Just to let you all know, I will not be blogging on this site until further notice and, very likely, never again. I shall continue to blog as A Different Hat on Brand Republic (http://tinyurl.com/3yq34a5).
I had an incredible journey which I have described below, in reverse order:
1. Why did I do it?
2. What was it like?
3. Was it worth it?
Draw your own conclusions!
And thanks.
Wednesday 23 June 2010
Thursday 3 June 2010
Was it worth it?
By standing up to be counted as an Independent Candidate MP, I certainly learnt some home truths, both professionally (which you might not like) and personally (which you might not care about).
So yes, of course it was worth it. Well I am not going to say ‘no’ am I?
From a professional point of view, I know political advertising and marketing is different from specific products or services.
It is very PR-led. Some of the electorate (‘consumers’) are tied by arcane and irrational tribal loyalties. The political parties conduct the same focus groups with the same respondents from the same target constituencies - so they feed back the same stuff that they know you want to hear, thus encouraging campaigns of style over substance.
I also know that, despite the above, at General Election time the ‘market’ is volcanic and unstable. And the parties are scared because they know anything can happen – as it did. They just don’t know what it might be.
So, here are the home truths, many of which have been acknowledged in other media. I wanted to wait to see if I could add anything new.
As a Candidate MP, you get the chance to connect with real people. Not people in focus groups, not target audiences, not demographic profiles. People in the real world.
A surprising number, clutching a lager, spit at you, an inch from your face and demand: ‘what are your policies?’, ‘what are your policies?’, ‘what are your policies?’; ‘what about me?’, ‘what about me?’, ‘what about me?’.
Once, standing opposite the sitting Labour MP on the pavement, I advised our intoxicated constituent: ‘that bloke over there has been our MP – why don’t you talk to him?’. Sorry, Martin. It had to be done.
But other people have a real grievance or concern they want to share. I met a lady whose 11-year-old daughter is petrified by dogs since being attacked aged eight. I would have had a great creative solution for her. Another had her daughter taken into care because she didn’t have a big enough flat, but she couldn’t get a big enough flat without her daughter living with her. Vicious. Neither of these poor ladies knew where to turn.
These weren’t the only ones. I met several people in the real world who are completely ignored and untouched by the media world we live in, especially digital media. How many of them need an iPad this week?
Let’s be honest, although agencies and media-types like to develop more sophisticated definitions and segmentations, how much of our work is aimed at consumers in what would have been ABC1s rather than C2DEs?
In this real world experience, I have been shocked by how many C2DEs there are out there. You walk past them every day but you don’t touch them. In an election, you do. They are all equal. They all have a vote.
But the political parties don’t ‘target’ them. Their game is to trawl the streets for three years, knock on every door and find out who is going to vote their way and who is not. Those who aren’t, they try to convert. The key people are the ‘floating voters’ who haven’t made up their minds.
There is such a huge gap between the ‘poor, scared, forgotten and alone’ and the ‘interested and engaged’ that, frankly, the former are not courted by our politicians who don’t have a clue how to communicate with them. Why do they matter? They are entitled to vote, but are unlikely to bother, so why bother about them? For that matter, the same goes for marketers. They haven’t got any money so why target consumer products at them?
Others are really interested and engaged by politics and current affairs and are keen to know where you stand and challenge your views. These are the happy moments when you are asked about something you have never thought of and, as an Independent rather than party mouthpiece, you don’t have a guidebook to refer to – so you have to think.
But, as we now know, no one had thought of the effect of the TV debates. Despite not being tactically cute enough to leverage the impact of the first debate into presenting a credible Cabinet team at the time of the second and third, the Lib Dems suddenly became the viable default option.
I was one of 46 Independent MPs ‘endorsed’ by the Independent Network. As well as passing tests of character and integrity, we agreed to abide by the Martin Bell Principles: http://tinyurl.com/32ebcqk. The Independent Network has admitted the Election was undeniably disappointing for independent candidates. Even Esther Rantzen lost her deposit – and she probably had more media exposure than the rest of us put together.
We all thought the expenses scandal would be a major issue and expose our politicians as shabby, untrustworthy jobsworths who spent five years being shepherded into the lobbies in return for their underhand perks.
But, at a national PR launch, I realised to my horror, that the expenses scandal would not be an issue at all. I have a positive track record in this area and my particular point was that the MPs couldn’t have worked out individually that they could flip their houses and avoid Capital Gains Tax. The flipping must have been a well-known scam among them – yet not one had the moral compass to raise a hand and say ‘isn’t this wrong?’.
But when I made this point to the political editor of a ‘serious’ national newspaper, he couldn’t see the problem. He just said ‘of course, they all knew about it – the Commons Expenses Office told them to do it’. So that’s alright then. No need for MPs with financial integrity.
A further motivator for Independent candidates was to fight a political system where majority Governments containing specifically-recruited, spineless jobsworth backbenchers can force legislation through without a full and fair debate in the House of Commons. Well, it didn’t happened the way we wanted, but it ain’t like that now. And I am delighted.
So, in terms of my political objective, although no thanks to me, I believe we now have a ‘fairer’ Parliament. Hopefully, we’ll never have to endure a single majority party again. Nick Clegg is playing the long game. After the referendum on AV, the Lib Dems will get a fairer ratio of seats to votes and these flipping career politicians will have to coalesce for evermore.
Anyway, sorry, I digress. Let’s get back to the real world.
Apart from the above, my over-arching motivation in standing had been the divergence, rather than convergence, of society. Why are we becoming further apart from each other, rather than closer together?
This was the fundamental question I was seeking to answer.
So, from a professional (i.e. marketing and media) point of view, here are the home truths as I found them and, I hope, some positive thoughts as to how we might improve things:
1. Better use of marketing, media and creative skills
There are loads of people – probably millions – who we (those of us with Blackberries and iPads) virtually ignore. I know. I’ve met them.
Political parties like to identify social problems but their solutions, which they call ‘policies’, are woeful: at best, badly thought-out and poorly communicated (if at all); at worst, self-serving and party point-scoring.
Laughably, the Conservatives once produced a leaflet called ‘Breakdown Britain – Citizen’s Repair Manual’, in which they tried to liken society to a broken motor car with diagrams of broken engines and nuts and bolts. Who is going to read that?!
The poor, scared, forgotten and alone are more disengaged from the media than our London-centric media ‘specialists’ might think. Their lives are dominated by their own problems and day-to-day survival. And their purchasing motivators are driven by price discounting and affordability rather than cute advertising or fancy media connectivity.
They are not on Facebook and they don’t Twitter. In fact, they are unlikely to have internet access at all. They can’t read, so why would they?
They may have TV, but the £142.50 licence fee (tax) is a lot of money - a national scandal in my view. They are likely to avoid paying this, which will get them into trouble – or nick the money from elsewhere, which will get them into even more trouble.
Sure, politicians will claim a policy for this and a policy for that, but they are box ticking – not touching people. Behavioural economics be damned.
If our political system has been working why, after all these Labour years, and with all this great new media technology, have the poor, scared, forgotten and alone become so disengaged from the rest of us?
Can’t we, as one of the world’s great creative industries, unite to develop genuinely creative solutions to the social problems that these people face?
Can’t we develop a professional approach by talking to them other than on a commercial basis, identifying their problems, setting objectives, defining strategies and developing genuinely creative solutions to HELP them?
We would be much better at this than politicians. Why are our skills limited to commercial, rather than social, objectives (I am talking about more over-arching social issues here than the tactical work of the COI)?
If I had been elected, one of my missions would have been to propose a cross-party committee to act as ‘client’ and lobby Government funding for just such a project.
I do think a Role of Government should be to get the best problem-solvers aimed at the biggest problems in society on a non-party basis.
Politicians claim the high ground in this area (‘I am in politics to serve the community, to improve society’). Well they don’t. As we now know.
Can’t we knock some heads together, whether through the IPA or ISBA or the Marketing Society or the School of Communication Arts, whatever, to set up a non-political working group with an objective to help the lives of people whose demographic profiles fall below the target audiences of our commercial clients?
2. Connecting Government – and people - with charities
For example, for discussion, could we develop a campaign programme to educate the these people on where to turn for the help they need?
A Government ‘policy’ or box-ticking unit is unlikely to be the answer. Why would you go there, when they might ask you questions that threaten your housing or your dole money? When people need help, they should get it from people who want to give it, not whose job it is to do so.
For example, have you ever heard of Guidestar.org.uk? As a Trustee of a UK charity for nearly 10 years, I had never heard of them. And I bet the poor, scared, forgotten and alone haven’t either.
Guidestar was ‘set up in 2003 to provide a single, easily accessible source of detailed information about every charity and voluntary organisation in England and Wales’. All 163,000 of them. That’s a lot of charities.
Guidestar may or may not be the right people, I don’t know. It might be the Citizens Advice Bureau (but I don’t have a clue where they are and I haven’t ever seen any advertising or messaging from them either).
Or maybe there’s room for a grown-up Helpline. I don’t know.
I do know that, when I was brought up in Hong Kong, there was a thing called The Community Chest. EVERYONE knew about it. It was so heavily advertised I can recall the corny jingle decades later (that’s penetration!):
Give, give, give to the Community Chest
Give, give, give and they will do the rest
Give, give, give just as much as you can
Give, give, give to help your fellow man.
If you’re from the East, if you’re from the West,
Help your neighbours with the Community Chest.
Give, give, give to help the sick and the poor
Give, give, give and then just give some more.
If there are 163,000 charities in England and Wales, how on earth are the poor, scared, forgotten and alone going to find the right one for them?
They deserve to be told, rationally, that there is one gateway they can go to for help, and, emotionally, that we all care and want to help them.
What is needed is the media skills to identify who these people are and how to reach them, a strategy on how best to do this and creative skills to touch them and encourage them to act. I reckon that is a GREAT brief.
And that it is the Role of Government to fund it, not execute it.
I suspect there is also a need to cut across Government departments, including the COI, and connect them to other official or voluntary bodies. Again, that would have been one of my projects an Independent MP.
3. ‘Geek snobbery’ in digital media
Before the Election, I approached several ‘digital-savvy’ friends and contacts before developing my own campaign. To a man (for, sorry, they all were), they promised this would be the first online, social networking General Election. One of them said he could do me a great deal for £25k.
I am concerned that, influenced by digital media fashions and with more than a touch of ‘geek snobbery’, we in Brand Republic have developed our own little bubble in our own little world and, in this divergent society, become far more disconnected with reality than we think.
How scared are we to admit that we don’t really understand the place – or the future – of digital media?
How influenced are we by the early adopters – the ‘geek snobs’ - who think, that by knowing how to use a new digital media product, they know how to monetise that technology for meaningful commercial results?
For example, although millions of people use Facebook, do they use it in such a way as to create significant commercial ROI?
Is Twitter an exciting new media opportunity? Or is it a completely new animal? A cross between - occasionally - an extraordinary news channel (Iran massacre, Cumbrian murders) and a game – a trivial pursuit, if you will - that some people like playing more frequently than others?
And where are the commercial opportunities? I tweet as ‘Tweeterbookclub’ and today I have 2,790 followers but I know, when I trawl through them (which is very boring), many of them aren’t reacting to my tweets – and a frightening number haven’t used Twitter at all for months and even years.
They haven’t just opted-out of my tweets, they have opted-out of Twitter altogether. Prove me wrong, but I reckon sites like Facebook and Twitter are the definitive ‘opt-out’ media channels. Commercial messages just get blocked out. And the more the messaging, the more the blocking.
Where’s the scalability for these sites? Without it, they won’t survive. (Actually, I reckon I know how they could, but I ain’t going there now).
4. Client confusion
The explosion in digital media has led to a plethora of digital agencies and a confusion of choice for clients.
More than ever, the agency world has polarised into the multinational groups, with all their advantages of size and international client service, and the local specialists – who are faster-moving, faster-thinking but, for clients, ever-more confusing.
As clients in the last General Election, I am sure all the politicians were being advised to develop digital solutions and that this would be the way.
But it wasn’t.
How many clients in today’s commercial world are being led down the same line and wasting valuable resources just as I could have done?
I suspect more than the geek-snobs might like to think.
So now, apart from an excuse to post the wordiest blog of all time, I have to touch on how standing for Parliament was worth it from a personal point of view (this will be shorter):
1. It is a privilege to stand outside Clapham Junction with an excuse to talk to anybody who passes by – the more sober, the better. This is a real eye-opener, as I hope I have reflected above.
2. And it was fun. We really engaged with people by driving round with the milk float (DON’T FLOAT - VOTE!).
This led to some extraordinary and unforeseen experiences. We drove round Parliament Square and I was interviewed by Spanish, Portuguese and American TV stations on College Green. I even predicted the result to the American station. All very random and completely off-strategy for attracting votes from my Battersea constituency.
Someone asked me for my autograph because they thought I was the actor-singer Michael Ball. Makes a change from Jeremy Clarkson.
One of my thoughts was to change the name of Clapham Junction, where it isn’t, to Battersea Junction, where it is. I was trying to explain this to a potential voter and he said: ‘Yes, but it’s called Clapham Junction because the station is there’. There’s no answer to the wisdom of the electorate.
Out of respect to them, my website www.hughsalmon4battersea.co.uk is much more serious in tone and my Manifesto ran to 27 pages.
3. My major local issue was to help persuade the powers that be to convert an unused, derelict local hospital into a badly needed secondary school. It looks like this is now going to happen.
I have said before that, at a General Election, anything can happen. In a completely different way from commercial marketing, none of the parties know what this might be. They really don’t know if, as a local Independent candidate, you might attract a following and tip the balance between one party and another. My vote in 2010 would have done this in 2005.
But I am convinced that a credible local Independent candidate standing for this issue, and raising its importance, led to Ed Balls (ex-Education Minister) coming to the hospital site and, with a week to go, Michael Gove (future Education Minister) coming too.
By doing this, and helping to make this an all-party issue, it became a non-issue and it looks like the school is going to happen. Brilliant.
4. Finally, most rewarding of all, was the opportunity to discuss, on an equal basis with the ‘main’ parties, real issues with real people. You didn’t know what they might ask you. Unlike the parties, you didn’t have a crib-sheet of answers supplied by Central Office. You had to think.
And I like to think that all of my answers had a more human perspective than the regimented political party dogma.
This website attracted genuine people with genuine concerns. Here is one:
EMAIL FROM BATTERSEA CONSTITUENT
Dear Hugh,
I have read your website with interest and would be interested to know where you stand on the ability of B&B owners to ban gay couples from renting a room together and, please, your views on whether or not the Pope - an apparently committed homophobe and coverer-upper of child abuse - should be allowed a platform in the UK or whether his presence here should be denied as not being conducive to the public good.
Thank you.
MY REPLY
Dear (anonymity respected),Thanks for getting in touch. I have thought long and hard about these issues. My mother and her side of my family are Catholics.
Personally, I am an atheist and think, through history, religious divisions have done enough damage to the world.
Thank you for taking the time to read my Manifesto. As you will have read, I am for convergence rather than divergence and I will answer your two questions in this spirit:
1. I most certainly against a ban on gay couples from renting a room together. As I have made clear in all my communications in this campaign, I relate to people on how they behave - not their race, religion, background, wealth or sexuality.
However, in the instance to which you refer, I would prefer to live in a society where the following exchange had taken place:
Landlord: "I am aware that I am legally bound to admit you to my B&B, but I have to inform you that my religious beliefs are such that I would rather you find alternative accommodation at the following hostelries in this area. However, if you cannot find alternative accommodation, then of course you may stay here and you will be as welcome as any of our other guests".
Gay couple: "Thank you for letting us know your position. We do not share your views but respect your right to hold them. We will try and find somewhere else nearby, failing which we will come back as you have proposed".
This way, a relatively simple conflict of views need not have become a national media scandal.
2. Re the Pope, you have used the word 'apparently'. I'm afraid I cannot agree that we deny the Pope a visit on this basis.
Overall, I am against the religious divisions in our society, and am certainly against the faith schools that feed them.
I do not care if people are Catholic or Muslim, gay or straight, Tory or Labour, or support Arsenal or Chelsea. I have written a book called 'Do As You Would Be Done By' and this does it for me.
I would rather live in a more tolerant world, and this desire is perhaps the defining reason for my standing up to be counted as an Independent Candidate in this way.
I hope this helps.
All the best,
Hugh
CONSTITUENT RESPONSE
Dear Hugh
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me - so thoroughly and promptly too, if I may say so. My partner and I will be voting for you tomorrow and wish you luck…..
Your beliefs, are, in my humble opinion, sound, reasoned and reasonable - more power to you and others with independent spirit!
Again, good luck tomorrow!
Regards
END OF MESSAGE
I believe that the opportunity to relate to complete strangers in this way – and this is one of many – has been an absolute privilege and I’m proud to live in a democratic society where this kind of engagement can take place.
I just wish we could do more to recognise all the good things and the good people in this country and somehow do more to recognise, share and communicate the positive values that bind us rather than, as a society, become increasingly divergent – which is what seems to be happening not least educationally, financially and culturally.
END OF MESSAGE (AGAIN).
So yes, of course it was worth it. Well I am not going to say ‘no’ am I?
From a professional point of view, I know political advertising and marketing is different from specific products or services.
It is very PR-led. Some of the electorate (‘consumers’) are tied by arcane and irrational tribal loyalties. The political parties conduct the same focus groups with the same respondents from the same target constituencies - so they feed back the same stuff that they know you want to hear, thus encouraging campaigns of style over substance.
I also know that, despite the above, at General Election time the ‘market’ is volcanic and unstable. And the parties are scared because they know anything can happen – as it did. They just don’t know what it might be.
So, here are the home truths, many of which have been acknowledged in other media. I wanted to wait to see if I could add anything new.
As a Candidate MP, you get the chance to connect with real people. Not people in focus groups, not target audiences, not demographic profiles. People in the real world.
A surprising number, clutching a lager, spit at you, an inch from your face and demand: ‘what are your policies?’, ‘what are your policies?’, ‘what are your policies?’; ‘what about me?’, ‘what about me?’, ‘what about me?’.
Once, standing opposite the sitting Labour MP on the pavement, I advised our intoxicated constituent: ‘that bloke over there has been our MP – why don’t you talk to him?’. Sorry, Martin. It had to be done.
But other people have a real grievance or concern they want to share. I met a lady whose 11-year-old daughter is petrified by dogs since being attacked aged eight. I would have had a great creative solution for her. Another had her daughter taken into care because she didn’t have a big enough flat, but she couldn’t get a big enough flat without her daughter living with her. Vicious. Neither of these poor ladies knew where to turn.
These weren’t the only ones. I met several people in the real world who are completely ignored and untouched by the media world we live in, especially digital media. How many of them need an iPad this week?
Let’s be honest, although agencies and media-types like to develop more sophisticated definitions and segmentations, how much of our work is aimed at consumers in what would have been ABC1s rather than C2DEs?
In this real world experience, I have been shocked by how many C2DEs there are out there. You walk past them every day but you don’t touch them. In an election, you do. They are all equal. They all have a vote.
But the political parties don’t ‘target’ them. Their game is to trawl the streets for three years, knock on every door and find out who is going to vote their way and who is not. Those who aren’t, they try to convert. The key people are the ‘floating voters’ who haven’t made up their minds.
There is such a huge gap between the ‘poor, scared, forgotten and alone’ and the ‘interested and engaged’ that, frankly, the former are not courted by our politicians who don’t have a clue how to communicate with them. Why do they matter? They are entitled to vote, but are unlikely to bother, so why bother about them? For that matter, the same goes for marketers. They haven’t got any money so why target consumer products at them?
Others are really interested and engaged by politics and current affairs and are keen to know where you stand and challenge your views. These are the happy moments when you are asked about something you have never thought of and, as an Independent rather than party mouthpiece, you don’t have a guidebook to refer to – so you have to think.
But, as we now know, no one had thought of the effect of the TV debates. Despite not being tactically cute enough to leverage the impact of the first debate into presenting a credible Cabinet team at the time of the second and third, the Lib Dems suddenly became the viable default option.
I was one of 46 Independent MPs ‘endorsed’ by the Independent Network. As well as passing tests of character and integrity, we agreed to abide by the Martin Bell Principles: http://tinyurl.com/32ebcqk. The Independent Network has admitted the Election was undeniably disappointing for independent candidates. Even Esther Rantzen lost her deposit – and she probably had more media exposure than the rest of us put together.
We all thought the expenses scandal would be a major issue and expose our politicians as shabby, untrustworthy jobsworths who spent five years being shepherded into the lobbies in return for their underhand perks.
But, at a national PR launch, I realised to my horror, that the expenses scandal would not be an issue at all. I have a positive track record in this area and my particular point was that the MPs couldn’t have worked out individually that they could flip their houses and avoid Capital Gains Tax. The flipping must have been a well-known scam among them – yet not one had the moral compass to raise a hand and say ‘isn’t this wrong?’.
But when I made this point to the political editor of a ‘serious’ national newspaper, he couldn’t see the problem. He just said ‘of course, they all knew about it – the Commons Expenses Office told them to do it’. So that’s alright then. No need for MPs with financial integrity.
A further motivator for Independent candidates was to fight a political system where majority Governments containing specifically-recruited, spineless jobsworth backbenchers can force legislation through without a full and fair debate in the House of Commons. Well, it didn’t happened the way we wanted, but it ain’t like that now. And I am delighted.
So, in terms of my political objective, although no thanks to me, I believe we now have a ‘fairer’ Parliament. Hopefully, we’ll never have to endure a single majority party again. Nick Clegg is playing the long game. After the referendum on AV, the Lib Dems will get a fairer ratio of seats to votes and these flipping career politicians will have to coalesce for evermore.
Anyway, sorry, I digress. Let’s get back to the real world.
Apart from the above, my over-arching motivation in standing had been the divergence, rather than convergence, of society. Why are we becoming further apart from each other, rather than closer together?
This was the fundamental question I was seeking to answer.
So, from a professional (i.e. marketing and media) point of view, here are the home truths as I found them and, I hope, some positive thoughts as to how we might improve things:
1. Better use of marketing, media and creative skills
There are loads of people – probably millions – who we (those of us with Blackberries and iPads) virtually ignore. I know. I’ve met them.
Political parties like to identify social problems but their solutions, which they call ‘policies’, are woeful: at best, badly thought-out and poorly communicated (if at all); at worst, self-serving and party point-scoring.
Laughably, the Conservatives once produced a leaflet called ‘Breakdown Britain – Citizen’s Repair Manual’, in which they tried to liken society to a broken motor car with diagrams of broken engines and nuts and bolts. Who is going to read that?!
The poor, scared, forgotten and alone are more disengaged from the media than our London-centric media ‘specialists’ might think. Their lives are dominated by their own problems and day-to-day survival. And their purchasing motivators are driven by price discounting and affordability rather than cute advertising or fancy media connectivity.
They are not on Facebook and they don’t Twitter. In fact, they are unlikely to have internet access at all. They can’t read, so why would they?
They may have TV, but the £142.50 licence fee (tax) is a lot of money - a national scandal in my view. They are likely to avoid paying this, which will get them into trouble – or nick the money from elsewhere, which will get them into even more trouble.
Sure, politicians will claim a policy for this and a policy for that, but they are box ticking – not touching people. Behavioural economics be damned.
If our political system has been working why, after all these Labour years, and with all this great new media technology, have the poor, scared, forgotten and alone become so disengaged from the rest of us?
Can’t we, as one of the world’s great creative industries, unite to develop genuinely creative solutions to the social problems that these people face?
Can’t we develop a professional approach by talking to them other than on a commercial basis, identifying their problems, setting objectives, defining strategies and developing genuinely creative solutions to HELP them?
We would be much better at this than politicians. Why are our skills limited to commercial, rather than social, objectives (I am talking about more over-arching social issues here than the tactical work of the COI)?
If I had been elected, one of my missions would have been to propose a cross-party committee to act as ‘client’ and lobby Government funding for just such a project.
I do think a Role of Government should be to get the best problem-solvers aimed at the biggest problems in society on a non-party basis.
Politicians claim the high ground in this area (‘I am in politics to serve the community, to improve society’). Well they don’t. As we now know.
Can’t we knock some heads together, whether through the IPA or ISBA or the Marketing Society or the School of Communication Arts, whatever, to set up a non-political working group with an objective to help the lives of people whose demographic profiles fall below the target audiences of our commercial clients?
2. Connecting Government – and people - with charities
For example, for discussion, could we develop a campaign programme to educate the these people on where to turn for the help they need?
A Government ‘policy’ or box-ticking unit is unlikely to be the answer. Why would you go there, when they might ask you questions that threaten your housing or your dole money? When people need help, they should get it from people who want to give it, not whose job it is to do so.
For example, have you ever heard of Guidestar.org.uk? As a Trustee of a UK charity for nearly 10 years, I had never heard of them. And I bet the poor, scared, forgotten and alone haven’t either.
Guidestar was ‘set up in 2003 to provide a single, easily accessible source of detailed information about every charity and voluntary organisation in England and Wales’. All 163,000 of them. That’s a lot of charities.
Guidestar may or may not be the right people, I don’t know. It might be the Citizens Advice Bureau (but I don’t have a clue where they are and I haven’t ever seen any advertising or messaging from them either).
Or maybe there’s room for a grown-up Helpline. I don’t know.
I do know that, when I was brought up in Hong Kong, there was a thing called The Community Chest. EVERYONE knew about it. It was so heavily advertised I can recall the corny jingle decades later (that’s penetration!):
Give, give, give to the Community Chest
Give, give, give and they will do the rest
Give, give, give just as much as you can
Give, give, give to help your fellow man.
If you’re from the East, if you’re from the West,
Help your neighbours with the Community Chest.
Give, give, give to help the sick and the poor
Give, give, give and then just give some more.
If there are 163,000 charities in England and Wales, how on earth are the poor, scared, forgotten and alone going to find the right one for them?
They deserve to be told, rationally, that there is one gateway they can go to for help, and, emotionally, that we all care and want to help them.
What is needed is the media skills to identify who these people are and how to reach them, a strategy on how best to do this and creative skills to touch them and encourage them to act. I reckon that is a GREAT brief.
And that it is the Role of Government to fund it, not execute it.
I suspect there is also a need to cut across Government departments, including the COI, and connect them to other official or voluntary bodies. Again, that would have been one of my projects an Independent MP.
3. ‘Geek snobbery’ in digital media
Before the Election, I approached several ‘digital-savvy’ friends and contacts before developing my own campaign. To a man (for, sorry, they all were), they promised this would be the first online, social networking General Election. One of them said he could do me a great deal for £25k.
I am concerned that, influenced by digital media fashions and with more than a touch of ‘geek snobbery’, we in Brand Republic have developed our own little bubble in our own little world and, in this divergent society, become far more disconnected with reality than we think.
How scared are we to admit that we don’t really understand the place – or the future – of digital media?
How influenced are we by the early adopters – the ‘geek snobs’ - who think, that by knowing how to use a new digital media product, they know how to monetise that technology for meaningful commercial results?
For example, although millions of people use Facebook, do they use it in such a way as to create significant commercial ROI?
Is Twitter an exciting new media opportunity? Or is it a completely new animal? A cross between - occasionally - an extraordinary news channel (Iran massacre, Cumbrian murders) and a game – a trivial pursuit, if you will - that some people like playing more frequently than others?
And where are the commercial opportunities? I tweet as ‘Tweeterbookclub’ and today I have 2,790 followers but I know, when I trawl through them (which is very boring), many of them aren’t reacting to my tweets – and a frightening number haven’t used Twitter at all for months and even years.
They haven’t just opted-out of my tweets, they have opted-out of Twitter altogether. Prove me wrong, but I reckon sites like Facebook and Twitter are the definitive ‘opt-out’ media channels. Commercial messages just get blocked out. And the more the messaging, the more the blocking.
Where’s the scalability for these sites? Without it, they won’t survive. (Actually, I reckon I know how they could, but I ain’t going there now).
4. Client confusion
The explosion in digital media has led to a plethora of digital agencies and a confusion of choice for clients.
More than ever, the agency world has polarised into the multinational groups, with all their advantages of size and international client service, and the local specialists – who are faster-moving, faster-thinking but, for clients, ever-more confusing.
As clients in the last General Election, I am sure all the politicians were being advised to develop digital solutions and that this would be the way.
But it wasn’t.
How many clients in today’s commercial world are being led down the same line and wasting valuable resources just as I could have done?
I suspect more than the geek-snobs might like to think.
So now, apart from an excuse to post the wordiest blog of all time, I have to touch on how standing for Parliament was worth it from a personal point of view (this will be shorter):
1. It is a privilege to stand outside Clapham Junction with an excuse to talk to anybody who passes by – the more sober, the better. This is a real eye-opener, as I hope I have reflected above.
2. And it was fun. We really engaged with people by driving round with the milk float (DON’T FLOAT - VOTE!).
This led to some extraordinary and unforeseen experiences. We drove round Parliament Square and I was interviewed by Spanish, Portuguese and American TV stations on College Green. I even predicted the result to the American station. All very random and completely off-strategy for attracting votes from my Battersea constituency.
Someone asked me for my autograph because they thought I was the actor-singer Michael Ball. Makes a change from Jeremy Clarkson.
One of my thoughts was to change the name of Clapham Junction, where it isn’t, to Battersea Junction, where it is. I was trying to explain this to a potential voter and he said: ‘Yes, but it’s called Clapham Junction because the station is there’. There’s no answer to the wisdom of the electorate.
Out of respect to them, my website www.hughsalmon4battersea.co.uk is much more serious in tone and my Manifesto ran to 27 pages.
3. My major local issue was to help persuade the powers that be to convert an unused, derelict local hospital into a badly needed secondary school. It looks like this is now going to happen.
I have said before that, at a General Election, anything can happen. In a completely different way from commercial marketing, none of the parties know what this might be. They really don’t know if, as a local Independent candidate, you might attract a following and tip the balance between one party and another. My vote in 2010 would have done this in 2005.
But I am convinced that a credible local Independent candidate standing for this issue, and raising its importance, led to Ed Balls (ex-Education Minister) coming to the hospital site and, with a week to go, Michael Gove (future Education Minister) coming too.
By doing this, and helping to make this an all-party issue, it became a non-issue and it looks like the school is going to happen. Brilliant.
4. Finally, most rewarding of all, was the opportunity to discuss, on an equal basis with the ‘main’ parties, real issues with real people. You didn’t know what they might ask you. Unlike the parties, you didn’t have a crib-sheet of answers supplied by Central Office. You had to think.
And I like to think that all of my answers had a more human perspective than the regimented political party dogma.
This website attracted genuine people with genuine concerns. Here is one:
EMAIL FROM BATTERSEA CONSTITUENT
Dear Hugh,
I have read your website with interest and would be interested to know where you stand on the ability of B&B owners to ban gay couples from renting a room together and, please, your views on whether or not the Pope - an apparently committed homophobe and coverer-upper of child abuse - should be allowed a platform in the UK or whether his presence here should be denied as not being conducive to the public good.
Thank you.
MY REPLY
Dear (anonymity respected),Thanks for getting in touch. I have thought long and hard about these issues. My mother and her side of my family are Catholics.
Personally, I am an atheist and think, through history, religious divisions have done enough damage to the world.
Thank you for taking the time to read my Manifesto. As you will have read, I am for convergence rather than divergence and I will answer your two questions in this spirit:
1. I most certainly against a ban on gay couples from renting a room together. As I have made clear in all my communications in this campaign, I relate to people on how they behave - not their race, religion, background, wealth or sexuality.
However, in the instance to which you refer, I would prefer to live in a society where the following exchange had taken place:
Landlord: "I am aware that I am legally bound to admit you to my B&B, but I have to inform you that my religious beliefs are such that I would rather you find alternative accommodation at the following hostelries in this area. However, if you cannot find alternative accommodation, then of course you may stay here and you will be as welcome as any of our other guests".
Gay couple: "Thank you for letting us know your position. We do not share your views but respect your right to hold them. We will try and find somewhere else nearby, failing which we will come back as you have proposed".
This way, a relatively simple conflict of views need not have become a national media scandal.
2. Re the Pope, you have used the word 'apparently'. I'm afraid I cannot agree that we deny the Pope a visit on this basis.
Overall, I am against the religious divisions in our society, and am certainly against the faith schools that feed them.
I do not care if people are Catholic or Muslim, gay or straight, Tory or Labour, or support Arsenal or Chelsea. I have written a book called 'Do As You Would Be Done By' and this does it for me.
I would rather live in a more tolerant world, and this desire is perhaps the defining reason for my standing up to be counted as an Independent Candidate in this way.
I hope this helps.
All the best,
Hugh
CONSTITUENT RESPONSE
Dear Hugh
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me - so thoroughly and promptly too, if I may say so. My partner and I will be voting for you tomorrow and wish you luck…..
Your beliefs, are, in my humble opinion, sound, reasoned and reasonable - more power to you and others with independent spirit!
Again, good luck tomorrow!
Regards
END OF MESSAGE
I believe that the opportunity to relate to complete strangers in this way – and this is one of many – has been an absolute privilege and I’m proud to live in a democratic society where this kind of engagement can take place.
I just wish we could do more to recognise all the good things and the good people in this country and somehow do more to recognise, share and communicate the positive values that bind us rather than, as a society, become increasingly divergent – which is what seems to be happening not least educationally, financially and culturally.
END OF MESSAGE (AGAIN).
Tuesday 25 May 2010
What was it like?
So, I have this nagging concern that, with the major social battles of the 20th century fought and won - women’s suffrage, equal rights, free market economics over socialism - and, especially, with all this new media about - why, in the 21st century, is our society diverging rather than converging?
And why aren’t our politicians more sophisticated, more strategic, about how they use these new media opportunities to bring people closer together and unite society – globally as well as domestically.
I have never very impressed by politicians, certainly not professional ‘career politicians’. What have they done? I don’t like their air of superiority, their fiddling expenses and flipping houses to avoid capital gains tax. This was going to be a major issue in this election (not).
I must be better than this lot. In fact, I can prove I am. So I decide to stand up and be counted as an Independent MP. I’m the man.
And that’s my problem. I’m on my own. I’m Independent. I am not a party. I am a person, warts and all.
I don’t have ‘policies’. Aren’t policies executional (rather than strategic)? Why don’t strategic marketers have ‘policies’? What was Lowe’s Heineken policy? Or the BBH Levi’s policy? Or Fallon’s Cadbury policy?
I don’t even like the word ‘policy’. It sounds like the police. If you emphasise the second syllable, you can even pronounce it ‘policey’.
Call me old-fashioned, but I feel more comfortable with setting objectives, agreeing strategies and developing executions - all in one logical flow.
1. What were my objectives?
There is an easy answer – and a more complicated one.
The easy answer is ‘to persuade the constituents of Battersea to vote for me, Hugh Salmon, to be their MP in the House of Commons’.
The complication is that this an unlikely, unrealistic objective to achieve.
So why bother?
Well, there’s the Lottery answer that if you’re not in it, you won’t win it. And, of all elections, this one is very unpredictable. You never know.
But the chances are still low, so are there any other reasons to justify the time and cost involved?
Well, for me, yes. Remember, my over-arching concern is the divergence, rather convergence, of society. Why are we becoming further apart from each other, rather than closer together?
Maybe, by offering myself up, albeit in a non-commercial environment, I could connect with real people. Not target audiences, not demographic profiles, not focus groups. Real people in the real world.
Where would that get me? I didn’t know, but I was keen to find out. If nothing else, it would be a new, interesting and, hopefully, enjoyable experience. And you never know…..
2. What was my strategy?
As I saw it there were three strategic barriers I had to overcome:
i) how to attract attention but, at the same time, be taken seriously?
ii) how to attract local voters, within my constituency, when they are most influenced by national issues and the established parties (and especially, as it turned out, the national party leaders)?
iii) how to balance offline and online media opportunities?
I decided that I would use offline media and ideas to attract attention and get noticed. And thereby, hopefully (because there was no time to test this), potential voters would go to my website where the content would be full and the tone serious and compelling. My ‘manifesto’ ran to 27 pages: www.hughsalmon4battersea.co.uk
I was advised to use all sorts of other online strategies but I had set myself a fourth barrier. I was due to move house right in the middle of the campaign, leaving me bereft of broadband for three weeks prior to 6 May. This was going to be a Blackberry campaign if ever there was one.
3. How did I execute this strategy?
Standing in one of the most contested seats in the country (the Labour majority in 2005 was a mere 163 votes), I was aware the Conservative candidate, in particular, had been ‘working’ the constituency for years. She had fought Pendle (nowhere near Battersea) in 2005, so she knew the game. She infiltrated Battersea like she has been here all her life.
For unsurprising reasons, the seminal book ‘Eating The Big Fish – how challenger brands can compete against brand leaders’ has a particular resonance for me (http://tinyurl.com/2339ere).
As, now, a Challenger brand myself, I read it again. The four principal requirements of a Challenger brand stood out:
i) Self-Referential Identity. For three weeks, I was going to be me. Introducing myself to people, talking about myself, telling them my views, answering their questions about what I thought about their concerns (and there were some surprises, I tell you).
ii) Emotion. To deliver my strategy of getting noticed, I had to find a way of moving people emotionally. Ideally, I would be interesting, approachable, welcoming, human, maybe even fun to engage with.
iii) Intensity. I needed to offer ‘intense projections’ and be ‘vivid’.
Oh dear, this was going to be hard work.
iv) Salience. I had to be ‘highly intrusive’ – unavoidable.
I knew I could not compete with the brand leaders – or their leaders.
I knew I did not have time to knock on every door of the constituency.
I knew they had more money than me.
I had to think.
And I had more reading to do.
The Electoral Commission’s ‘Guidance for Candidates’ runs to 119 pages. Hidden within was the news (to me) that every candidate is entitled to the delivery by Royal Mail of a leaflet to every letter-box in the constituency.
So that was a no-brainer. I needed a leaflet, the brief for which was to get noticed in the short journey between the letter-box and the bin.
My team and I went for a shot of me and the line ‘Battersea needs Hugh’. Not great, but arresting enough we hoped. On the rear, was a personal ‘letter’ from me outlining why I would be the perfect vote and a call to action to my content-filled and seriously argued website.
But we could not rely on the leaflet. And we did not have time to follow it round every letter-box in Battersea. We would have to find a way to get noticed – to achieve ‘salience’ some other way.
Hence renting a milk float bedecked with the line ‘DON’T FLOAT – VOTE!’ (sorry, the line works better in capital letters than upper and lower case).
We would decorate it with banners and bunting and bottles. We would drive it up and down the roads of Battersea, we would park it on the High Streets, we would drive it past the stations and the supermarkets and in the parks. We would have children rapping on the back and we would wave and smile and have fun. We would be intrusive and salient with vivid intensity and, by having fun, we would ‘invite a realignment of emotions’. We would achieve a self-reverential identity.
And we did.
I’m telling you, we did. Trust me. As the Challenger brand, in terms of impact, the little fish beat the Big Fish. The Tories had a trestle table!
But no-one was going to the website. According to Google Analytics, we were getting around 50 visits a day, peaking at just over 100 on 6 May itself. In the whole campaign, we did not achieve 1,000 visits to the site.
Yet this was where the serious content had been placed, the arguments discussed, the case made and my 27-page Manifesto housed and hosted (I couldn’t afford a print copy).
So I knew, from very early on, that there was no way this level of interest in the website would translate into any sort of meaningful vote.
But you have made a commitment to the country. You have to carry on.
I was out there, my team was out there and the milk float was out there (apart from when it broke down, but that’s another story). Whenever I handed out a leaflet, I urged people to take a look at the website – but clearly, this strategy was not working. They just weren’t doing it.
Nevertheless, I was enjoying being out there, meeting people, talking to them about the things that mattered to them. There were plenty of surprises, not least that the biggest issue, by far, was Immigration.
MPs expenses, arguably my strongest card, were hardly mentioned.
Immigration came up at the hustings too – those that I was invited to. Small-minded sprats sidelined me and the ‘smaller’ parties, using the TV debates as an excuse for restricting exposure to the three major parties. ‘What’s good enough for the BBC is good enough for us’.
Then I discovered that one of them had been a Labour agent in another constituency and I worked it out. Labour were scared of me!
With a tiny majority to protect, Labour were desperate. By the end of the campaign, the poor Labour candidate was begging for every single vote – and he could hardly bear to look me in the face.
He must have known what was going to happen too, especially after the first TV leader debate on 15 April. But you never know. Nor did he. In the end, although paltry, my vote would have cost him the seat in 2005.
When more open-minded and democratic constituents (including, to their credit, a locally-based trade union) allowed me, as an official candidate, to answer questions at the hustings I really had to concentrate.
The first time I was on top table - alongside Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, UKIP and Green candidates – I realised they all had guidebooks with the answers to give to every ‘policy’ question asked. Yet again, as I could not resist pointing out to the sizeable audience, I had to think!
As an Independent, how would I run the economy? How would I repay the national deficit? What were my views on Iraq and Afghanistan? What did I think about gay couples being turned away from B&Bs? What were my policies on Immigration?
With every answer, I tried to feature a personal story, a human touch. I wanted to emphasise that, in a Parliamentary democracy, the electorate should vote for the best individual candidate for the people of Battersea - what, later, on 16 May, David Cameron admitted to Andrew Marr is ‘a more civilised decision’ than to vote by arcane tribal loyalties or the most charismatic party leader.
So, for example, in my answer on Immigration, I asked if people had read ‘The Lady In The Van’ by Alan Bennett. I said he had let her live in his driveway for nearly 20 years, and it was very generous of him to do so. But he could not let 50 Miss Shepherds live there.
In the same way, I said, as a country, we haven’t got room for everyone who wants to live here so it is a numbers issue, and a control of those numbers issue.
With my own experience of the civil service and my lack of trust in politicians, did I have faith that the people in charge of controlling Immigration were doing so effectively?
My answer would be a resounding ‘no’ – however, as their Independent MP, I would be on top of these people and, if necessary, asking them awkward questions in Parliament.
I had lots of answers like this but they are for a book, not a blog, and I’m not a good enough writer to write a book (I’ve tried).
There is one final ‘What was it Like?’ question that I must address. And that was the count itself. It was in Wandsworth Town Hall, with Battersea (Conservative gain) being counted and announced alongside Putney (Conservative hold) and Tooting (Labour hold).
When you watch these things on TV at home or with some friends, you hear the results read clumsily by the Returning Officer and you smoothly and seamlessly return to the smooth, seamless David Dimbleby to hear considered and interesting analysis by intelligent, well-behaved experts.
Well, it is not like that when you are there, I can tell you. I’ve never been to Millwall Football Club but this was how, in the past, I have imagined it. Talk about aggression! Talk about bigots! Talk about tribal loyalties! Talk about uncivilised behaviour! Talk about divergence!
There were rah-rahs with big blue rosettes sniffing and gloating about their Battersea gain. There were people with big red rosettes (and bright red metallic wigs) pointing at the blues and chanting for Sadiq Khan, the Labour hold, “Yes, we Khan! Yes, we Khan! Yes, we Khan!”.
And all this at three in the morning. Where do these people go all day?
I have every faith that most people are perfectly decent and reasonable. As advertising people know, consumers are not morons. But, I have to say that some of the people at this count were morons and bigots - and, by the way, I have to say more of them wear blue or red than yellow.
I wanted to experience ‘real people in the real world’ but this wasn’t that. Frankly, I wondered what on earth I was doing there. I did not feel comfortable at all. After an intoxicating, invigorating, challenging, exciting experience, this was a horrible, unsettling ending.
So, was it worth it?
And why aren’t our politicians more sophisticated, more strategic, about how they use these new media opportunities to bring people closer together and unite society – globally as well as domestically.
I have never very impressed by politicians, certainly not professional ‘career politicians’. What have they done? I don’t like their air of superiority, their fiddling expenses and flipping houses to avoid capital gains tax. This was going to be a major issue in this election (not).
I must be better than this lot. In fact, I can prove I am. So I decide to stand up and be counted as an Independent MP. I’m the man.
And that’s my problem. I’m on my own. I’m Independent. I am not a party. I am a person, warts and all.
I don’t have ‘policies’. Aren’t policies executional (rather than strategic)? Why don’t strategic marketers have ‘policies’? What was Lowe’s Heineken policy? Or the BBH Levi’s policy? Or Fallon’s Cadbury policy?
I don’t even like the word ‘policy’. It sounds like the police. If you emphasise the second syllable, you can even pronounce it ‘policey’.
Call me old-fashioned, but I feel more comfortable with setting objectives, agreeing strategies and developing executions - all in one logical flow.
1. What were my objectives?
There is an easy answer – and a more complicated one.
The easy answer is ‘to persuade the constituents of Battersea to vote for me, Hugh Salmon, to be their MP in the House of Commons’.
The complication is that this an unlikely, unrealistic objective to achieve.
So why bother?
Well, there’s the Lottery answer that if you’re not in it, you won’t win it. And, of all elections, this one is very unpredictable. You never know.
But the chances are still low, so are there any other reasons to justify the time and cost involved?
Well, for me, yes. Remember, my over-arching concern is the divergence, rather convergence, of society. Why are we becoming further apart from each other, rather than closer together?
Maybe, by offering myself up, albeit in a non-commercial environment, I could connect with real people. Not target audiences, not demographic profiles, not focus groups. Real people in the real world.
Where would that get me? I didn’t know, but I was keen to find out. If nothing else, it would be a new, interesting and, hopefully, enjoyable experience. And you never know…..
2. What was my strategy?
As I saw it there were three strategic barriers I had to overcome:
i) how to attract attention but, at the same time, be taken seriously?
ii) how to attract local voters, within my constituency, when they are most influenced by national issues and the established parties (and especially, as it turned out, the national party leaders)?
iii) how to balance offline and online media opportunities?
I decided that I would use offline media and ideas to attract attention and get noticed. And thereby, hopefully (because there was no time to test this), potential voters would go to my website where the content would be full and the tone serious and compelling. My ‘manifesto’ ran to 27 pages: www.hughsalmon4battersea.co.uk
I was advised to use all sorts of other online strategies but I had set myself a fourth barrier. I was due to move house right in the middle of the campaign, leaving me bereft of broadband for three weeks prior to 6 May. This was going to be a Blackberry campaign if ever there was one.
3. How did I execute this strategy?
Standing in one of the most contested seats in the country (the Labour majority in 2005 was a mere 163 votes), I was aware the Conservative candidate, in particular, had been ‘working’ the constituency for years. She had fought Pendle (nowhere near Battersea) in 2005, so she knew the game. She infiltrated Battersea like she has been here all her life.
For unsurprising reasons, the seminal book ‘Eating The Big Fish – how challenger brands can compete against brand leaders’ has a particular resonance for me (http://tinyurl.com/2339ere).
As, now, a Challenger brand myself, I read it again. The four principal requirements of a Challenger brand stood out:
i) Self-Referential Identity. For three weeks, I was going to be me. Introducing myself to people, talking about myself, telling them my views, answering their questions about what I thought about their concerns (and there were some surprises, I tell you).
ii) Emotion. To deliver my strategy of getting noticed, I had to find a way of moving people emotionally. Ideally, I would be interesting, approachable, welcoming, human, maybe even fun to engage with.
iii) Intensity. I needed to offer ‘intense projections’ and be ‘vivid’.
Oh dear, this was going to be hard work.
iv) Salience. I had to be ‘highly intrusive’ – unavoidable.
I knew I could not compete with the brand leaders – or their leaders.
I knew I did not have time to knock on every door of the constituency.
I knew they had more money than me.
I had to think.
And I had more reading to do.
The Electoral Commission’s ‘Guidance for Candidates’ runs to 119 pages. Hidden within was the news (to me) that every candidate is entitled to the delivery by Royal Mail of a leaflet to every letter-box in the constituency.
So that was a no-brainer. I needed a leaflet, the brief for which was to get noticed in the short journey between the letter-box and the bin.
My team and I went for a shot of me and the line ‘Battersea needs Hugh’. Not great, but arresting enough we hoped. On the rear, was a personal ‘letter’ from me outlining why I would be the perfect vote and a call to action to my content-filled and seriously argued website.
But we could not rely on the leaflet. And we did not have time to follow it round every letter-box in Battersea. We would have to find a way to get noticed – to achieve ‘salience’ some other way.
Hence renting a milk float bedecked with the line ‘DON’T FLOAT – VOTE!’ (sorry, the line works better in capital letters than upper and lower case).
We would decorate it with banners and bunting and bottles. We would drive it up and down the roads of Battersea, we would park it on the High Streets, we would drive it past the stations and the supermarkets and in the parks. We would have children rapping on the back and we would wave and smile and have fun. We would be intrusive and salient with vivid intensity and, by having fun, we would ‘invite a realignment of emotions’. We would achieve a self-reverential identity.
And we did.
I’m telling you, we did. Trust me. As the Challenger brand, in terms of impact, the little fish beat the Big Fish. The Tories had a trestle table!
But no-one was going to the website. According to Google Analytics, we were getting around 50 visits a day, peaking at just over 100 on 6 May itself. In the whole campaign, we did not achieve 1,000 visits to the site.
Yet this was where the serious content had been placed, the arguments discussed, the case made and my 27-page Manifesto housed and hosted (I couldn’t afford a print copy).
So I knew, from very early on, that there was no way this level of interest in the website would translate into any sort of meaningful vote.
But you have made a commitment to the country. You have to carry on.
I was out there, my team was out there and the milk float was out there (apart from when it broke down, but that’s another story). Whenever I handed out a leaflet, I urged people to take a look at the website – but clearly, this strategy was not working. They just weren’t doing it.
Nevertheless, I was enjoying being out there, meeting people, talking to them about the things that mattered to them. There were plenty of surprises, not least that the biggest issue, by far, was Immigration.
MPs expenses, arguably my strongest card, were hardly mentioned.
Immigration came up at the hustings too – those that I was invited to. Small-minded sprats sidelined me and the ‘smaller’ parties, using the TV debates as an excuse for restricting exposure to the three major parties. ‘What’s good enough for the BBC is good enough for us’.
Then I discovered that one of them had been a Labour agent in another constituency and I worked it out. Labour were scared of me!
With a tiny majority to protect, Labour were desperate. By the end of the campaign, the poor Labour candidate was begging for every single vote – and he could hardly bear to look me in the face.
He must have known what was going to happen too, especially after the first TV leader debate on 15 April. But you never know. Nor did he. In the end, although paltry, my vote would have cost him the seat in 2005.
When more open-minded and democratic constituents (including, to their credit, a locally-based trade union) allowed me, as an official candidate, to answer questions at the hustings I really had to concentrate.
The first time I was on top table - alongside Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, UKIP and Green candidates – I realised they all had guidebooks with the answers to give to every ‘policy’ question asked. Yet again, as I could not resist pointing out to the sizeable audience, I had to think!
As an Independent, how would I run the economy? How would I repay the national deficit? What were my views on Iraq and Afghanistan? What did I think about gay couples being turned away from B&Bs? What were my policies on Immigration?
With every answer, I tried to feature a personal story, a human touch. I wanted to emphasise that, in a Parliamentary democracy, the electorate should vote for the best individual candidate for the people of Battersea - what, later, on 16 May, David Cameron admitted to Andrew Marr is ‘a more civilised decision’ than to vote by arcane tribal loyalties or the most charismatic party leader.
So, for example, in my answer on Immigration, I asked if people had read ‘The Lady In The Van’ by Alan Bennett. I said he had let her live in his driveway for nearly 20 years, and it was very generous of him to do so. But he could not let 50 Miss Shepherds live there.
In the same way, I said, as a country, we haven’t got room for everyone who wants to live here so it is a numbers issue, and a control of those numbers issue.
With my own experience of the civil service and my lack of trust in politicians, did I have faith that the people in charge of controlling Immigration were doing so effectively?
My answer would be a resounding ‘no’ – however, as their Independent MP, I would be on top of these people and, if necessary, asking them awkward questions in Parliament.
I had lots of answers like this but they are for a book, not a blog, and I’m not a good enough writer to write a book (I’ve tried).
There is one final ‘What was it Like?’ question that I must address. And that was the count itself. It was in Wandsworth Town Hall, with Battersea (Conservative gain) being counted and announced alongside Putney (Conservative hold) and Tooting (Labour hold).
When you watch these things on TV at home or with some friends, you hear the results read clumsily by the Returning Officer and you smoothly and seamlessly return to the smooth, seamless David Dimbleby to hear considered and interesting analysis by intelligent, well-behaved experts.
Well, it is not like that when you are there, I can tell you. I’ve never been to Millwall Football Club but this was how, in the past, I have imagined it. Talk about aggression! Talk about bigots! Talk about tribal loyalties! Talk about uncivilised behaviour! Talk about divergence!
There were rah-rahs with big blue rosettes sniffing and gloating about their Battersea gain. There were people with big red rosettes (and bright red metallic wigs) pointing at the blues and chanting for Sadiq Khan, the Labour hold, “Yes, we Khan! Yes, we Khan! Yes, we Khan!”.
And all this at three in the morning. Where do these people go all day?
I have every faith that most people are perfectly decent and reasonable. As advertising people know, consumers are not morons. But, I have to say that some of the people at this count were morons and bigots - and, by the way, I have to say more of them wear blue or red than yellow.
I wanted to experience ‘real people in the real world’ but this wasn’t that. Frankly, I wondered what on earth I was doing there. I did not feel comfortable at all. After an intoxicating, invigorating, challenging, exciting experience, this was a horrible, unsettling ending.
So, was it worth it?
Monday 17 May 2010
Why did I do it?
I had never been involved in politics, certainly not party politics but, in July 2007, I was asked by a friend, who headed up one of the public sector reviews in Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice, to cast my professional eye over the report his team had produced.
We met in a pub, as you do, and I gave him my views. Then he asked me what I thought of the Conservative Party’s image and communications. I duly rubbished the ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ campaign from the 2005 election and agreed to prepare a document demonstrating how I felt the Tories could, alongside my agency, develop and more effectively communicate innovative solutions to help mend the ‘broken society’ the Centre for Social Justice had identified.
Although this initial work would be pro bono, I was hoping it might lead to a professional appointment (even though I was not a member of the Conservative Party, had not always voted for the Party or even been to a Party party).
I prepared a document in which I argued the case for a more innovative and creative approach to the Role of Government in today’s free market economy including:
i) a mission to ‘ruthlessly examine every aspect of society and define the part Government has to play’
ii) to ‘reassure the electorate that the Conservatives care about each and every UK citizen, including the poor, unhealthy and needy, and have thought through the way ‘The State’ can help every single one of them’.
Steve Hilton, the Conservative’s director of strategy, agreed to a meeting. Unfortunately, the date offered conflicted with a photographic shoot in The Bahamas I was due to attend for a paying client. Well, however tough the assignment, you have to put your existing clients first don’t you?
In the event, I never got to meet Steve Hilton. He went cold on me. But I sent him my presentation. I have no idea what happened to it - but some of my thinking is surprisingly similar to the Big Society initiative which the Tories have since rather clumsily announced.
Anyway, I enjoyed The Bahamas, as you do, and got on with my life.
Then, early last year (2009), another friend asked if I could help advise a friend of his who was planning to stand as an Independent Candidate in the forthcoming Euro elections.
I met and liked the guy. And we went to the launch of The Jury Team, led by the impressive Sir Paul Judge, which was aiming to challenge the Party political system by promoting the value of Independent MPs.
Martin Bell, the former Independent MP, was there. So was Dr Richard Taylor, a standing Independent MP. But I was most impressed by a certain Major General Ramsbotham, one of nearly two hundred ‘crossbenchers’ in the House of Lords. He said that, on debating every issue, an expert on one side of the House would make his or her case, an expert on the other side of the House would argue an alternative point of view and the crossbenchers would vote for the side which they felt had the most merit.
Yet in the House of Commons, you could argue until you were blue, yellow or red in the face and still the ‘career MPs’ would be whipped sheepily into the their party lobby. This was their job. If they did not do this, they would not have been recruited by their Party Head Office in the first place – and they certainly had no chance of promotion. No debate about it, a majority Government could get what it wanted.
I was persuaded that this situation was daft. The old party political system was as ‘broken’ as the rest of society. Perhaps, even, one led to the other.
So I got sucked into this burgeoning case for Independent MPs. Alongside 46 other candidates, I was ‘endorsed’ by the Independent Network. I passed their tests to show I am a true and proper citizen and I agreed to abide by the Martin Bell Principles of honesty, integrity and trust.
I attended a prospective candidate workshop in Birmingham (Esther Rantzen was there!) and a debate in the Houses of Parliament (where I had never been before). It was all very interesting.
I wrote another paper on the barriers to entry for potential Independent candidates, both emotional - ‘will I be seen as the local Screaming Lord Sutch?’ - and rational - ‘where do I start, how much does it cost, are there any forms to fill in?’ (oh, yes there are!).
I also developed my ‘Role of Government’ ideas and, on a national level, felt that:
i) I have ideas to help bring UK society closer together
ii) we aren’t being very intelligent about how we counter terrorism
iii) there is a role that the media, especially new media, could play in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have blogged on this before: http://tinyurl.com/y4rca5s.
Appreciating these issues are a bit soft, I had more concrete local policies. I am very angry about the lack of secondary schools in Battersea - and the consequent behavioural differences of our eleven year old children.
I had the idea that a recently-closed local hospital overlooking the green pastures of Wandsworth Common should be re-built into a vibrant new school. I also argued the case for changing the name of Clapham Junction to Battersea Junction. I’ve blogged on this before too: http://tinyurl.com/32o5x7v.
Thus I found myself standing as an Independent Candidate for Battersea. This was not one of the target seats that Martin Bell had identified, but I have lived here for twenty years, worked here for over ten and think MPs should come from the area they know and not be parachuted in by the Central Offices of the established parties.
On 5 July 2009, I had watched John Major say on the Andrew Marr Show: ‘We have a problem with people becoming advisors to Ministers, learning the jargon, getting selected for seats and into Parliament without touching real life on the way.'
Well, I feel I have touched ‘real life’ so I decided that the time had come for me to stand up and be counted.
I did not know then what we all know now - that the TV leader debates (Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s biggest mistakes and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem’s biggest opportunity), would dominate the election, blow all the Independents out of the water and result in the end (hopefully) of the old tribal party politics we were standing against in the first place!
Before all this, I had developed a marketing strategy for my Independent candidacy in Battersea. Watch this space. My next posts will be headed ‘what was it like?’ and ‘was it worth it?’.
I’ll get them done asap but sorry, for now, I need to get back to the real world.
We met in a pub, as you do, and I gave him my views. Then he asked me what I thought of the Conservative Party’s image and communications. I duly rubbished the ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ campaign from the 2005 election and agreed to prepare a document demonstrating how I felt the Tories could, alongside my agency, develop and more effectively communicate innovative solutions to help mend the ‘broken society’ the Centre for Social Justice had identified.
Although this initial work would be pro bono, I was hoping it might lead to a professional appointment (even though I was not a member of the Conservative Party, had not always voted for the Party or even been to a Party party).
I prepared a document in which I argued the case for a more innovative and creative approach to the Role of Government in today’s free market economy including:
i) a mission to ‘ruthlessly examine every aspect of society and define the part Government has to play’
ii) to ‘reassure the electorate that the Conservatives care about each and every UK citizen, including the poor, unhealthy and needy, and have thought through the way ‘The State’ can help every single one of them’.
Steve Hilton, the Conservative’s director of strategy, agreed to a meeting. Unfortunately, the date offered conflicted with a photographic shoot in The Bahamas I was due to attend for a paying client. Well, however tough the assignment, you have to put your existing clients first don’t you?
In the event, I never got to meet Steve Hilton. He went cold on me. But I sent him my presentation. I have no idea what happened to it - but some of my thinking is surprisingly similar to the Big Society initiative which the Tories have since rather clumsily announced.
Anyway, I enjoyed The Bahamas, as you do, and got on with my life.
Then, early last year (2009), another friend asked if I could help advise a friend of his who was planning to stand as an Independent Candidate in the forthcoming Euro elections.
I met and liked the guy. And we went to the launch of The Jury Team, led by the impressive Sir Paul Judge, which was aiming to challenge the Party political system by promoting the value of Independent MPs.
Martin Bell, the former Independent MP, was there. So was Dr Richard Taylor, a standing Independent MP. But I was most impressed by a certain Major General Ramsbotham, one of nearly two hundred ‘crossbenchers’ in the House of Lords. He said that, on debating every issue, an expert on one side of the House would make his or her case, an expert on the other side of the House would argue an alternative point of view and the crossbenchers would vote for the side which they felt had the most merit.
Yet in the House of Commons, you could argue until you were blue, yellow or red in the face and still the ‘career MPs’ would be whipped sheepily into the their party lobby. This was their job. If they did not do this, they would not have been recruited by their Party Head Office in the first place – and they certainly had no chance of promotion. No debate about it, a majority Government could get what it wanted.
I was persuaded that this situation was daft. The old party political system was as ‘broken’ as the rest of society. Perhaps, even, one led to the other.
So I got sucked into this burgeoning case for Independent MPs. Alongside 46 other candidates, I was ‘endorsed’ by the Independent Network. I passed their tests to show I am a true and proper citizen and I agreed to abide by the Martin Bell Principles of honesty, integrity and trust.
I attended a prospective candidate workshop in Birmingham (Esther Rantzen was there!) and a debate in the Houses of Parliament (where I had never been before). It was all very interesting.
I wrote another paper on the barriers to entry for potential Independent candidates, both emotional - ‘will I be seen as the local Screaming Lord Sutch?’ - and rational - ‘where do I start, how much does it cost, are there any forms to fill in?’ (oh, yes there are!).
I also developed my ‘Role of Government’ ideas and, on a national level, felt that:
i) I have ideas to help bring UK society closer together
ii) we aren’t being very intelligent about how we counter terrorism
iii) there is a role that the media, especially new media, could play in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have blogged on this before: http://tinyurl.com/y4rca5s.
Appreciating these issues are a bit soft, I had more concrete local policies. I am very angry about the lack of secondary schools in Battersea - and the consequent behavioural differences of our eleven year old children.
I had the idea that a recently-closed local hospital overlooking the green pastures of Wandsworth Common should be re-built into a vibrant new school. I also argued the case for changing the name of Clapham Junction to Battersea Junction. I’ve blogged on this before too: http://tinyurl.com/32o5x7v.
Thus I found myself standing as an Independent Candidate for Battersea. This was not one of the target seats that Martin Bell had identified, but I have lived here for twenty years, worked here for over ten and think MPs should come from the area they know and not be parachuted in by the Central Offices of the established parties.
On 5 July 2009, I had watched John Major say on the Andrew Marr Show: ‘We have a problem with people becoming advisors to Ministers, learning the jargon, getting selected for seats and into Parliament without touching real life on the way.'
Well, I feel I have touched ‘real life’ so I decided that the time had come for me to stand up and be counted.
I did not know then what we all know now - that the TV leader debates (Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s biggest mistakes and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem’s biggest opportunity), would dominate the election, blow all the Independents out of the water and result in the end (hopefully) of the old tribal party politics we were standing against in the first place!
Before all this, I had developed a marketing strategy for my Independent candidacy in Battersea. Watch this space. My next posts will be headed ‘what was it like?’ and ‘was it worth it?’.
I’ll get them done asap but sorry, for now, I need to get back to the real world.
Wednesday 5 May 2010
@ Parliament Square
I filmed my thoughts about the more intelligent use of new media in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAw-8ETHP1M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAw-8ETHP1M
Monday 3 May 2010
PUBLIC MEETING
Tomorrow, Tuesday 4 May, I will be at:
'The Alma' Function Room (upstairs),
Alma Road SW18 1TF
8 - 10pm
All welcome!
Here are some shots of me floating about the constituency yesterday and today:
All welcome!
Here are some shots of me floating about the constituency yesterday and today:
Battersea Power Station
Just past the Old Brewery, Wandsworth
Outside The Bedford, Balham
At Clapham Junction
Sunday 2 May 2010
Bank Holiday Update
The now infamous milk float will be out and about today. We aim to cover the whole East to West trajectory of the 'Battersea' Constituency.
Many of you have been kind enough to enquire about the progress of my campaign so here goes:
1. The Battersea Constituency which, for some reason, includes parts of Balham and Wandsworth and where, in the last Parliament, the incumbent Labour MP had a majority of 163 - after six recounts, one of the smallest in the country.
2. The TV Leaders Debates have thrown everything up in the air. By agreeing to these, Gordon Brown and David Cameron may have made the biggest mistakes of their professional lives (except, perhaps, for Mr Brown's gaff last week -mind you, I have found there are a lot of bigots out there. A 23-year-old member of my team with Asian ethnicity was so roundly and aggressively verbally abused by a self-proclaimed BNP supporter that I have asked her to withdraw from anymore leafleting. Which is a pity because she is a talented lady, I need her help, I am ashamed she had to endure such offensive behaviour and appalled that such objectionable people as the man who approached her live amongst us).
3. Having said that, after the extraordinary, and unexpected, reaction to the first TV Debate, Nick Clegg may have made a big strategic mistake. After 'winning' so convincingly, I felt at the time that he should have used this momentum to demonstrate the Cabinet credentials of his Lib Dem colleagues, particularly Vince Cable, and thereby position his Party as fit for Government. In Battersea, the electorate know Cable is a credible Chancellor (arguably the best of all three parties) but they have no idea who Lib Dem are fielding for Education, Health, Home Office or Foreign Office.
4. So where does this leave me as an Independent Candidate, unconnected to any party though 'endorsed' by the Independent Network(http://independentnetwork.org.uk/)?
5. I certainly feel that, with my team of friends and volunteers we have achieved the most professional marketing campaign:
I believe our logo design has award-wining potential (see below).
The milk float has gone down a treat - and rocketed me onto the front page of the Wandsworth Guardian (fame at last!).
Feedback suggests my website is the best of all the Candidates, including the three major parties (http://http://www.hughsalmon4battersea.co.uk/).
I went for a sticker rather than a rosette, which I feel uncomfortable wearing.
6. I have managed, wherever possible, to convey my message of 'convergence rather than divergence' and how more effective use of the media tools and skills we have available could help modernise politics, unite us as a society, and perhaps even be more powerful than military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I recognise that this is a bit 'soft' and have obviously had to underpin my thinking by taking specific positions on a range of issues from Immigration (without doubt the most- asked-about issue) to the rights and wrongs of B&Bs to accommodate gay customers.
7. What are my chances? Certainly the TV Leader Debates have significantly compromised the exposure I might otherwise have managed to achieve. Small-minded local societies and campaigns have used this as an excuse to allow me, as an Independent Candidate, minimal time at various hustings ('if the TV people are only featuring the three major parties, why should we let you speak?').
8. And certainly the Lib Dems are an easier 'default' vote than they would have been before the TV Debates.
9. But I think I have managed to overcome the strategic tension between getting noticed (the milk float) and being taken seriously (my website).
And feedback suggests that there are still a fair few of you who know that a vote for an Independent cross-bench Candidate like me will be the only way to challenge our broken political system and our untrustworthy and corrupt career polticians.
10. Many, many thanks to all who have donated to my campaign. I should have emphasised before that my £500 deposit to stand as a Candidate would be born by myself - and this is what I have done(notwithstanding the fact that Wandsworth Council would not accept a cheque so I had to rush out to a cash machine and get the readies!).
11. This means that ALL - the full 100% - of funds donated has gone directly towards the promotional material I have produced.
12. Inevitably, we are over-budget. It has been a hectic few weeks of making things happen quickly and at the last minute (advertising agency background very useful here).
13. Also, I have moved house right in the middle of this process and have had no broadband access at home.
14. So that's the message. I'm still in there pitching. Any last minute donations gratefully received……….
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