Everything in Moderation

This country is being strangled by regulation and taxation, criminals are taking over our streets, family life is collapsing, immigration control is a joke, alcoholism and drug abuse are rife, the constitution is crumbling and we are being subsumed in a European super-state. Oh yes, and no one decent can go out after 8 o’clock.

Eight years later it seems clear that this choice was the wrong one. And Mr Cameron’s intervention in the Sky debate suggests that he realises it too.

A Blue Skies party might say this – that this country is already prosperous but untold opportunities lie ahead for all if we build a flexible low-tax economy; that one of the greatest advances in social policy of the last thirty years is that we now know that crime can be beaten with the right policies and that in other countries this is happening; that immigration can be an immensely positive thing and that assimilated communities have been enormously successful and will continue to be so provided we get the system under control; that many cities outside London are booming and that there is now so much to do after 8 o’clock. I could go on, but you get the idea.

In the mid-1990s President Clinton’s chief strategist Dick Morris came to a similar conclusion. The Democrats, he said, reminded him of a group of tenants who would greet the collapse of their roof with chuckles because it meant trouble for the landlord. Changing that attitude, which he found very difficult, was one of the keys to Bill Clinton’s extraordinary political recovery from a landslide mid-term defeat in 1994 to re-election in 1996.

The reason that optimism is a superior political position to pessimism is really quite simple – association. Why do you think car companies advertise their products with attractive women? It makes their cars seem sexy. Why do fundraisers serve you a meal before they pitch to you? It makes them seem warm and generous. Why did the Persians slay the messenger who brought news of defeat? It’s all because of association, the linking of message, messenger and environment. John Lennon is not alone in wanting to see the word ‘yes’ at the top of the ladder.

A Black Skies party is itself viewed as dark, threatening, likely to bring about precisely the problems it warns against. The public slays the messenger that brings it bad tidings.

It doesn’t have to be like this. My mother likes to describe pessimists as those who can only see the holes in the Emmenthal. It’s time for the Tory party to wake up and see the cheese.

Let me flog you a used car

Combine a subtle sales technique with some tests on mouthwash and you get an election strategy

Mr Cameron became Conservative leader in early December 2005. This appeared after he faced his first Budget as opposition leader.

29 March 2006

It is one of the most famous campaign posters ever produced – a scowling caricature of Richard Nixon, accompanied by the slogan: ‘Would you buy a used car from this man?’ And the reason why this political attack, of all the many thousands, has resounded over the decades is simple – the ability to sell a used car is a pretty good test of both a candidate and his political strategy.

I’ll tell you what set me thinking about flogging second-hand automobiles – last week’s Budget.

Gordon Brown is a great believer in dividing lines. He wants the voters to be able to see clearly the choice in front of them, with Labour, naturally, on the popular side of the divide. So his speech aimed to frame the debate over the rest of this Parliament.

Whatever else David Cameron may do, Mr Brown hopes that the choice at the next election will still boil down to this – the party that invests in public spending versus the party that cuts it.

On the face of it, this would seem to present the Conservatives with a nasty dilemma. Do they go for a tax-cutting agenda, hoping to overcome the scepticism of voters over such promises and their fears about the impact on services? Or do they abandon lower taxes, and with it a crucial part of what might make a Conservative economic and social policy work if the Tories were to win?

And here is where the used cars come in. The Tories should skip around Mr Brown’s trap. They don’t have to choose between remaining a low-tax party and abandoning tax cuts (no choice at all for a Tory). Instead they have to choose between these two strategies – lowball and highball.

As part of his lifelong work charting the way in which human beings are influenced, the social psychologist Robert Cialdini spent time undercover as a second-hand car salesman. It was during this period that he was introduced to one of the most successful selling techniques – lowball.

The customer is offered a car at a low, low price. Enthusiastically, he agrees. Then, deftly, the cost advantage is withdrawn. A calculation error is claimed, or the salesman’s offer is ‘overruled’ by the showroom manager. A particularly popular version is to offer the buyer an inflated trade-in price for his old car. Then when the deal has been agreed in principle, an ‘independent’ valuer arrives and reduces the offer. Knowing how much his old car was really worth, the customer accepts the new valuation as fair. The sale goes ahead.

Lowball is a very effective and common method of persuasion. It takes advantage of our great desire to remain consistent once committed. In yesterday’s papers the al-Qaeda supergrass trial provided a frightening example of lowball’s potential power. It was alleged that the defendants were aiming to recruit young people to fight in Afghanistan, and then later tell them that this had become logistically impossible and they would need to target Britons.

What has this got to do with politics? Lowball is frequently on display in elections. The Blair-Brown strategy before the 1997 general election was a classic lowball strategy. Voters were told that income tax rates would not be increased, yet, once Labour was elected, tax began steadily to rise.

Now take a look at their methods. At first the tax increases were stealthy, almost hidden (changes to advanced dividend corporation tax for instance), later the rises were more blatant (national insurance) and justified more openly. This is instructive. You see, lowball need not be dishonest (the direction of travel can be made clear even if the distance of travel isn’t), but if it is dishonest, voters will not complain. That is lowball’s power.

By the time Labour got round to raising taxes openly, voters were convinced that this was what they voted for. Just like the customer with the undervalued trade-in motor, when Mr Brown told taxpayers they would need to pay more, after all, to fund the NHS, voters reacted by shrugging. Hadn’t they always known, deep down, that the initial valuation was unfair? That they would have to stump up more? A Tory lowball strategy, an honest one, would involve being clear about wanting lower taxes and public service reform but it would be gentle and cautious about the speed and extent. In power, slowly, it would be able to go farther and with public consent.

There is an alternative, of course, and some people urge it on the Tories. Highball. The party distinguishes itself from Labour with a radical, exciting, enticing programme. It tackles public prejudices by making the big arguments right now, upfront.

There’s just one problem with highball. No party has ever gone from opposition to power on a highball strategy. Margaret Thatcher in 1979? Definitely lowball. Tax was mentioned but no big promises, and reassurance was provided at all stages. Radical Thatcherism came later, when it could take the committed voters with it.

Of course, it could be objected that the analogy breaks down because a tax-cutting Tory party wouldn’t be threatening costs, it would be tempting people with a benefit. This is a misunderstanding. A radical manifesto involves this cost – risk. And social psychology, something called prospect theory, tells how voters will react to this, too.

If you offer someone a choice between receiving £15,000 and a gamble in which they could be given £10,000 or £20,000, then mathematically the two alternatives are the same. Psychologically they are not. A complicated experiment involving testing people’s reaction to adverts for antibacterial mouthwash (don’t ask) proved that we would prefer the £15,000 gain to the gamble. But fascinatingly, if we were told that we would certainly lose £15,000 or we could gamble and might lose either only £10,000 or as much as £20,000, we prefer to gamble. We are more cautious about expected benefits and are prepared to take more risks when a possible loss looms.

Our caution, our commitment, our consistency – lowball is the only possible choice for the Tories. Anything else, and the voters will say: we’re not going to buy a used car from those people.

Guess the weight of the ox: then you will see what’s wrong with our politics

Social science suggests we need to change the way we reach political conclusions

5 April 2006

This weekend I had my handwriting analysed at a birthday party. I basically regard graphology as nonsense, but my friends had taken infinite trouble with the rest of the proceedings. Cliff Richard, for instance, sang ‘Congratulations’ as Denise Van Outen jumped out of the cake, neither of which happened at my last birthday to the best of my recollection. Having my handwriting analysed seemed the least I could do.

Anyway, the lady looked at the way I signed my name and said that I liked to connect up ideas from apparently unrelated areas. Fiendishly clever insight, that.

And so this column will set out to prove her right. In just under 1,000 words I intend to link the suspension of an academic at the University of Leeds, the weight of an ox, the outcome of the 2002 football World Cup, the recent dissenting speeches of Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn and the state funding of political parties. And, of course, cakes, graphology and Denise Van Outen.

Let’s get going. On Sunday, a group of academics wrote to a newspaper complaining about the disciplinary proceedings instituted by the university against one of its lecturers, Frank Ellis. Dr Ellis has been suspended for arguing that racial groups have different average IQ levels, and that those of blacks are inferior to whites. His defenders protested that some evidence suggested he was correct.

Yet the academics who suspended Dr Ellis and those who defended him are making an error. In fact, the identical error. They are confusing the correctness of Dr Ellis’s views with whether he should be allowed to continue his academic career. These are not the same thing at all.

In the autumn of 1906, as recorded by James Surowiecki in his excellent book The Wisdom of Crowds, the scientist Francis Galton visited the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. While there he found his eyes drawn to a guess-the-weight-of-an-ox competition. Butchers and farmers were taking part, but so were ordinary visitors without any expert knowledge. Galton was interested in how bad their guesses would prove to be.

Galton was to be surprised. The average of the 800 guesses during the day was almost exactly right and, crucially, much more accurate than any individual expert assessment. What he had discovered was something counter-intuitive – that even the wildest incorrect guess plays its role in helping to produce an accurate average guess.

Dr Ellis is a lecturer in Russian and Slavic Studies. He probably has as firm a grip on the study of IQ and ethnicity as he does on the study of ox-weighing. But his view is useful in both, regardless of its correctness. Allowing mistaken views to have a voice in the academy is a vital part of determining the truth.

Galton’s observation suggests something else that is important too – independence. Let me use an example from an area about which I know a good deal more than I do about fat stock – football predictions. A Swedish study conducted during the last World Cup showed that groups of experts were far worse at predicting match outcomes than complete amateurs (in this case, US students with almost no football knowledge).

There were a number of reasons for this – experts try to be clever-clever, for instance, and factor in things that do not affect the outcome – but one of the most important was the experts’ lack of independence.

When experts make judgments, they do not make them alone. Their forecasts are based on the collective wisdom, wrong or right, of other experts. They reinforce each other’s errors. This makes their collective guess, the average of their guesses, far less accurate than if they had each guessed independently.

All of which brings me, as surely you knew that it would, to the state funding of political parties.

Divining the truth requires the greatest breadth of opinion to be taken into account, not excluding even the wildest and silliest ideas. And it requires the greatest achievable independence of opinions, so that all are adding in their own view rather than recycling someone else’s mistake.

Now consider modern British politics. Here all the prizes go to uniformity, the acceptance of collective responsibility, the exclusion of fringe opinions and the squashing of dissent. The ability to read and remember the ‘line to take’ from party headquarters is valued far more highly than creative contributions to the public debate. Recent speeches by Labour’s Mr Byers and Mr Milburn urging their party to develop a fresh agenda were remarked upon only because they departed from ‘party discipline’. Their content, such as it was, was ignored.

The whole of British politics is, in other words, a giant conspiracy to reinforce error. The exercise of independent judgment is rare, the tendency to recycle the conventional wisdom of experts is great. And once an error is made, the unspoken rules say that it must be persisted with, and everyone is required daily to offer their fresh support for yesterday’s mistake.

It is this, and not the massively overstated problem of sleaze, that is really corroding British political life.

And the state funding of political parties will make it still worse, certainly in the form that is being considered. The State will bestow its financial favours on central party organisations. Private fundraising will be severely restricted. Discipline will be rewarded, the maverick punished and independence of view militated against.

If there has to be state funding, if it cannot any longer be resisted, then surely it should be to the individual Member of Parliament rather than to the party. If MPs want to contribute to the centre then they can. And yes, I know, there are some pretty eccentric MPs out there. But that, you see, is the whole point.

Enough substance, Mr Cameron. Stick to style … because you’re worth it

Politics is more like Budweiser than like Crest toothpaste

In the year after his election as leader, there was constant criticism that David Cameron wasn’t moving quickly enough to elaborate on his agenda. An important theme of my columns was to argue against this. What follows appeared on the morning that Mr Cameron was due to give his first speech to party conference as leader.

4 October 2006

I am worried about David Cameron. I fear he will have too much policy. I am concerned that there will be too much substance and not enough style.

In 1975 Volkswagen introduced the Rabbit on the American market. And it was good. It was economical, it didn’t break down and its hatchback design was an improvement on its rivals. ‘The best car in the world for under $3,500,’ bragged the company in full-page advertisements. It probably was. But sales were disappointing.

In his book How Brands Become Icons, Douglas Holt explains why. The traditional view of branding was that it was necessary to identify a unique selling proposition – Crest toothpaste has distinctive cavity-fighting ingredients, Dove soap is gentle on the skin because it contains one quarter cleansing cream – and then tirelessly communicate this benefit to consumers. Holt calls this ‘mind-share branding’, trying to imprint a view of the brand’s unique benefits on the minds of consumers. Yet, Holt says, for many brands this approach is not enough. He dubs these ‘identity brands’.

An identity brand – Nike, Budweiser, Jack Daniel’s – is valued not so much for what it does as for how it makes consumers feel about themselves. One of the earliest identity brand adverts was L’Oréal’s slogan, ‘Because I’m worth it.’ The brand is bought largely to help the purchaser to define their identity. Volkswagen recovered when it stopped selling itself on its maintenance record and started selling itself as the provider of the sort of car that a creative individual would drive.

To promote an identity brand you tell a story, one that resonates with people, one that they want to be part of. Corona turned itself into the party beer with adverts that told stories of people drinking it on the beach at spring break. Mind-share branding works differently: it works by pounding on about the benefits of the product. But Holt believes that this is suitable only for ‘low-involvement’ goods or business-to-business services.

Political parties, in fact political causes, are classic identity brands. Voters make choices in order to make statements about themselves, to establish their own identity, as much as they do because of anything the parties offer them. When people announce their voting behaviour, they often say ‘I’m a Tory’ or ‘I’m Labour, me’. What was the slogan of the anti-war movement a couple of years back? Not ‘this war is wrong’, or ‘this war is expensive’, or ‘there are no weapons of mass destruction’. It was this: ‘Not in my name.’ The ultimate identity slogan.

Most pundits, however, think of parties as mind-share brands. So here we all are in Bournemouth asking the Tories where the USP is, where the policies are, as if it were policies, benefits, the technical qualities of the brand and its products that determine elections. They don’t.

Naturally (this is the media we are talking about, after all, and high mindedness is our USP), there is a more high-minded case for policymaking. To start off with, policymaking tells us what parties are going to do in government, doesn’t it? It informs voters what to expect, doesn’t it? Well, actually, no, not really.

Let’s take the most often-cited case – tax cuts. If a party that might govern for a decade or more lets you know what is going to be in its first budget, how well informed are you? If they set some targets for the NHS and a planned reorganisation of regional health authorities, how much do you really know about the way they will run the health service?

Between 2001 and 2005 Tony Blair committed this country to two major wars. Were they in his manifesto? Of course not: how could they have been?

Policymaking, then, is a bit of a con. Manifestos pretend to be an entire programme for government when in reality even the most detailed of them only cover a few items. Voters don’t make judgments based on these programmes and they shouldn’t either.

What matters is not such bogus ‘substance’, it is the governing style of the prospective rulers. Are they strong or weak? Interferers or liberals? Atlanticists or Europhiles? Moderates or extremists? Localisers or centralisers? Tax cutters or big spenders? Tied to vested interests or independent of them? Free traders or protectionists? In touch or out of touch? These are the sort of questions voters should ask.

Big emblematic policies – favouring the continuation of the NHS, supporting school vouchers, opposing the Euro and so on – can help, to a certain extent, to provide answers to such questions. Much more than that they can’t do.

But even if a manifesto doesn’t tell you what sort of government you are going to get, at least it is useful for the party taking office. Erm, no again.

I used to be director of the Conservative Party policy unit. There were four of us. The Government probably has as many people assigned to the development of policy on the export of carpets. We did not remotely have the ability to determine sensible policy on the myriad of detailed issues we would be facing in government. We couldn’t costs things properly or make the right trade-offs. But that didn’t stop us trying.

Labour has spent much of the past five years undoing stupid things it committed itself to in opposition and then did in its first five years. The problem with politicians, you see, is not that they don’t do what they say they will, but the opposite – they try to do what they said they would do, even after realising it wasn’t a good plan.

So if policies don’t win elections, inform voters or help with governing, why do the media keep asking for them, and why do politicians keep offering them? Simple. To keep us all entertained.

Let’s review yesterday’s papers, shall we? Full pages on a stray remark about autism at a fringe meeting, reports of a tax revolt that wasn’t happening, a Tory donor questioned by police and a huge story in the Daily Mail informing us that a new family tax policy was about to be announced. The Mail provided us with costings and everything, which was clever of them considering that the policy doesn’t, as far as I can discover, exist.

Why did these stories appear? Partly to fill the space normally occupied by policy announcements – crackdowns on internet porn, a five-point plan on dental hygiene, you know the sort of stuff – that are carefully handed out to newspapers to make sure everybody is usefully occupied. Without it the space gets filled one way or another. And some media outlets decide that they will make up their own policies if none are given to them.

The Conservative Party conference has been rich in useful information about the sort of prime minister Mr Cameron will be. He declared from the platform, for instance, that he belongs to the centre, an extraordinary, unprecedented remark for a modern Conservative leader to make.

But soon all those policy groups will report and we’ll be done for. We’ll stop learning all this useful style stuff and ‘substance’ will rule the day. Let’s hope David Cameron puts it off as long as possible.

Ooh matron! I’m sick of fizzy populism

Labour could regret having a snap election

When Labour gathered for Gordon Brown’s first conference speech as Prime Minister in 2007, it was at the end of a summer in which he could do no wrong politically. Everyone seemed to be talking about him as a political genius and saying he would call an election and sweep back to power. I listened to his address and then, at the height of this fever and before it broke, I sat down to write this column questioning the whole thing.

26 September 2007

So rubbish is the new brilliant, is it? Here’s the theory. Yes, Gordon Brown was really boring on Monday. Yes, he had nothing to say, but took sixty-five minutes to say it. Yes, his statements of belief were astonishingly incoherent. Yes, his stunning strategic move was to pinch the clothes of the Tory party, failing to recall that they were the garments the Tories wore when they lost three elections.

There was remarkable agreement in Bournemouth that the Prime Minister’s speech was poor. Even his most enthusiastic supporters weren’t claiming it was Demosthenes.