Huge amounts of energy in politics are spent measuring the unmeasurable. Opinion polls tell us only how people think they would vote, and those answers are as fallible as every human effort at self-knowledge. Focus groups are meant to dig deeper, mining swing voters’ moods with metaphors. If each party was a house, what would it look like? What if each leader was a car? An animal? A biscuit?
Since most people, most of the time, are not paying attention to politics, the parties obsess about what has “cut through”. Often, it is things the candidates would rather forget. A story about British Prime Minister David Cameron cycling to work and having his shoes brought by a driver who was following behind, which first appeared in 2006, was remembered for years afterwards. Ask a random sample what they know about Ed Miliband and high on the list will be something about him beating his brother to the top job. Months are spent plotting policy announcements on the “grid”, yet most of them land noiselessly, trees falling in the empty Westminster wood.
So the biggest thing that will happen in politics over the next few weeks is that many more people will notice it is there. The official campaign period, which began with parliament’s dissolution last Monday, marks the point when “low-information voters” — to use the horrible phrase of party strategists — start soaking up the news. All sides are pinning great hopes on this spike in attention. For the Conservatives, it is meant to be the moment when people wake up to the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming prime minister, realise that a fledgling economic recovery can only soar under Cameron and make up their minds to vote accordingly.
For months, Lynton Crosby, Cameron’s campaign strategist, has been promising a big break along those lines, but the date of its arrival has been regularly put back. Now, Downing Street aides say they do not expect voters to start properly engaging with the choice until they get back from their Easter holidays. When nervous Tory MPs note that time is running out, they are told the swing is an 11th-hour phenomenon; perhaps even 11.59 — a “blink” in the privacy of the polling booth.
Yet, Labour strategists also welcome the prospect of a campaign that sharpens the focus on Miliband. A run of more assured media performances by the opposition leader has boosted the party’s confidence. The campaign team insists its candidate won the battle of adjacent TV interrogations, broadcast last week. That is a delusion, say the Tories, pointing to snap polls that named Cameron as the victor. The view in Labour HQ is that Miliband surpassed expectations by a big enough margin for the audience — and the media — to have to consider his capabilities afresh. That is a modest kind of win. (And a televised debate alongside six other leaders last Thursday could have less helpful disruptive effects.)
But the loudest cheers among aides watching in Labour’s campaign “war room” were reserved for the moments when Cameron squirmed under questioning about food banks and zero-hours contracts. Important though it is for Miliband to look more prime ministerial, the greater prize is cracking the shell of incumbent authority that protects his rival, and on which the Tory campaign is now so reliant. Issues the Conservatives once counted on to attract votes for them have lost some of their magnetism. To talk about immigration means skirting around the broken pledge to bring numbers down.
Boasting about benefit cuts exudes indifference to poverty as much as budget discipline. Promising to “finish the job” of eliminating the deficit contains a reminder that the job was due to be finished already.
So Cameron is building his case for a second term not on a record of achievement but on fear that Labour would make everything worse. Some of the persuasion is meant to be automatic — the effect of juxtaposing the two leaders. The rest is to be bought. Voters in marginal seats have been deluged with Conservative advertising, and the big spending guns haven’t begun their barrage. If the message hasn’t cut through yet, it will be pounded in: Cameron means safety; Miliband means danger. This approach partially resembles the one that didn’t quite work last time. The Crosby campaign is very different in tone to the one shaped by Steve Hilton in 2010, but then too the message was incarnate in the leader. Cameron was offered as proof that the Tories had become more compassionate, more in tune with modern Britain. “Dave is the change”, Hilton used to say. But he changed back. Now we are told that Dave is the economic plan.
Yet, Labour strategists are less afraid of a personalised contest than the Tories say they ought to be. They like to quote David Axelrod, Miliband’s hired-gun American consultant, who describes presidential-style campaigns as an “MRI of the soul” — revealing the inner character of the candidates. That, Labour hopes, will favour Miliband, since his motives for being in politics bear more scrutiny than Cameron’s. Desperate wishful thinking, say the Conservatives. They believe negative perceptions of the Labour leader are baked in — that his inadequacy cut through long ago. All it takes to finish him off is for minds to be focused by the campaign. The odds certainly tilt against Labour. The Tories routinely nudge ahead in polls, and there is precedent for a late flight to incumbency.
Risk-aversion is a powerful driver of human behaviour. The burden of proof falls on the challenger, asking the country to gamble on regime change. Miliband, however, has been written off many times and he keeps writing himself back on again. He is nothing if not resilient, which suggests that a prolonged stare at Labour may not achieve everything the Tories need. The Miliband that people see may not tally with the monstrous caricature of Conservative creation. Then those who currently say they will vote Labour — and there are enough of them, on some measures, to unseat Cameron — could carry that intention all the way to the polling booth and not blink when they get there.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
