What's Right?

I always remember trying to introduce a sales system that worked well in 8 countries into another (the US).  It wasn’t invented there and they didn’t want it. The local head did not (understandably) want to force it on his sales force although he knew it would work well. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, he said, if people don’t like it they won’t use it properly. Emotion beats facts any day.

That came to mind with the Eastleigh by-election result. I hope someone does some decent analysis of voter thinking because the result was very interesting. At one level, the Lib-Dem win was not a surprise – they had everything in place and the candidate was a well established local. But Huhne and Rennard were not good examples of behaviour and the domination of local issues means national ones were not seen as being as important.

However, UKIP taking nearly 30% of the vote is a surprise that has a strong correlation to the Italian vote for Beppe Grillo’s party: it reflects a strong dislike for existing political parties and a feeling of powerlessness as economic problems make people nervous about their future.

What should the Tories do?

Factually: this isn’t about policy. There’s no point in drifting rightward.

In the last 8 weeks, the Tories have promised an in/out referendum on EU membership. It’s not immediate, but it’s a promise and they are the only mainstream party promising it. Not only that, but a UKIP MEP left UKIP and joined the Tories. Not just any UKIP MEP: Marta Andreasen, probably the most significant UKIP member ever in that she was the EU’s internal auditor who highlighted the poor record keeping and probable fraud within the EU and was sacked for her pains. And lastly, picking up another of UKIPs main concerns, on election day itself immigration figures showed a decline well on the way to the Government’s long term target (admittedly this is probably a reflection of the economy as much as immigration policy, but it is still happening).

All this made no difference: votes leached from the Tories to UKIP (and from other parties as well, but not as much). This must be about protest not policy, emotion not fact. I saw the Daily Express on Wednesday: it had 2 readers’ letters complaining about the EU stating that the Conservatives had reneged on a promise to hold an in out referendum. I’m sure the writers believed that, but it’s simply not true.  The Conservatives  promised to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty if it hadn’t been ratified when they came to power and to create a law that there must be a referendum in future if further powers were transferred to the EU. This they did. And the Lisbon treaty had been ratified by the time they came into office. They did keep their promises. But people think they didn’t. Emotion not fact.

So what should the Tories – and indeed other mainstream parties – do to regain the emotional confidence – or trust – of voters?  As noted above I don’t think we should change policies. Voters will spot changes in direction and character and will cynically assume they are not genuine. I think that we have to continue to be true to ourselves, to state clearly why we think and behave as we do and to be consistent about it.

We also have to focus on economic growth. I’ve always thought that the only important issue for the 2015 Election will be whether the economy is growing again.  If it is the coalition parties will do well. Unfortunately this will mostly be determined by what happens overseas, especially Europe and Asia, but there are things we could do ourselves. No fault dismissals; Lower and more importantly simpler taxes; Getting the Bank of England to get banks lending to SMEs rather than talking about more QE and negative interest rates are three things I would do; in fact any two of them would do.

But most important of all: be genuine. Voters don't trust politicians. So there's no point in being anything else.