Listen and lead – the challenge from the women of Worcester

The designation of “Worcester Woman” as the darling of the political parties in the British 1997 election was a classic piece of target marketing, operating on the assumptions of advertising. At its core was the belief that people share the same values and opinions as their neighbours and colleagues. If you know where someone lives, where they work and what they earn, their internal desires will be revealed to you.

For this reason, most of the women interviewed for openDemocracy dismissed the Worcester Woman label as ridiculous, patronising or offensive. They were not homogenous. What emerged most strongly was the diversity and individuality of the women. Through the interviews, the cynical Worcester Woman label became a vehicle for accessing a set of authentic and stimulating narratives.

Yet although the stories are diverse and the participants varied, there is a remarkable consistency in one area: the level of disconnection from mainstream political culture. Reading the Worcester Woman pieces, it is striking how far the concerns of real people are utterly divorced from those of professional politicians.

It is an obvious but interesting paradox that the New Labour government, which is famed for its opinion polling, and invests more heavily than all its predecessors in market research, has failed to convince the interviewees that it listens to their concerns. The women’s diagnoses of the problems of party politics were very similar. A loss of trust in politicians echoed through all the interviews. The call for leadership was real. And, alongside leadership, there was a shared desire to be listened to, to be given a voice and therefore some relevance in the political system.

Leading and listening

Striking a balance between leading and listening is not an easy task for political parties. The norms of democracy and the realities of competitive elections require that people be given a voice and that their concerns be recognised. Yet we also want conviction from our politicians: allegations of populism and opportunism do damage to political reputations.

When, last summer, a leaked memo written by Tony Blair revealed his willingness to adopt an agenda set by tabloid newspapers, commentators attacked its flagrant populism. In it he called for “two or three eye-catching initiatives… Something tough, with immediate bite… This should be done soon and I, personally, should be associated with it.” Reflecting on the memo in the Observer, Andrew Rawnsley commented that, “Nothing has done more damage to the Prime Minister than the impression that he seeks only to ingratiate.”

So how are parties to reconcile the certainties of conviction with the flexibility of responsiveness? The various leaked memos that seeped out from government last summer demonstrated the extent to which this balancing act is a central preoccupation for those in Downing Street. The memos, most of which were written by Blair’s strategy and polling adviser Philip Gould, revealed confusion amongst the key players in the New Labour project – aware that they were not connecting with the public but unsure what to offer. They seemed puzzled that their style of government-by-focus-groups could be vulnerable to accusations of not listening to the public. In one memo Gould quotes a bewildered Peter Mandelson: “Something has gone seriously wrong. But what is it?”

Running through the memos is a recognition that the relationship between state and citizen has become more complex, and that the government needs to address this new reality. As Gould put it, “It is my view that we are in the middle of a huge and structural shift in the way politics is conducted, and the way that the electorate views politicians… Politicians will have to understand that leadership feeds off consent just as consent needs leadership.”

Delivering the Herbert Morrison lecture last November, Mandelson admitted that the party needed to learn lessons “about the balance of listening and leading, about the need not to overclaim. And [about] the constant conversation we need to keep having with the public, in language that makes an emotional and not just a political connection between government and governed.”

These diagnoses are consistent with those offered by the Worcester Women. But the remedies offered by New Labour are disappointing. From Gould there is a call to “reinvent the New Labour brand” and to “outwit” the media. Blair’s suggestion of eye-catching initiatives included “locking up street muggers”. These are not responses that would satisfy the women of Worcester.

Such solutions signify New Labour’s tendency to favour a marketed style of politics in which party and government are packaged and sold to voters. It is a continuation and refinement of the very form of politics that gave us Worcester Woman (and her male counterpart, Mondeo Man). This approach proceeds on the assumption that the competitive political marketplace is analogous to the consumer market, and that the terminology and tools of commercial marketing are appropriate for politics. Leadership is reconciled with listening via market research, and the communication of simplified messages that aim to circumvent the distorting influence of the media.

Politics as brand marketing

Criticisms of this form of politics, and particularly its New Labour variant, abound in left-of-centre journals and newspapers. Such criticisms, however, often misrepresent the problem of marketed politics, and weaken their argument by refusing to recognise that parties must engage in anything so tawdry as self-promotion. Politics is an inherently promotional activity, in which a party must convince a sceptical electorate that its values are worth supporting.

Indeed, the parallels between a successful political party and a consumer brand are considerable. Brands simplify choice and reduce dependence on detailed product information, in much the same way as party labels relieve voters of the need to familiarise themselves with all the party’s policies. Brands provide reassurance by promising standardisation and replicability, generating trust between producer and consumer, much as parties emphasise unity and coherence in order to build up voter trust.

Like parties, brands are aspirational, evoking a particular vision of the “good life” and holding out the promise of personal enhancement. To be successful, brands must be perceived as authentic and value-based, requiring congruence between the internal values of the product or company and its external message. In the same way, successful parties must link their external presentational strategies to a set of core values if they are to retain voter support.

The problem for practitioners of the marketed form of politics is that they observe the parallels between consumer marketing and political communications but draw the wrong conclusions. Politics does not imitate the consumer market, but rather the reverse. Brands are striving to mimic political parties, offering consumers an outlet for self-expression and the opportunity to endorse a particular way of life, something that was traditionally offered by politics.

Brands seek to achieve their own combination of listening and leadership, embodying consistent brand values but responding to consumer demand. The marketing process, which blends core values, consumer feedback and attractive presentation, is a pale reflection of the political process in which parties seek to promote an ideology and communicate with supporters at the same time as engaging with the wider electorate.

Of course, this feat is far easier in the consumer sphere than in politics. Consumer brands can construct false and misleading aspirations, using advertising to blur the distinction between desire and need. In the political environment, values are (or should be) real rather than invented, dialogue is genuine rather than a marketing tool, and there is the potential to offer not just the promise but the reality of aspirations fulfilled.

At the present time brands are striking the balance between listening and leadership much more successfully than political parties. As has been much discussed since Naomi Klein’s No Logo, brands such as Nike, Gap and Starbucks have been phenomenally successful in attaching a lifestyle and even an ideology to their products, showing what can be achieved by fusing consistent “core” values with market responsiveness. As Madeleine Bunting argues in the current issue of the journal Renewal, “Brands are no longer simply about the qualities of the product or service they sell, they are promoted as a set of values, a philosophy, even an ideology. For example, the Orange brand represents a bright optimistic future, while Nike is about individual achievement – just do it.”

The response of political parties to the success of such brands has not been to recognise that brands are themselves filling a void left by politics, but rather to seek to imitate consumer branding. Politics is becoming a reflection of a reflection. This is most obvious in the case of New Labour, the most self-consciously branded political party. Its creators rejected not only the Labour Party’s past, but the very idea that a party should embody a vision of the good society based on a distinctive combination of ideology and policies.

The New Labour brand was defined through imagery and symbols rather than ideological positioning. Short slogans (such as New Labour, New Britain) were combined with frequently repeated messages (for example “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”) and highly symbolic images (such as the bulldog used in a 1997 election broadcast) to evoke a particular perception of the New Labour brand. This superficial mode of self-definition continues to be the approach favoured by the party leadership. Gould’s memos call for more “visuals, particularly visuals with people” to reconnect with the electorate. He insists that “Until you agree the dozen or so words that sum it up, you can’t really progress at all.”

Yet it should be clear to Gould and his colleagues that this form of marketed politics cannot build strong links between government and citizen. It leads to intelligent disenchantment – as voters grasp what is happening. Emma Auster, one of the Worcester interviewees, tellingly remarks, “A politician’s like a salesman. He’s just there to sell his product.”

If politicians are the salesmen of politics, citizens become its consumers. Indeed, Tony Blair, in the foreword to the government’s 1998 Annual Report, wrote that, “In all walks of life people act as consumers not just citizens. They want those providing a service to justify themselves. How much is it costing me? Where is that money going? Government is no different.” The implication of Blair’s claim is that to be a consumer is to be empowered, and hence that the political efficacy of citizens is enhanced by adopting the characteristics of consumers.

This view of citizenship is very similar to that espoused by Madsen Pirie, president of the right-wing Adam Smith Institute. He argues that: “People are still participating in government, but increasingly see themselves as consumers of its services. With citizen’s rights they can vote en masse to change things. With consumer rights they can change things individually. Citizen’s rights are exercised in a package and collectively. They are distant, diffuse and ineffective. Consumer rights are direct, personal, individual and effective. They empower people and enable them to change things.”

Citizens don’t want to be consumers

These approaches imply not only that consumerism is more potent than citizenship, but also that voters themselves are demanding a more consumerised form of politics. Yet there is no trace of such a plea in the Worcester Woman interviews. There is no evidence that this is how the interviewees perceive their relationship with government, and no sign that they wish to extend their consumer identities into the political domain. Rather than endorsing consumerism as an alternative form of identity and empowerment, the women are trenchant critics of what they see as a pervasive consumer culture.

Consumerism is experienced as pressure and conformity, as superficiality and transience. As Anne Smith puts it, “Happiness doesn’t simply come from owning things, does it? It never has.” Even when praising the role that consumer power played in rejecting GM foods, interviewee Deborah Moore reflects that, “Ideally, you’d think these issues were things that could be dealt with at the political level.”

To perceive citizenship as a form of consumerism is to limit the potential of politics. It is because of the current dominance of this marketed form of politics that, despite some effort to expand consultation, voters continue to feel ignored and sidelined by mainstream politics. People want to be listened to, but they do not want to be stripped of their opinions and have them repackaged and sold back to them. The American political commentator EJ Dionne argues that the focus group is a perfect symbol of what has happened to democracy: “Insofar as ‘the people’ are consulted by political leaders these days, their reactions are of interest not as a guide to policy, but simply as a way of exploring the electorate’s gut feelings, to see which kind of (usually divisive) messages might move them most.”

If the government is to move away from this anaemic form of politics, it needs to recalibrate the balance between listening and leading. It must recognise that listening to voters does not necessitate knee-jerk responsiveness. Opinion polls are problematic because they do not reflect people’s considered opinions, and are by their nature framed to collect individualised responses. There are alternative forms of consultation that allow scope for reflection and for collective decision-making.

Many local governments have pioneered innovative ways to consult citizens, demonstrating the potential for consultation to empower rather than alienate participants. When well designed, it is possible to use consultation as the basis for considered responses that can be fed into policy-making much more effectively than impressionistic answers to polling questionnaires.

A case-study of consultation in Eugene, Oregon, for example, showed that voters would opt for a “free-lunch” (better public services and lower taxes) if that was on offer, but if provided with information about the need for budgetary trade-offs, they would reach a consensus on either service reductions or tax increases. In addition to information, empowerment requires transparency and feedback, so that participants are aware of the impact that their contribution has had. Bad experiences of consultation will only deepen feelings of cynicism.

This is one approach to the issue of listening. Another is to use local politicians and MPs as a channel of communication from voters to government rather than, as is too often the case, making them mouthpieces from party and government to voters.

Alongside listening, the issue of leadership also needs to be addressed. Politicians need to have more faith in the electorate’s willingness to endorse strong leadership. Margaret Thatcher is mentioned by several of the Worcester interviewees, reflecting a nostalgic hankering for what was perceived as her conviction politics. As Diana Brooks puts it, “I admired Mrs Thatcher for her strength and her clarity of purpose, because she seemed to be well established and she knew where she was going.” Ten years after her fall from power, politicians should not be allowing Thatcher to monopolise people’s perceptions of strong leadership.

The interviews with Worcester women may make depressing reading for politicians. They offer a consistent pattern of disillusionment, and in all likelihood this is not a feeling experienced only by the women of Worcester. Yet politicians should take solace from the fact that the interviewees issue a common set of demands. With slight variation, they all want the same things from politics. It is not an easy fix. Empowering voters whilst providing leadership is a difficult balancing act. But the reward for the politicians who manage to do so may be the restoration of popular faith in politics.