Time for Nick Clegg to change the conversation
All communication professionals know that if you don’t like the conversation you change it. Put another way, do not fight on your critics’s territory. Take the battle where you can win.
All third parties struggle to be heard while in opposition. The Liberal Democrats were not the exception to the rule. However good the people employed by Cowley Street were they faced an uphill struggle.
In government the party now gets a lot of media attention. While much of this is negative it gives communicators an opportunity. With a thought out and consistent communication strategy they may be able to change the conversation about the party.
To do this they need clear policies that tell a story about what the party is about and why it is in government.
But given the view the public now has of the party, that won’t be enough.
They need to find something that changes the perception of the party fundamentally. A headline that makes the reader’s eyebrows lift up as they they say to themselves, ‘I didn’t think that about the Lib Dems’. And of course it has to be a positive eyebrow raising moment.
Good communication alone cannot do it but strong policies without consistent public relations won’t either.
If the party fails do both, it is hard to say how it will come back from the low poll rating it currently has.
June 22nd, 2011 at 10:18 pm
“They need to find something that changes the perception of the party fundamentally. A headline that makes the reader’s eyebrows lift up…”
LIB DEMS WILL SCRAP INCOME TAX
and tax unearned wealth instead
June 23rd, 2011 at 8:03 am
Andrew
That would certainly raise an eyebrow. It is in the liberal tradition: Gladstone considered getting rid of income tax. It would send a message about letting people control their incomes, liberal again, and that income earned from labour should not be taken by the State. It fits into thinking around land value tax. But it would require a more fundamental shift in the provision of public services than we are seeing right now. Taxing other sources, unearned wealth, goods at point of sale etc, wouldn’t raise enough revenue I suspect to fund the UK’s welfare state. We would also have to go back to the Beveridge report, a liberal, that leant towards a social insurance scheme for health and think hard about how we fund education and other services.
This morning I discovered headlines in the FT, Times and Telegraph saying Clegg has suggested that every adult in Britain gets shares in RBS and Lloyds –
http://on.ft.com/lHK2iQ
So perhaps he has already begun work on changing the conversation.
June 23rd, 2011 at 8:31 am
You need to be careful what you mean by ‘unearned’. You would do greater economic damage by tilting towards capital taxation and away from income. If you just mean land values and inheritance, then that’s a more sensible area of debate.
The broader problem with taxation policy is that what is genuinely liberal — taxing consumption, along with increased taxes on pollutants — is politically unpopular, while what is popular — taxing investment and interfering in private enterprise — is illiberal. Not to mention counter-productive.
June 23rd, 2011 at 8:40 am
Philip
All good points. I assumed Andrew meant LVT and so on.
Simon