Mick Temple's Blog

MARKETING DEMOCRACY

27-10-2007

If Blair's Labour was spun to power by the likes of Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell, Cameron's Tories haven't been slow to learn how marketing can open the door to No. 10. Now it looks as though the Lib Dems are catching on too. But Professor Mick Temple warns that what's good for soap powder doesn't necessarily work for democracy.

I'm writing a number of academic works at the moment. As well as finishing a book on the British press and politics for OUP (out next year, I'll really be plugging it then!) and trying to update a conference paper on 'Web 2.0' I co-wrote with Gary Hudson (a former BBC journalist in the West Midlands who I'm sure many of you remember), I'm desperately trying to finish a paper (due next week) on political marketing and its anti-democratic tendencies.

I'm suddenly aware that the above sounds like a boast about how busy I am, and how lucky you are that I took the time to write my weekly blog for your delectation. You might also ask what the point is of spending sometimes years writing an academic book when the audience is so small.

Well, researching and writing keeps my brain active, hopefully warding off senile dementia and the arguments the work raises also occasionally seep out into the mainstream political sphere. Let's take the political marketing paper I'm working on.

The traditional view of New Labour's genesis is that it re-established itself as a potential governing party by modernising its appeal. The party listened to the electorate and responded to their fears, hopes and needs. And lo, it came to pass that the Blessed Tony was wafted into Downing Street on the good wishes of the population.

The reality of New Labour's success is that it was NOT founded on listening to the wishes of the people. Labour's traditional supporters were ignored in the re-modelling of the party as was the electorate as a whole. Blair's pollster, Philip Gould, used highly segmented focus groups to help craft a message about New Labour. That message was not to the electorate as a whole but to those social groups in marginal constituencies who were swing voters.

Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman - the prosperous working-class seduced by Thatcherism and the lure of the market but now unhappy at the state of society - were the targets of New Labour's carefully crafted messages and it was only the views of those key voters which mattered.

Such a strategy effectively subverted the democratic process. Whole chunks of the electorate were treated as irrelevant, their wishes unconsidered.

And, since Dave Cameron, the Conservatives have been attempting the same process in reverse. The party's traditional supporters barely matter - as Tony Blair was alleged to have said of Labour's core, 'where else can they go?' The turn-out at the last two elections might have answered that question, Tony.

It looks as if Nick Clegg (yet more Blair-lite on the market) is going to win the LibDem leadership, which shows what I know - see last week's blog. Given the LibDems' problems - and the task of selling a young and photogenic new leader - the focus groups are already being prepared.

Any LibDem not 'onside' with the need to update the party's image had better get used to being ignored. Your party is about to be marketed. Muesli Man and Wholefood Woman, anyone?

Political marketing is seen as essential for a modern political party but the demands of marketing fit uneasily with their core ideologies and the historical attachment we feel to our parties. And as the parties colonise the centre in pursuit of 'key voters', electoral apathy and alienation can only increase. Political marketing? Bad for democracy, indeed.

To read New Labours 1997 manifesto click here