Marketing for Liberal Democrats

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Comment by Olga Ivannikova on August 9, 2010 at 10:12

Lesson from Obama's campaign - http://tinyurl.com/32qubpp

Comment by Olga Ivannikova on July 28, 2010 at 10:24

actually I realised that its a discussion for another group -Liberalism in liberal democrats http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/liberalisminliberaldemocrats

Comment by Olga Ivannikova on July 28, 2010 at 9:57

Dave,
I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I think the answers actually in your post.
Firstly, you change the public debate by making a sensible practical liberal argument. On immigration, for example, the whole debate over the last ten years has been framed through xenophobic lens with very few people prepared to balance the debate. As a result its now very difficult to sell a liberal immigration policy. The only way you can change that is by standing up and having a debate.
The second point is that those policies that are unpopular in the last election we avoided talking about and after the first debate the other parties focused the debate solely on those policies in their terms. If we had explained those policies first it would have been more difficult for them to do that. That is not to say that we ignore our popular policies, just that we need to frame the debate so that we win votes and also start to shift public opinion so that we can push liberal ideas further into the public consciousness which will assist us in the future and create a more liberal country, which is what we want (is it not?) :)

Comment by Dave Thawley on July 27, 2010 at 23:06

err, Please scratch my guinea pig statement - I think focus group sounds more politically correct. :-) I agree with what you are saying about the spin as well. In the world we are living in we need to be able to talk to the population while countering the possible negative view the media can paint. I hope we have learned this for next time around

Comment by Andrew Stephen Crichton on July 27, 2010 at 22:39

The guinea pig idea (I think they are called 'focus groups' :) ) is a good one, and those kind of things have been used by both Labour and the Conservatives when they have been in the wilderness.

You're also right about the debates. Immigration was a great weakness for us, because our policy sounded unpopular and was torn apart by the media. If we could have just moderated our policy a bit, or put it across in a less extreme sounding way, it might not have done as much damage. I'm afraid in this modern age we need to be more effective at 'spin' too.

Comment by Dave Thawley on July 27, 2010 at 22:11

I agree somewhat with Andrew says but we must also sell the fact we are fair and a little different on top of it all. My view also is that we are not a centralist party so while we can sell ourselves on certain centralist ideas we really need to keep pushing our radical nature as well. I see this as our main problem - the population is sold a left/middle/right view of politics but we don't really fit into this. Our manifesto spreads from the middle outwards to the left and right but also into directions which don't fit this dichotomy. The unpopularity of some of our polices are born out of the propaganda driven into the population day after day. I am not sure how we get around this but I suppose the best way would be to test drive different explanations to gunipigs and work out which description was best understood. This was not done with trident and our immigration policy in the debates. Both of these are the best course of action for everyone but Nick failed to get the message across. Now this isn't his fault, its our fault as a party. At the moment there doesn't seem a way we can organise ourselves as efficiently as we could do - I'm thinking about ways around this and I'll show my thoughts in a couple of weeks but whatever we are at the moment failing ourselves. As liberals we are intelligent creative empathic imaginative people with a passion for fairness. With these general attributes between us we should be able to work out solutions as to how we can sell the ideas. To do this though I believe we need to find a way of linking up so that we can tackle the issues which are stopping us. for example, I cringed when Nick spoke about immigration but there were plenty of things he could have said which would have turned the vote looser into a vote winner, or at least a vote neutral policy. This would allow us to keep to our unique political position while still countering the social constructions being interjected into the population..

Comment by Andrew Stephen Crichton on July 27, 2010 at 20:21

Olga,

Not emphasising isn't the same as abandonment. What I argue for is not a dramatic change in policy, rather a more cynical approach to politics. No party that has formed a government in the UK has ever converted the British public to its point of view, rather the media essentially determines popular opinion. If our party is to ever form a government, it needs to take up policies that are popular amongst the british public, and which they are not indifferent to.

This does not mean abandoning our liberalism, but taking a more moderate approach. Surely any party which has at its core Liberals is better for Britain than Statist Labour or Authoritarian Conservatives?

As for being too scared to be liberal, I have to disagree. Most people I know who switched from Liberal to Labour at the last minute did so not because of the two party squeeze, but because they simply couldn't tolerate our policies towards Trident and the EU. Meanwhile what we most heavily emphasise (electoral reform, civil liberties) they remain largely indifferent to.

The majority of the British population are broadly in favour of:

-Limited immigration restrictions
-Membership of the EU, but not too much integration
-Not being taxed anymore than they need be
- A strong military

If our party can articulate our policy to give us an edge in these subjects, it will win the election. It isn't so much about policy alteration as how we word it and what we choose to say. But this does not mean we have to abandon our Liberal principles. Our idealisation of civil liberties can be articulated as an anti CCTV/Speed Camera policy. Our pro-european views can be demonstrated by a closer relationship with European states vis-a-vis America. Meanwhile, our concern for social welfare can be expressed as it is : investment in public services is universally popular, as long as we don't take too many tax dollars...

Yeah I uh, got a little carried away...but the gist of it is...don't commit political suicide by sounding too soft on crime, too statist, excessively pro-EU or anti-military (no matter what trident really was that's how the press spin opposition) Do emphasise those areas of our policy which aren't controversial. and there are many.

Comment by Olga Ivannikova on July 27, 2010 at 19:48

Andrew,
I dont think we should be scared to make an argument on issues that we feel strongly about.
If we abandon core principles such as internationalism and liberalism, then all we come across as to the average voter is another centrist party. there is no point in voting for that.
our opponents are going to attack our unpopular policies regardless what we do. So we have two choices:
First choice: hide and let them frame an argument, lose the debate and lose our distinctive appeal or
two: frame the argument as we want it argued and try and change minds
Realistically, I think that our Trident policy was popular.
In this election we were too scared to be liberal. I dont think we should make the same mistake again.

Comment by Andrew Stephen Crichton on July 27, 2010 at 13:17

Reposted from Olga's blog for your viewing 'pleasure'.

I have to agree with your first point about the Liberal Democrats. My father (a lifelong Conservative voter) had never ever considered voting Liberal Democrat before. However, When I gave him a list of Liberal Democrat policies and compared them to Conservative policies, he realised that he agreed almost entirely about the Liberals.

I think the 'don't have a chance' idea can be overcome if they articulate themselves better though. A key issue with their marketing is they tend to emphasise those policies which are politically disastrous, such as higher taxes, opposition to Trident and their very vocal support for the EU. In their marketing they need to play down these facets, perhaps not even mention them at all. No matter what our feelings on the EU or Trident, these simply do not appeal to the majority of the british people. Also, the majority are almost entirely different to electoral reform and policies about liberty. These do not win votes (except from the sort of people that would have voted for us anyway), whereas, by contrast, policies such as raising the income tax threshold most definately do.

Our current policies tailor to our core vote, when it is not our core vote we need to tailor to but to the majority of the british population. This is demonstrated by both Labour and the Conservative's public move to the centre ground, which if you look at policy doesn't change a thing about what they actually do, merely how they present themselves to the public

Comment by Richard on July 16, 2010 at 13:04

'Av it' - great idea :-)

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