Wednesday, 18 August 2010

Political Campaigning and Supporting

From effective supporters to effective campaigners


The recent election highlighted one thing; that members of the political Parties are not afraid to go out rally behind candidates. We are not afraid to put forward our vision and promote ourselves as political supports from all sides of the political spectrum. The number and quality of events during election 2010 was impressive; but it also highlights that people are now more dependent upon their candidates than ever before.

Election 2010 showed those of us with political interests are effective supporters but are not effective campaigners. All too often the real work of changing and challenging policy to candidates and fail to take a more assertive and leading role as individuals. Voters often take their lead and arguments from them. Which is fine assuming that there are capable candidates and not simply candidates, such as the Labour MP Ed Balls, who sprout crap all the time and rarely use sufficient evidence.

The strain of the party chain of command often means that candidates are ‘on message’ and rely on national policies and superimpose them to local issues. This makes for good and loyal supporters, but it does not make effective campaigners capable of sustaining a debate with hard facts and evidence. The voter at the doorstep, and at every event between now and the next election, requires more than this rhetoric and national understanding – they need detail and, importantly, evidence.

During the last election many were frustrated to hear the same old debate about ‘cuts’ and ‘spending’... ‘6billion this and 6billion that’ with no reference to much real information and any resemblance to local circumstances. It would be easy to justify policies by highlighting wastage in our own communities. Instead, the majority of political supporters wait for candidates to lead us to our arguments.

It’s not as if we don’t have the tools for this task. The Freedom of Information Act means we can route through Council documents and critique MPs decision making. Many Government documents are also available under the act. There are multiple websites revealing information that is not deemed important by the national media. Whilst I am not critiquing her directly, the blogger Michelle Donelan’s article shows that many are content to distribute generalised literature with more emphasis on design and little notice of hard evidence. As campaigners we are missing a major trick; we are simply relying on our ideology and general swathes of policy instead of campaigning effectively with evidence.

In another blog, the Conservative Owen Meredith, used poll evidence to show that many people (students actually) will not vote. But the principle extents to the 40odd percent who did not vote in the last election. Meredith placed the emphasis on voters themselves by critiquing that their enhanced education has not caused them to be interested in politics.

But can we blame them? A majority of supporters rely on the lead of their candidate and the lead of national figures such as David Cameron & previously Gordon Brown. Whilst this leadis often strong, it also bears little relevance to the daily concerns of many people. Such characters often do not reveal the kind of detailed information that actually convinces people. Indeed, many are turned off by this debate and consider it the ‘Westminster bubble’.

One other factor is also deeply worrying when examining this rut of political inactiveness. That political campaigners often take areas for granted. I was shocked to discover many of my local Labour Party supporters being briefed on local issues for a constituency ballot many many miles away. They were bussed there and then campaigned on local issues that most will have no idea about – not the local touch that an interested local would, I imagine, appreciate.

I find myself agreeing with Alistair Campbell that ‘old-fashioned door to door, face to face campaigning in the community is going to be more important than ever’. Where I find a problem is that most of this campaigning ultimately fails because it does not address the central concerns of many voters, lacks sufficient evidence to CONVINCE voters and ultimately does not enhance the general debate because a majority of supporters will/do not effectively challenge their own preconceptions.

If we switched to becoming campaigners and used the tools available to us we would be able to effectively articulate our message using cold hard facts. This has the additional benefit of inspiring confidence in our voters at a local level. Conversations in which we present convincing evidence will have the effect of building our support at grass roots level.

We need to be more profession and become more inclined to do a little detailed research ourselves. We need local evidence to back our opinions, we need to ask challenging questions about where money is spent and who made the decisions. Without this we cannot hold people to account nor can we effectively show people that we, as a party, have a detailed grip of detail to become their representatives.

As it stands, we are good at supporting candidates. The recent election has shown that Conservatives are once again willing to pound pavements for support. But we are generally ill prepared for the kind of debate that people expect. We need to professionalise ourselves and develop a bank of local detail and research in order to show people that we are the right party to represent them.

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