of time interrogating the nuanced subtleties of “Patriotic Industrial Activism".

And you cannot sell to a man who isn’t listening.


UPDATE:


Just found a great website that shows everyone who retweeted my original article - thanks to all, extremely flattered.

Split down the middle as a party on the NHS Bill

The graphic above shows the split of LD supporters who have voted on the latest House of Twits poll asking the question 'Do you support the NHS Bill?'

As you can see it splits three ways almost equally between Yes, No and Don't know.

Small sample but a good illustration of the tension in the party of the bill. The overall vote, across supporters of all parties, is rather more obviously against.

"This fine coalition government won't see out 2013 - what a shame for Britain'. Peter Oborne in The Telegraph.

I find Peter Oborne something of an enigma. He writes as a Tory yet is fearless in calling issues however he sees them, regardless of the political tribe he attacks, even his own. He writes wonderfully well, yet when I see him on the TV I generally find him unconscionable - last time I saw him on Newsnight he was so rude to a European official they walked out of the interview.

Anyway it's the written Peter Oborne I am pondering today and in particular his incisive analysis of the Lib Dem political position we find ourselves in, published this morning. Every member of the party should read it - it's that good. We won't agree with an awful lot of it - he thinks, for example, that despite acknowledging the fixed 5 year term of the Parliament Act that our time in government is nearing an end. But there's a myriad of thought provoking ideas in there.

Here are a few choice extracts - but do read the whole thing. The first extract is from the end of the piece but I have put it first as sets the context for the rest.


"I write all this with sadness. Plenty of mistakes have been made since 2010, but this has nevertheless been the best government for a generation, led by men and women for the most part of decency and goodwill. Important steps have been taken towards addressing the financial deficit, while the reforms to welfare and education are essential to the health of Britain as a nation and will soon be irreversible".

"...coalitions are always disastrous for the smaller party. It gets swallowed up, blamed for the failures and only rarely credited with the successes, and then not nearly enough.

In some cases, as with the hapless Progressive Democrats, who never recovered from their alliance with Fianna Fáil and were dissolved in the wake of the 2007 Irish general election, the smaller party vanishes from history. But always it suffers heavy losses."

"It is important to remember that the Lib Dems and the Tories remain united on certain issues, above all the need to tackle the deficit. But on numerous others – Europe, tax, health, trade policy, family policy, constitutional reform – the two parties are polarised".

"The fact is that Mr Cable has a reasonably worked-out and coherent grasp of political economy, whether one agrees with it or not, and Mr Osborne does not. A large number of Tories want Mr Cable out. They are very stupid. Few things would damage Tory re-election chances more gravely than the Business Secretary on the back benches in partnership with the increasingly impressive Labour leader, Ed Miliband".

See. Great stuff. And in the context of @markpack s great infographic yesterday of Lib Dem achievements in government, extremely thought provoking. Do read the whole thing. It's worth it

UCL, The Future of the Liberal Democrats, Luke Johnson and me...

Lucky old you. My talk to the UCL Economics and Finance Society on the future of the Lib Dems and the like has been re arranged for Thursday 22nd March, 7pm, UCL main building.

It looks like I am speaking jointly with Luke Johnson. I have no idea how this will work - the only thing I think we have in common is that our first jobs were (at different times) Graduate Trainees at the same company. Still, I'm looking forward to hearing Luke. I'm sure he is saying the same about me. :-)

Do come along if you're free. I have been saving some of my VERY BEST jokes .

NHS Bill. Too many Twitter hashtags

Ok, not really

But I do worry that the effectiveness of the Twitter campaign against the NHS Bill is being somewhat undermined by the multitude of hashtags being used. So far I have seen:

#killthebill
#savethenhs
#dropthebill
#saveournhs
#nhsbill
#nhssavedmylife

Happy to hear others.

Now obviously there are bigger issues to debate. But with so much concern on Twitter, it's a shame there isn't more consistency. There was just the one #horsegate tag and that seemed rather effective.

As @markpack pointed out to me - that's the trouble with the NHS campaign - it needs a top down reorganisation of its hashtags.

Why Child Benefit?

The news that the IFS has judged that George Osborne may have £10 billion to play with he didn't think he'd have in the budget has resulted in a lot of speculation on what he might do with it.

And the thing currently exercising minds is scrapping the proposed changes to Child Benefits.

Now, there is a lot of debate about why this is the top priority of so many Tory MPs. Primarily there is a concern that the changes affect many middle class Tory voters, that the cuts (due to take place in Jan 2013) were proposed to hit at a time when many thought the economy would be growing again, ameliorating the effect  for those voters (now an unlikely prospect) and so abandoning the changes is a cynical ploy to look after the Tory vote. And indeed, it does seem at first glance an odd place to spend the money when, say, there are cuts to disability benefits looming - shouldn't we be looking there first?

But I do wonder if actually the issue is not looking after Tory voters ( I suspect for backbench Conservative MPs, that's just a bonus) and more the practical issue  - that the proposed changes just don't work.

Currently the cut affects any household with a higher rate tax payer. But administering and policing that policy is a nightmare - the system is wide open to abuse. Plus there is a built in issue with tying in personal tax liability (through income) with a non personal benefit (household income) which means that a household with two people earning £80k between them keeps the benefit, while a household with one person earning £44k a year loses.

I'm not wedded to the principle of Universal Benefits per se. For example, the fact that a millionnaire aged over 65 gets the same winter fuel allowance as a pensioner living entirely on the state pension seems madness to me.

But in this case, when the proposed system just won't work, can't be policed (without incurring enormous costs which defeats the purpose of the change) and has a fundamental unfairness flaw built in - well, better to U-turn now.