Getting Through - Connecting with voters in 2024

[00:00:00] The Why Curve with Phil Dobbie and Roger Herring. How to win voters? Well, it's not good to leave early from an international commemoration, obviously. But TV debates, social media, falling into lakes, wearing high-vis jackets in factories. What actually gets your message across in 2024?

[00:00:18] What's effective in changing people's minds as we head to the UK election? And does any of the campaigning really move the dial? The Why Curve. Well, it's a good question. I mean, everything has been tried in this election and every other election.

[00:00:33] I feel like there should be a law against involving small children. Really? Why? Oh, it's just politicians and small children. Politicians are in many ways small children. Exactly. Well, maybe they're with their kindred folk, perhaps. Well! But it is all just so fake, isn't it?

[00:00:47] Look, I relate well to children. And also, but you set off in you have to roll your sleeves up for a start. Obviously, you're really seen as very important, obviously.

[00:00:58] And you talk to small children or you go into a factory and you have lots of people in high-vis jackets all around you, ideally with helmets on, maybe glasses as well. So you're part of the industry. Whatever happened to just being a genuine bloke or a genuine lady?

[00:01:11] What happened to just being an ordinary person who just approaches the whole thing as anybody else would do? I think the problem is they are all so trained to the hilt about what they can and cannot say. They've got advisors, obviously in Rishi Sunak's case, very bad advisors.

[00:01:25] You'd think, wouldn't you? You would. And then you're thinking, well, any ordinary bloke. So let's go back to ancient history now. But if you go back to the D-Day celebrations, if your advisors said,

[00:01:36] oh, you're just stuck out early, you'd be going, no, I don't think that's a good idea. Because but that's, you see, the opposite. You know, like ordinary people, they're trained. Part of the training is be visible. Part of the training is knowing this stuff. Yeah.

[00:01:47] So in fact, they're not like ordinary ordinary people might say, well, yeah, fancy the evening off. You've got to be non-ordinary. But also does any of this matter? The posters, the falling, you know, there was Ed Davey falling into a lake

[00:02:00] and coming downhill with his legs akimboed on a bicycle and that kind of stuff. Is it stunts that work? Well, we remember, don't we? We remember him as the man who had his legs akimboed. Yeah. And what about posters? What about social media? Does that make any difference?

[00:02:15] Well, I think it does. Not to you because you're not on social media. Well, I am, sadly, rather too much probably. But I mean, is that actually the battleground? Is that actually where it's all being fought? So we, you know, you might be watching it on TV news,

[00:02:26] but what proportion of the population is actually not watching that? And what they're getting is what's portrayed in social media. And is that where the real fight is happening this time? Or do they pick up their newspapers? I mean, nobody reads newspapers anymore.

[00:02:35] Remember the Sun won it one of the elections in the 90s. Yeah. Wouldn't be any more, would it? No. So what actually does change? Because in the end, you've got to change somebody's mind to try and win an election.

[00:02:45] And then there's all the slogans which you've had in the past. So I mean, you know, as in a former life, I was an ad man for a while. I was a partner in an ad agency. And it's very simple advertising, really.

[00:02:56] That's why I was able to do it quite successfully. You just have one message. You just repeat it over and over and over again. But you've got to make sure you get the message right because otherwise you're just doing untold damage.

[00:03:06] But it's the idea is, you know, it's got to be emotive. It's going to get people to go, oh yes, I can identify with that. You connect with people somehow. And then you just repeat it ad nauseam. But do people listen to that?

[00:03:17] I'm not seeing that this time. Yeah, but do people listen to that and go, oh gosh, yes, I was going to vote for issues in that. But now I won't. I'll vote for Keir Starmer. Is that how it works?

[00:03:25] I mean, it doesn't feel like it works that way. No. People have pretty, you would imagine, well-tuned ideas already. But I feel like this time, like the Labour Party, I think are sort of on the verge of a good idea. They've just not used it well.

[00:03:39] So if you go to the Labour Party website, which of course nobody does unless they're researching a podcast. Yes. And the top, they've just got one word, change. And that's it. I mean, that is exactly that's all anybody wants right now.

[00:03:53] He could say, by the way, we are going to kill small children. Sorry about that. But at least it's change. And people would go, yes, we want change. Shame about the kids. But we want change. Collateral damage. But yes. So we would suggest that one word.

[00:04:06] If they just ram that home everywhere, we're off the chain. But that suggests people's attention spans are tiny and their ability to comprehend is tiny. Maybe it is so. That's what the advertising industry has been assuming for a very long time.

[00:04:18] But yes, anyway, where are we this time? Indeed. It does feel like a muddled campaign. It feels like a muddled campaign and one that hasn't got any of the absolutely key killer quotes. You remember, you know, Labour isn't working.

[00:04:30] That goes back to 79, you know, or the devil eyes thing, which didn't work. And they were trying to say that about Tony Blair. Well, let's find out about this from someone who has made a study of it. In fact, what works and what doesn't.

[00:04:43] He's Dr. Matt Walsh, head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at the University of Cardiff. And he joins us now. So, Matt, do you think it's just like running an advertising campaign? Is it, you know, if you're trying to sell breakfast cereal,

[00:04:54] you've got to come up with a catchy slogan that resonates with people. Is it just the same to think for running an election? It's certainly similar in that you've got to have a message which is going to be appealing to people.

[00:05:05] You've got to have an image that's going to be appealing to people. The difference is unlike selling soap powder or whatever it might be, is that you've got to buy into people's ideologies as well. It's making a sense to people of their vision of the world,

[00:05:20] trying to provide something that gives them a real sense of, you know, I can buy into supporting this particular party because it reflects my values. It reflects the way I think about the world. It isn't just a question of it's going to get my t-shirts

[00:05:33] a little bit whiter looking. Yeah, but the agencies would say it's a bit more than that though. They wouldn't know. They would say that we are trying to get the emotive response. We're trying to get to the very essence of our brand. So it evokes something in people.

[00:05:46] They'd say it's exactly that. Phil was in advertising, by the way. That's why I know it's all bullshit. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's true, but I guess it's... People don't define themselves in quite the same way, I would suggest, by their purchases as they do

[00:06:05] when they're thinking about their vision and ideological approaches to the world. Whether or not they think, you know, this is how I think governments and countries ought to work and ought to run themselves. It's all about social justice, it may be,

[00:06:20] or it may be about the defence of the nation. All of those sorts of ideas are really important and kind of fundamental to the way we think about ourselves. And so do they have to be... I take your point because you wouldn't have someone going,

[00:06:31] oh, you use Persil, do you? And I'm probably not going to associate with you very much anymore. Whereas we do take that stance, don't we, with politics? Well, we make judgements about people by how they... So is it... Where they are.

[00:06:43] So is being divisive, is that part of the secret sauce then? Certainly one of the options here is not only to be inclusive, to have a big tent that brings everybody together, but it's also sometimes to define yourself by what you're not, what you're against.

[00:06:58] So you might well be saying, well, do you know what? We're not in favour of socialism, or we're not in favour of immigration. All of those sorts of ideas may be in the mix. So that sort of kind of sense of we stand in opposition to certain ideas,

[00:07:16] Wokary, for example, that's a big one, isn't it, at the moment, that's being bandied around all over the place. Certain parties will come out and say, we're against that kind of idea. We don't want to associate with these newfangled concepts and newfangled ideas,

[00:07:30] and we're going to stand against that. And that will be appealing to the people that we want to get back us and vote for us. Does that work as well? Does this sort of anti-advertising approach, does that work better than? Because I wouldn't have thought so.

[00:07:42] I would have thought actually keep it positive, you might win votes if you go down the negative road. No, but people like negative, people thrive on negativity. I guess it's an easy catch, isn't it? I mean, certainly look, you know, if sometimes a negative campaigning

[00:07:57] can work really, really well. People always say they don't like negative campaigning. That's a standard idea, isn't it? People want to be positive, they want to be presenting a positive view of the world. But negative campaigning can work really well, can work really efficiently.

[00:08:10] You look back in the election back in 2017 and a lot of the advertising that was done by the conservatives in that election was really negative. It was anti-Corbyn, it was trying to paint Jeremy Corbyn as a terrorist sympathiser, somebody that supported the IRA.

[00:08:28] It was very, very negative about Diane Abbott. Do you remember the interview that she did with LBC where she got the numbers wrong about policemen? And they use that, the conservatives use that a lot to sort of show do you really want this person

[00:08:41] who doesn't appear to know the numbers properly to be in charge of the home office. So negative campaigning can really work. Those were really popular adverts when they came out on Facebook. Negative ads on Facebook were really popular and really got a lot of currency. Labour isn't working.

[00:08:55] Yes, that goes back a long way. Absolutely. I mean, Matt, we've got them. Okay, so the message as we've sort of established has to be either positive or negative, but fairly simple. But what about the delivery? Because that seems to be the thing now.

[00:09:07] I mean, back in the day, there were drafty church halls and people making speeches and then there were pamphlets. And now we have TV debates or we have social media, of course. The delivery of that, does that matter? Does it make much difference? How has that developed?

[00:09:23] Yeah, I mean, things have certainly moved on. I mean, the days when it was all about the stump speech are long gone. We've long had a mediated political world, haven't we? Where the way in which we learned about what politicians thought about the world

[00:09:40] came to us through television or through newspapers or through radio. Now we have went into a world where not only have we got that, that still exists, that's still happening. But also the politicians are also trying to speak to the voters directly themselves.

[00:09:53] So they can have their own audiences which they can look after and curate on Facebook or on Twitter or X as we must call it these days. They can have their own audiences there where they can speak directly to us

[00:10:05] and tell us what they think about the world. And some politicians really play into that. They really work on the basis that we're going to get a bad hearing in the press, the press are basically against us. So therefore we're going to try and circumvent them completely

[00:10:18] and speak to our supporters through social media. Nigel Farage is really good at that. Jeremy Corbyn was pretty good at it as well. So some politicians, it really works for them as a kind of mechanism for speaking directly to people. And the delivery of the message

[00:10:32] has got really sophisticated, hasn't it? So now parties spend large amounts of money making their own video content. So there'll be cameras and photographers following around the party leader, trying to get good pictures of him or her at the various events that they go to, that they hold,

[00:10:49] interacting with the public, all of those sorts of things that are going to want to try to get good images that they're going to put up on Facebook or on other forms of social media to try to kind of engage with those audiences,

[00:11:00] to try to get them to really understand. Can you go too far with that though? Because Rishi Sunak, I mean almost from the day he moved into number 10, he obviously employed a photographer who was going to follow him around, somebody who said, well, you know,

[00:11:12] I specialize in very narrow depth of field in very strong lighting because he's got these sort of like, you know, almost like there's been a team, creative team framing every single photograph that Rishi Sunak has been in since he came into number 10. I mean, it's a...

[00:11:29] And they put those up on social media and little films too. There's the TikTok shots of him dancing around inside number 10, that kind of thing. And it all just seems so fake, doesn't it? Yes, I think lots of people will have a problem with that

[00:11:42] for feeling a bit fake, but I think that, you know, you're right, he absolutely has got a creative team who are working on those ideas and working on those visions. The video that you referenced from last Christmas of him alone in number 10 playing cricket with his Coke cans

[00:11:56] and all that sort of stuff. I mean, that was clearly put together by somebody who's got a creative now, so he understands how to tell a story and how to put something across that's positive and is going to reflect well on their principle.

[00:12:09] On the other hand, you're right, it can feel fake, it can feel that, you know, it's a bit too much. And so we've seen some videos, haven't we, already in this election of Rishi Sunak, you know, standing in front of a flip chart

[00:12:23] saying he's going to go through Labour's policies and show you why they don't work, which Labour immediately ripped off and put their own policies there. And so I said, here we're showing the positive side of it. They spun it back at him. So sometimes these things work

[00:12:35] and sometimes you can try and be a bit too clever and come across that. Yeah, we think back to the Ed Stone of Ed Miliband's campaign, which was, you know, whoever came up with that idea. But that really was a stone round his neck in the end.

[00:12:50] But it's hard to tell. My favourite one is not Flash, just Gordon. Oh yeah. When they're trying to get, you know. That worked, didn't it? Yeah, not. Yeah. But I mean, so, but again, it's the slogan idea and I feel like we're not seeing that this time.

[00:13:04] You know, there's not that big Labour isn't working or take back control or Barack Obama saying, yes, we can. You know, all of these were messages that were just repeated again and again and neither party seems to have that.

[00:13:17] Well, I suppose Labour are digging deep on change, aren't they? And the video that they released when Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street announcing the election date, the video that came out straight away from Labour was absolutely around change. It's all about change

[00:13:32] because we are the party of change. And that's obviously a positive one for them to try and work with at the moment. Rishi Sunak has obviously also been trying to cast himself as a change candidate because that fits quite well with his vision of himself.

[00:13:50] It's difficult to do that when you've been in power for 14 years, though, isn't it? It's hard. Yeah, if you're all about change, why haven't you changed so far? You know, the question's right themselves. Well, one thing he did change was he changed his jacket,

[00:14:03] didn't he, when he came out of the rain? Well, yeah. I mean, the fact that it has just been a one person party as well, it seems to have changed a little bit now. But should it just be one person? It was with Boris, wasn't it?

[00:14:14] It clearly was with Barack Obama. It was with Tony Blair. Do you need to have somebody who is likeable? Keir Starmer? Well, I mean, Keir Starmer's just... Ed Davey? Yeah, I mean, there's no strong personality there to drive the politics in any of these parties, is there?

[00:14:30] Not like some of those people I've just mentioned. Yeah, I mean, it works well if you've got a good candidate, doesn't it? That's where it works well. I mean, I remember I did some interviews with a couple of years ago about the 2019 election

[00:14:43] and people from the Conservative Party who worked on their digital operation were singing the praises of Boris Johnson as this brilliant candidate with this ability to connect with people, this real Heineken politician kind of idea. And all of those sorts of things worked for him at that stage

[00:15:02] and then worked against him once he began to lose his popularity. And so if some of those sorts of ideas of working and really focusing on a kind of presidential campaign of a single person, the candidate that everybody's voting for works well if you're working with someone

[00:15:18] who's got that common touch. But it falls apart slightly if they lose their popularity or if they're like Theresa May was, a bit wooden on camera, not really coming across well. Well, yes, I mean, it's interesting you mentioned the presidential thing because the debate, the TV debate,

[00:15:35] which has been a big part of campaigns in recent years. And we've seen two or three of them already with different groups there. They often look quite wooden, a bit uninspired, a bit awkward, a bit confected. Do they work as a means of convincing anyone, do you think?

[00:15:55] Well, it's a bit like election campaigns as a whole. There's always a big question regarding election campaigns as to whether or not they ever change anybody's minds. Do people, do voters go into election campaigns having already basically decided who they're going to vote for?

[00:16:11] There's quite a lot of literature that suggests that actually that is the case. That it's very rare that an election campaign will change the voting intentions of the public. So none of the money that's spent is going to move the dial at all, basically?

[00:16:23] Well, the reason why they spend the money is because of the fear that if they didn't spend the money, it might, the dial might be moved for them. So if you choose not to campaign, what happens would you lose as a result?

[00:16:36] And there's quite a good example, isn't there, from recent history, which is 2017, where everybody thought that it was going to be a procession for Theresa May, but it actually turned out to be a really difficult campaign. She didn't want to appear in the television debates,

[00:16:51] sent substitutes to some of the debates. And there was real questions about whether or not that was a strategically poor move. And then when she found herself in trouble over the dementia tax, as it was branded at the time, there was no one to save her.

[00:17:08] She, the campaign fell apart around her. So, you know, it's always a question of the counterfactual, isn't it? If you don't campaign, does it all go wrong? And your opponent spends the money and that actually gets through. Just came out to this idea, though,

[00:17:20] as Rod just says, you know, I was an ad man for a while. This idea that you take one concept, you repeat it as much as possible. Okay, you can have sort of secondary messages, but clearly the message, and you touched on it.

[00:17:33] If you go to the Labour website, it has got that word change front and centre. I don't feel like that. And that's an easy win, isn't it? Because everybody wants change. And so it's an obvious headline in a way. I don't feel as though

[00:17:45] they're milking that as much as they can. And you go to the Ture website, clear plan, bold action, secure future. I mean, no one believes any of that. So it's- Or can remember it because it doesn't stick in the mind, does it?

[00:17:56] So change is a bit like in Australia when Goff-Whitlam came back after 23 years of Conservative government. It's time. And that was that had a resonating, that had a song that went with it. It just, I mean, I know the Australians who've been living overseas

[00:18:11] who came back because Goff, because there was a change of government. It was a big renaissance for the Labour Party in Australia. There's no feeling of that this time? None of that. But it was, it's time is a slogan that stuck and it was very much associated

[00:18:23] with that campaign change. You'd go, well, okay, makes sense. But it's not really the overriding message that is through everything that Labour is doing right now, is it? They feel like they're missing the boat on it. Yeah, I think that's probably a very good criticism of the campaign

[00:18:35] as it stands at the moment. I think you're right. There is a bit of a lifelessness about the Labour campaign as we go into things at the moment. I had a little bit of a look at their Facebook advertising earlier on today and it's okay.

[00:18:51] And there's nothing wrong with it. It's all fairly straightforward. It plays into that kind of presidential idea a little bit with Keir Starmer as well. But you're right. I think that overarching narrative of the campaign is probably one that's lacking. And when you talk to people

[00:19:06] that work on the election campaigns, they really believe that that's an essential part of what they're trying to achieve. That narrative of the campaign, what is it going to be that they're going to tell people as they go through the course of it

[00:19:18] and leave them with that understanding that this is what we are going to do. This is what we're about. If you go back to the 90s and think about Blair, the new Labour tag worked brilliantly for him because it encapsulated exactly

[00:19:31] that kind of idea of what it was that they were, that they were different, that they weren't the same Labour party. They were new, they were modern and they were trying to do things in a different way. There was all sorts of other things

[00:19:42] that got tagged along to it that got dropped here and there as they progressed along. The third way, all of those sorts of ideas and they had their pledge card of the five things that they were going to do. All of those sorts of things

[00:19:54] put flesh on the bones of those ideas, but the new Labour tag was what drove the concept through. Now we've been looking at the big parties, obviously as the Conservatives and Labour in all this, but you know that the campaign is of anything because

[00:20:06] the small parties suddenly get a look in that people, you know they get TV time, they get air time, they wouldn't normally get the Lib Dems particularly I guess, but also reform. Where those smaller parties have potential, they've got a campaign pretty hard. It was interesting you mentioned

[00:20:21] about Facebook. Apparently I think reform are doing very well there, partly because Facebook has quite an older clientele now in many ways and they're working hard on that. But what about the mechanisms from all parties? You've got the Lib Dems, you know it's the stunts isn't it?

[00:20:35] It's Ed Davey cycling downhill or falling into a lake or knocking over some boxes. Does that stuff work? Well it's what Ed Davey is doing I think at the moment is making desperate place for attention I'm afraid. I think it's a bit like a toddler

[00:20:48] trying to grab your attention isn't it? By sort of you know accidentally injuring themselves. So sorry Ed Davey, that's a bit harsh but I think there is a little bit of that going on. It hasn't gone that far yet. Not yet. Yeah maybe you'll end up in hospital

[00:21:00] just as a last ditch to the Cassendo for the whole campaign. Yeah so it's that kind of it's that attention that they're trying to grab. What the small parties want from the TV debates in particular where they get a chance to appear there is for that one moment

[00:21:14] where they grab the public's attention. Do you remember back in 2010 with the first election debate there was Clegg Mania. Nick Clegg was this sort of new guy. No one really kind of. I agree with Nick. That's right Gordon Brown and David Cameron competing to see

[00:21:27] who could say it the most times. But it turned out to be ephemeral didn't it? You know although there was a real sense and there were some polls that came out that put you know the Lib Dems ahead of the Conservatives at one point. All of that stuff

[00:21:42] it turned out to be ephemeral and when we actually got to election day the performance was good but it was basically in line with how the Lib Dems generally performed. So there is a sort of kind of there's a bit of a disconnect

[00:21:55] between what they're trying to do through their communication and from trying to grab people's attention through stunts, through the TV debates through Facebook advertising or through other social media advertising and actually electoral performance getting the vote out on the day ensuring that they have good data

[00:22:11] about who their supporters are. So you think the stunts don't work basically then that they're not in fact? I mean I think for the most part you're just trying to grab a couple of seconds on a broadcast bulletin or a little bit in a photograph

[00:22:24] on it in a newspaper. They don't really work in terms of cutting through unless of course they go horribly wrong in which case they're more likely to cut through you know the bacon sandwich and Ed Miliband is one good example isn't it? I mean potentially the you know

[00:22:41] the defining image of this campaign is likely to be the sodden Rishi Sunak standing in Downing Street. You know I mean all of those things when they go wrong there's more chance that they will cut through. Yeah and it's because it's dependent on you talked about you know

[00:22:55] the presidential approach but we've got that haven't we? I mean it's I notice they're trying to use Rishi Sunak a little less and trying to you know promote the strength of the cabinet which might be a you know might be onto a bad thing there as well

[00:23:07] but because only any of them particularly popular right now are they but is we seem to be stuck on this approach that they have in the United States but I mean it's this you know I think it's the same the world over. It is the personality right

[00:23:18] as much as the policies. Yes and it's a mistake to think that's a completely modern invention that's been around for some time you know Margaret Thatcher was campaigning in 1979 doing things like this you know going out to hug cars in fields and things along those lines

[00:23:33] in an effort to appear more human and so all of those sorts of things have existed for a long time I think it's not something that's been around recently but it's certainly true that the two big parties the conservatives and Labour

[00:23:49] are at the moment trying to sort of draw on other figures apart from Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak and that is partly because the candidates themselves are not that popular. Well you mentioned we mentioned digital a bit in a way and obviously the new media

[00:24:02] and social media and how it works but Matt not that long ago we were talking in US and UK election terms about the ability of digital monitoring as a way of campaigning in a much much more efficient way than ever was possible before

[00:24:16] you literally would know to a street who votes what their profile is who to target and what measures to target them on you know you'd put particular messages to particular people and this was going to revolutionise the whole world of political campaigning

[00:24:30] but it doesn't again feel like it this time it doesn't feel like the parties are looking at people. Maybe because you're not seeing it maybe it's because maybe there's it's like a underground war that's being fought that we're just oblivious to because the beauty of online

[00:24:41] obviously is you can tell something to somebody and nobody else who you don't want to know about it knows about it so you can you know you can pander to whatever you want to pander to you know if you want to have the racist overtones

[00:24:54] you just target it at people who've got racist overtones and no one's going to complain about it because the people who would complain about it don't see it. Is that happening Matt at the moment do you think is that kind of in-depth personal stuff going on?

[00:25:05] Well I think there's two things here so firstly micro-targeting this sort of idea that you would be able to sort of sell your candidate down to sort of street level was always slightly overblown I think. I mean it is certainly true there is a lot of control

[00:25:19] that you can have over who sees your advert on Facebook but it's not more than you would get for normal advertising or marketing. It's not that there is some extra special source that's there that isn't available to other people. So I think there's probably

[00:25:35] the parties particularly the conservatists made quite a lot of use of micro-targeting in the 2015 election and that was because there was an unexpected conservative victory that led to people thinking oh my god this is the way of the future.

[00:25:49] This is how it's all going to work from now on and actually it's not really been the case that micro-targeting has delivered results for parties subsequently to that. What they've tended to focus on is much more the organic campaign which is you put stuff onto Facebook

[00:26:03] or Twitter and you look to see whether or not those messages will be picked up and passed to other people. So you're going to vote for the Labour Party and you talk about it on Facebook and your auntie sees that and she thinks oh yes well that's good

[00:26:21] maybe I'll vote for them too. So you get that kind of message being passed on. The other thing that's really changed as well is that there is much more visibility of what's happening with advertising on Facebook in particular than there was previously.

[00:26:34] So now you can go and have a look and see what ads are being run and see what differences are being put forward. So I had a look a little bit earlier at the Facebook ad library. You can see that in the last seven days

[00:26:47] the Conservatives have spent about £180,000 on Facebook adverts mostly playing into Rishi Sunak and the £2,000 tax claim that he made during the TV debate. Other parties are also spending money on it but nowhere near at the same kind of level. The Labour Party spent just a little bit under £50,000

[00:27:07] in the last seven days as well. So you can see that they aren't doing so. That suggests they're not very convinced about it doesn't it? It's just they're not... It's not our money. No. And I think the idea that

[00:27:18] they were going to spend lots and lots of money on Facebook advertising and micro targeting is slightly moved on from there and the way in which the Labour Party in particular approached the last election in 2019 their kind of report that they put together

[00:27:32] after the election was really critical of the way that they handled digital campaigning and basically said that they were just not talking to the right people. They were just talking to their supporters. They were... I don't know if you remember

[00:27:42] but a couple of days before the election in 2019 the Labour Party declared victory and said we've won the social media war. It's all over. They're for the Conservatives and obviously then a couple of days later went into the... They had the worst results

[00:27:55] for the Labour Party since the 1930s. So it doesn't always... Again, it's that kind of disconnect. It's that disconnect between what's happening virtually and what's happening with the supporters who back you and actually getting to the people who you need to persuade

[00:28:10] to actually go out and vote for you. So you don't think there's sort of like any subterfuge going on that the Tories are quietly in the... Oh, I'd never heard of that. That's the nature of subterfuge. In the background the Tories are there saying to people

[00:28:23] who might leave them to go to reform. Are they there saying to them well look, we can be just as forthright when it comes to immigration as they are. Just vote for us. You don't need to go their way without that being widely available

[00:28:37] to people who might not like that message. You're assuming a level of competence that the Tory party hasn't... Yeah. Obviously, we've had. Maybe that's one of my arguments falling apart. But I mean is that... You know, that idea that you can portray one message

[00:28:48] to one part of the population which isn't seen by another part of the population and you don't want it to because you think it might do damage. Dog whistle politics. Does that happen? Yeah. In terms of the sort of kind of the big platforms which are public facing

[00:29:02] it's probably not happening at scale. I don't think. I think if it was, you would be picked up. Where there may be things that are going on maybe using things like WhatsApp well so peer to peer communication where it's much more difficult to see what's happening.

[00:29:18] So you may well be getting people passing around messages between WhatsApp communities sort of saying vote for the conservatives because if you do we can be much harder on immigration. So then those sorts of things might be happening in there that we wouldn't necessarily be able to see

[00:29:37] because of the encrypted nature of peer to peer advertising. But in terms of the big... And if it's spent organically it could be a lie. The basis of it could be a lie of course as well. Absolutely. And it would be really hard to spot.

[00:29:46] So those sorts of kind of the big kind of questions about misinformation and disinformation so propaganda or lies that have been passed around that people have been talking about with this big election year both here but also in America and India and elsewhere is this kind of idea

[00:30:06] that this peer to peer communication could be filled with all sorts of nonsense all sorts of rubbish and that we would never know. But in terms of the big public facing stuff I don't think that's happening. But what about for the... I mean we've spoken about Facebook

[00:30:19] and others but I mean in order to reach the younger portion of the electorate who don't tend to vote that well anyway TikTok, Instagram, Telegram I mean are those things going to be used or do you think the parties have kind of given up on

[00:30:32] even trying to work with that side of things? Oh no they're definitely... They're definitely working with TikTok. There's no question about that. Both the big parties have recently opened up TikTok accounts and are putting effort into trying to reach people on TikTok.

[00:30:46] The kind of question as ever with these things is have you got the right kind of message carrier have you got the right message that's credible to that audience? Well Mr. Sunak's attempt on it would just look tragic when he was going so sorry to interrupt your TikTok

[00:31:01] as though it was some sort of continuous stream that people were watching. Oh is that that was... He just looked so uncomfortable in the whole process. And there's a man that you would think would have some familiarity with TikTok. I mean one of the first adverts

[00:31:14] that the conservatives put out on TikTok was David Cameron talking to camera and sort of saying or here I am on TikTok I do apologize for this you may remember that a few years ago I talked about too many tweets being a bad idea.

[00:31:29] Well if your average age of your TikTok user is 25 that you're trying to get don't you remember the joke from 15 years ago? I mean it's mad. That's short. Yes and who can forget Gordon Brown's attempt to smile on YouTube? That was a meme for a long time.

[00:31:45] I still think the best thing you did was who was that awful woman I thought he probably wouldn't vote on that one. But the... Just a final point about the use of music and I've got a couple of observations on music.

[00:31:58] One is you know when you get a tune that you really like a song that you really like it has a quick burn factor like you like it at the beginning and then you play it so much that you get a bit sick of it

[00:32:08] and then you don't want to hear it anymore. And I wonder whether political parties are a bit like that in that if they sell themselves too hard in such a short time frame like six weeks up to an election you might love them

[00:32:19] but then you don't after a while which was the Boris Johnson effect. So that's sort of like relating that to you know how popular music is. The music that you really like are the songs that have got a slow build and that means you've got to start campaigning

[00:32:31] well before the election and we're missing a trick on that. And then secondly just about songs generally I mean they make us feel good and you know it's like what was it the Dureem song? Things Can Only Get Better. Yes. You know they stick

[00:32:46] and we've had you know a lot of people over the years and there's been a lot of terrible songs though. They have as well but there's also been a lot of you know musicians who've joined presidential campaigns over the years like Frank Sinatra for example campaigning as well.

[00:32:59] David Steele I'm feeling liberal and doing it as a rap. I mean can you imagine anything worse? So both of those sort of like just the you know the slow build effect and the use of music. What do you think on those two things?

[00:33:11] Yeah I mean I think there's no question that you know the short campaign that's the 25 days before the election is called before the election takes place is a place where you're finalising the deal with the voters isn't it? It's that point where you're trying to throw everything in

[00:33:28] to get people to go out on election day and to get your message across to people. There's always this question as to how much people really pay attention to politics outside of election campaigns and even in election campaigns this is hence the repeating of the kind of concepts

[00:33:45] and repeating of the ideas again and again and again until everybody's sick of them is that you know people don't really pay that much attention until the last few days usually. It's really at the end moment that they really tune into things.

[00:33:57] So you've got to have that kind of long tale before the election campaign really gets underway where you've been pushing your ideas and pushing your concepts to the public as much as you possibly can and I think for both parties in this election

[00:34:11] that's been a bit of a problem. Labour because they spent so much time changing who they are since 2019 and changing the party and the Conservatives because they've just been through so many iterations of the party in the last five years that it's hard to have a consistent message.

[00:34:30] Music is obviously a fantastic way of capturing those things but it is also true that it's one of those things that doesn't always, it's hard to do except for to do it organically. So the Dereem, Things Can Only Get Better was something that wasn't done,

[00:34:46] it wasn't written for the campaign it was something that they adopted and kind of happened despite the Labour Party rather than because of the Labour Party and it's hard to get somebody to write you a good song. You might end up in a situation

[00:35:01] where you've got some terrible old has-been who's knocking out some awful track for you which only makes you look more foolish rather than on the cutting edge of things. Rishi Sunak needs Taylor Swift to write him a nice little... I don't think that's going to happen, is it?

[00:35:16] But he would turn the whole thing around, wouldn't it? Little else will. Matt thank you so much for being with us. We will see well what does prove to be effective campaign wise if indeed anything has maybe the maybe the votes have already mentally least been cast.

[00:35:31] Yeah what do you reckon, Matt? Have you picked a winner yet? I think if it's anything other than a Labour Party victory the pollsters will all be looking for new jobs because the polling is astonishingly in their favour. Keir will sing as he goes into Downing Street.

[00:35:52] Was the David Cameron hum that became a real thing wasn't at the end of the Brexit vote? So there is possibility of music. On which note? Thanks Matt. Cheers. Bye bye. Anyway so what about just the slogan for Labour? Just give us the job.

[00:36:11] Let's just get on with it or something like that because we're all desperate for it to happen. The point you make about job is interesting because if you give someone a job and their job is to manage a multi-billion pound department of government

[00:36:25] and they have never managed anything perhaps beyond a parish council in the past and suddenly on day one and pretty clear there's going to be a change. Yes, suddenly they're in charge of stuff. Suddenly they make decisions. In most companies in fact you know

[00:36:39] you start a new job you'll be on a three month probation well maybe we should do that. And maybe a bit of training. Well that's the point. Should the politicians who are coming in now and it will almost certainly be a whole new bunch

[00:36:48] who've never actually been in government should there be training for politicians? Should they at least know what the hell they're doing before they start it? Yeah a lot of them won't actually have been into Westminster at all. They will be brand new MPs

[00:37:00] who find themselves in the governing party. Suddenly making a decision potentially making votes on things but also running things. That's the weird thing. When you've reached this stage I remember this was true with the Labour government's 97. There were people who had not

[00:37:13] the Labour Party hadn't had anyone in government for so long nobody had ministerial experience at all. Yeah well wasn't there that moment when Tony Blair's wife came down to the front door to get some milk at and whether that was staged or not

[00:37:27] whether it was just like well they looked ordinary at that point. Yeah we had but you do have people who have no experience in this and there have been suggestions that people should be trained that politicians from whatever party with whatever their program

[00:37:41] on just the sheer way to administer stuff and see if that works. Well wouldn't it be a good idea if they studied that before they stood? Well maybe or at least You know maybe we ought to say look if you want to stand

[00:37:53] Yeah you have to do a course Course yeah I'm not sure that would be popular Maybe it should be a two or three year course you know where you learn the ins and outs and then we might lose a load on them I think that might not work

[00:38:03] And you have to pass exams Oh imagine You know you can stand but you haven't passed the exam I'm afraid Yeah so that's it That's how you failed on the IQ test Or is all this actually anti-democratic?

[00:38:14] In the end we get the people we vote for after all trained or untrained Yeah and there's a bigger question then does democracy work? Well there's another one Yes should it be actually an assembly of experts who rule us all well hopefully not

[00:38:25] But maybe we can make the people who rule us a little bit more expert in what they're doing That's what we're going to be talking about next week On the Y curve we'll see you then Thanks for joining us today We'll see you next week Bye