Tips for political parties

[philmophlegm]

I occasionally post about politics, but almost never about party politics. This is because I am the sort of person who avoids conflict and argument and when you express a political view, someone is bound to disagree with you. Furthermore, they will often be unpleasant. I do not want this.

However, I am interested in politics and wish to comment in a sort of detached, observer kind of way. After all, I studied Politics at university (in fact I took as many politics options as any PPEist is allowed to). So, what follows is a neutral post about the British general election. I welcome comments but I would prefer non-partisan observations.

What I would do if I was in charge of election strategy for each of the main parties.

 

Labour

OK, so things don’t look so good now. But remember, lots of people have voted for you at the last three general elections. Your leader may be unpopular, but those voters seemed to like it when he was raising taxes before, so maybe they’ll prefer him to be the one to raise taxes now rather than anyone else. Blame the financial crisis on ‘rich Tory bankers’. Downplay the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The leader of the opposition is posh, and lots of people don’t like posh people. However, direct campaigning on this issue looks petty, so what you need to do is use subtlety to reinforce the perception of Cameron = posh git. Pull in some favours from leftie comedians and BBC producers and get lots of references to Cameron (and other leading Conservatives) being posh on programmes like Have I Got News For You. Do not, under any circumstances compare posh boy Cameron to a super-cool, hard bastard DCI in a popular television series (oops…too late). Make the most of Mrs Brown. Hide your more useless, more irritating ministers for duration of the election campaign (**cough** Ben Bradshaw **cough**). Keep pushing the anti-immigration = racism line to evade tough questioning over immigration. In fact, play the race card at every opportunity – your campaign staff should be spending much of their waking hours reading Tory candidates’ blogs for anything even remotely politically incorrect so that you can use it as evidence that the Tories are the ‘nasty party’. Make the most of your years in government by playing the experience card.

 

Conservative

Be the party that’s brutally honest about the state of the economy and stop promising lots of small tax reductions – even if the total cost of the small tax cuts is small, it gives the impression that the economy can afford tax cuts, when what you should be doing is stressing the mess that the country’s finances are in. Have a convincing plan to return the budget deficit to more manageable levels and contrast the way Labour handled the financial crisis to the way that say Angela Merkel’s government handled it in Germany. Reverse the promise to sell off the banks at the earliest opportunity – instead, say that they will be sold off when the government can get the best price for them. At every opportunity, portray UKIP as a nutters’ party, and (if you can get away with it) as racist. (I have a suspicion that someone is doing this already, and the Conservatives seem the most likely culprit). Really go to town on the growth of the public sector and the rising cost of public sector pensions. Come back to the message that almost all new private sector jobs created since 1997 have gone to non-British citizens. Get more shadow cabinet faces out there – to suggest you have enough capable people to form a government. This goes double for people without posh accents, people with darker-than-average skin tone, gays and non-mad women. Instead of the ‘Vote Blair / Get Brown’ campaign of last time round, use something like ‘Vote Labour / Get militant trade unionists’ to make the most of the ‘Labour is funded by unions led by far-left leaders. If there is any inconvenient strike between now and election day, you want the electorate to think of it as Labour’s doing.

 

Liberal Democrats

If you want to break out of being the third party, you’ll have to stop being everyone’s second favourite and try and be the favourite for a third of the population. Left / right is becoming an obsolete way of looking at politics, so stop being the ‘centre’ party and come up with something different that is yours more than anyone else’s. What could that be? Liberalism – in the proper sense of the word, not the American ‘not liberal at all, just politically correct’ sense. If you were the party of true liberalism and freedom, you’d take votes away from the ‘right’ of the Conservatives as well as middle class Labour voters. That means campaigning against vested interests and both big business and big government. Take a liberal view on social matters to set you apart from the Conservatives and a liberal view on economic matters to set you apart from Labour. Campaign for reform of the EU along liberal, free trade, democratic lines and become a eurosceptic party. This is likely to be difficult with some of your own members, but then so was Clause 4 for Labour. Fight on local issues. Make a lot out of Labour’s links to the unions and the Conservatives’ links to big business. Try and come across as the ‘common sense’ party. In three-way debates, gang up with the Conservatives against Labour and gang up with Labour against the Conservatives. That way it looks like you always have the sensible, consensus opinion. (Vince Cable did this very cleverly in the Chancellors debate, without being challenged.)

 

UKIP

Face it, you aren’t going to be the next government. Your objective should be to make Parliament stronger and more likely to fight for its own rights. Do not put up candidates where either the MP or candidates with a good chance of winning are eurosceptic – otherwise you’ll just split the eurosceptic vote. This also has the benefit of keeping the more nutty of your candidates off the ballot papers and news programmes. Take things more seriously and try to be just that bit more slick. The other parties go in for spin and image control because spin and image control make you more attractive to the electorate.