This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

What advice would you give a left-leaning activist at the moment?
The problem that the left often has is communicating outside its ghetto. That ‘preaching to the converted’ approach is something that they’ve had for a very long time. I’m on the radical left but don’t speak as if I’m in a room full of other radical leftists. We saw in the 1980s flourishing alternative comedy, left-wing comedians. We are seeing a return to that. And we’ll see more of that in social media.

How much change do you think outriders like yourself are going to bring to party politics? Does the Labour Party need to engage more with you?
I don’t think the Labour leadership would touch me with a barge pole! But if they are seen to be behind these sorts of campaigns, or people like me are revealed to be puppets, it would be quite Machiavellian and cynical. No-one could accuse me of not being independent of the Labour leadership. Obviously I want Labour to succeed but not with the current arguments being made. Because I am independent of the leadership, people will be less likely to think that I’ve got a cynical agenda just to get Ed Miliband elected as PM. There’s a lot I want Miliband to say but I don’t think the space is there, so it has to be created. You can make the case for radical ideas without sounding like you’re frothing at the mouth and banging your fist on the table.

You can say the same thing in a different way.
I’m always in awe of the genius of the political right in the way that they present their political arguments.

For example, they compare the deficit to a household budget, which economically-speaking is absolutely illiterate, but it does make sense to people, doesn’t it? It’s not that people are stupid. It’s that they have more to do in their lives than trying to explain intricate details of the economy. They just hear ‘budget’ and think they have to balance their bills.

Obviously, I don’t think that the left should lie, but – and this makes me sound partisan – some elements of the right are less morally scrupulous about the arguments they make. They don’t care if they’re compromising the truth a bit.

There are plenty of people on the left capable of making arguments in a dishonest way, but there’s a sense of purity and ideological zeal on the left sometimes that says if you are oversimplifying a case then you are dishonest.

Do you think then that the left needs to simplify the argument?
Yes. Simplifying it, making it accessible. Not using language that the left ghetto uses – jargon basically. The left has traditionally relied on a moral, abstract argument which has been proven to fail.

What we did in my YouTube video was to show the absurdity of the right’s arguments about the public sector strikes. Most of my friends up in Stockport aren’t particularly political, but my test was if they found it funny and got the point. The left are so bad at doing that.

Owen Jones is the author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

The venue

Gaucho
Over four floors in Piccadilly, Gaucho is designed to give a “vibrant new perspective on Argentine life”. It includes ‘Cavas De Gaucho’, a specialist wine boutique, a ground floor wine bar and a ‘supper lounge’ that offers live music and entertainment.

What they drank
Shane had Patagonian Cobbler (Sauvignon Blanc and apple liqueur mixed with peach puree and apple juice, topped with summer berries) and Taladro Argentino (vodka with Argentine mint syrup, lime cordial and fresh lime).

Owen drank lager.

Bar snack
Empanadas and sausage platter.

To contact Gaucho, visit gauchorestaurants.co.uk or call 020 7734 4040

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

If economics is, as Thomas Carlyle said, the “dismal science”, what on earth would he make of psephology? This sub-branch of a sub-branch of a sub-branch of the sort of thing one learns at a provincial university (formerly FE college) is pretty dreich at the best of times. And now is certainly not the best of times.

Life was easy for the poll-counters in the old days. Butler and McKenzie were able to push the cardboard device along a simple axis, and bingo, there you had a result. Peter Snow made it his own, and over the years it had grown a third dimension to deal with the phantom rise of the Lib Dems, as it has in Scotland and Wales. However, it looks like we need a new dimension.

The slow and steady rise of UKIP in the polls throws it all into flux. As Anthony Wells of YouGov pointed out at the end of 2011: “By far the biggest increase has gone to UKIP, who have gone from around two per cent last July to around five or six per cent.” At a number of times over the past month UKIP has been polling seven per cent, one or two behind the Lib Dems, and is now hitting eight per cent. And with the way in which the party’s USP, the EU, has been dominating the news – and not for any good reason – there’s no reason to think that this steady rise has in any way peaked. Only in November a Harris poll put the desire to leave the EU at 45 per cent against 24 per cent who would vote to stay in.

How do you slice eight per cent out of the middle when you have no real idea where it’s coming from? It has been simple and lazy shorthand that UKIP picks up its votes from two main sections of society: disillusioned Tories, and those who wish ‘a plague on all their houses’. But, as No 10 polling guru Andrew Cooper and others will tell you when they wake sweating from their nightmares, that’s fine. So why did UKIP win Hartlepool, Hull and Plymouth in the last European election? How is it that its numbers are up most strongly in the north west, never a Tory heartland?

The simple fact is that when one looks at recent elections from Barnsley (where UKIP, remember, came second to Labour) to the recent Hazlemere and Meopham council by-elections in Buckinghamshire and Kent, where it picked up 33 per cent in a Tory ward, none of it makes sense. Or rather it doesn’t make sense if you’re dealing with a simple two or even three-party hypothesis, most particularly when you’re wedded to the old UKIP/provisional Conservative meme.

UKIP rarely figures on the formal swings mentioned in by-election reports. It will jump from 10 to 20 per cent in a ward, and the local papers and elsewhere will report a two per cent swing from Tory to Labour, or a three per cent swing from Lib Dems to… anybody. The rise and rise of the awkward underdogs is going almost unreported because, to the psephologists, it just does not – cannot – compute.

Slowly, some are beginning to notice. It started with Patrick O’Flynn in the Daily Express, who has been predicting and reporting now for a while that UKIP is on the up. Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph used a devastating op-ed to point out: “By running a candidate in a marginal seat, UKIP can deprive the Tories of a few thousand votes, more than enough to cause him or her to lose – indeed, one Tory, David Heathcoat-Amory… blames UKIP for his loss in the 2010 election.” Of course, he couldn’t blame his own exposure to the manure of the expenses scandal as a reason for his loss, but the point is well made.

Most astonishing in this respect was Sarah Sands, the deputy editor of the Evening Standard, who said in November that, despite the lack of subtlety in UKIP and its leader, Nigel Farage, it and he had been proven right in much of what they had been saying over the years, and given the choice she would back him, and thus the party.

At the last election, alongside Heathcoat-Amory, it has been suggested that UKIP cost the Tories 21 seats. This idea comes from those who cannot imagine that UKIP is picking up votes from elsewhere, because any analysis of its vote proves complacent. But today things are very different.

There are 117 seats of all parties whose majorities are less than six per cent. Given that the leadership of all three parties concentrates on ensuring that an increasingly fractious public must not have its say on membership of the EU and the drip, drip of defections, from the ordinary member to local councillors to think-tankers and former cabinet ministers, UKIP does not look like it’s going to go away fast. At first a trickle, and now a stream and probably a flood of figures is beginning to wake up and think the unthinkable – how many seats, then, are under threat from UKIP’s politically variegated support?

Put it this way: if, as many are suggesting, UKIP, rather than coming second in the next Euro poll – as it did in the last, at 16 per cent – tops it, what price 10 per cent, or even 15 per cent in a Westminster election the following year?

And if that happens, whose job is really safe? The swingometer will really fly off its moorings. Some shiny bottoms on the green benches will be getting decidedly squeaky. And, yes, we are looking at you, Guto Bebb in Aberconwy and you, Martin Horwood in Cheltenham, and dozens of others of all parties. UKIP will take no prisoners, for it believes that though there are individual MPs who try to represent their constituents, in the end they are representing parties who, when they have to make a decision, decide to protect themselves and ignore the public.

UKIP isn’t there to make compromises over the country’s future. It’s there because it believes that the best people to govern this country are the people of this country.

Gawain Towler is the EFD Group/UKIP head of press

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

On 16 November 2012, everyone in England and Wales, outside of the capital, will wake up with a new sheriff in town.

A week after the elections on Thursday 15 November this year, 41 new police and crime commissioners (PCCs) will take up their posts in each of the constabularies outside London. For a four-year term, they will have the power to appoint and sack the chief constable, to allocate budgets, and to draw up the strategic plan for policing in their area. They will be accountable to bigger electorates than any Member of Parliament and have more power than any backbencher. They represent one of the biggest shake-ups in policing for decades. It is one of the most important constitutional reforms since Tony Blair’s heyday, yet, to date, most voters are blissfully unaware of what’s coming, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, down the road.

Ministers hope that non-traditional and independent candidates emerge for the posts, rather as Blair did when he established elected mayors over a decade ago. Police minister Nick Herbert told a seminar in Sussex in November that he hoped “dynamic leaders, community champions, pioneers and entrepreneurs” would come forward to serve as police commissioners. I doubt he had Katie Price in mind.

The biggest challenge to be faced by any candidate for police commissioner is public apathy. With limited powers and no way of raising resources, people may view the posts as a waste of public money. Those candidates who can capture the public imagination with more than promises of public executions and a return to the birch, will do well. Those that have clever ideas for better policing within shrinking budgets will be taken seriously. A serious candidate will have to demonstrate the political skills of balancing competing demands, negotiation and mediation, but it should be more than a job for retread MPs who’ve lost their seats, or retired police officers.

It seems likely that the English Defence League (EDL) and British National Party (BNP) will field candidates. It is vital that the elections don’t become a Dutch auction for whoever can be the ‘toughest on crime’. For example, in my area, Sussex, there are big issues regarding hate crimes and homophobic violence, which the police need to address with great sensitivity. An EDL or BNP police commissioner would surely fail in that task.

So, what are the campaign challenges for a wannabe police commissioner?

1. The candidates will have to explain the role and function of the posts to which they’re seeking election. The government or Electoral Commission will not be spending a fortune on explaining the posts to the public. It will be down to the candidates to breach the walls of ignorance, indifference and cynicism. Each candidate will need a doorstep spiel to persuade the voters why it’s even worth turning out to vote for posts that are little-understood or desired. A candidate who can make the possibilities of the post vivid and popular will be in pole position.

2. The candidates’ programmes will need to reflect shrinking police budgets. Commissioners will be responsible for slicing up a smaller cake. Their first job will be to decide where to make cuts. The first months will be about balancing frontline and back-office activities, so the election campaign must be about priorities and tough choices, not making wild promises to spend more. The winners will have shown their grasp of fine detail and creative budgeting, not uncosted pledges to put more police on the beat.

3. None of the parties wants to spend money on expensive campaigns. The Lib Dems have made it clear they will not be financially supporting local candidates. Labour is similarly cash-strapped. So unless a James Goldsmith-style millionaire emerges, candidates will have to rely on low-resource, high-impact campaigns. That means more reliance on social media and digital campaigning, alongside traditional media relations, street stalls and blitzing. No campaign will be able to afford high levels of voter contact, billboards, direct mail or phone banks. The winners will run smart, not expensive, campaigns.

4. Candidates from mainstream parties need to take the independent challenge seriously. It came as something of a shock to the main parties when independents won the elected mayor posts in places such as Bedford, Hartlepool, Tower Hamlets, Mansfield and Middlesbrough. It seems probable that many of the 41 new commissioners will be independents, or from small parties. Candidates won’t be able to trade the usual political lines with each other. Instead, the debates will be more fluid and unpredictable, as independents come up with surprising and non-ideological policies.

5. Party HQs will have to allow candidates off the leash. The police commissioner posts are all about local accountability and reflecting local policing priorities. This means that candidates must be allowed to campaign on local issues, rather than parrot national ‘lines to take’. Candidates must champion their own communities, be they market towns, rural areas, inner cities, seaside towns or suburbs. It may be a hard habit to break, but party hierarchies will have to accept that candidates will fight on different manifestoes in different parts of the country. The candidates who gain traction will be the big personalities, with their own ideas: remember Ken Livingstone’s independent campaign in 2000?

The most necessary attribute for candidates will be stamina. The campaign will be shorter than a parliamentary election, but the distances are far greater. In my area, as an example, the Sussex commissioner will have to cover the estates of Brighton, the terraces of Hove, towns such as Crawley and Haywards Heath, seaside towns and harbours, rural villages and Gatwick Airport. This wide variety and distance is true in each of the 41 police constabularies across England and Wales. Only candidates to become MEPs use as much shoe leather in an election campaign.

Mayoral elections have given us Robocop, H’Angus the Monkey and Boris Johnson. This time next year we will know whether our police commissioners represent a similar all-sorts of unexpected victors, or another layer of unremarkable salaried politicians – or, as ministers hope, a new breed of civic leader.

Paul Richards is vice-chairman of Eastbourne Labour Party, and author of How to Win an Election

Here’s the bottom line: technology guarantees that British campaigns are about to get much more contrastive and aggressive, and your days of being basically free of negative video is over. And that’s a good thing.

The reason is simple. TV and computers will soon be the same box. In America, people now spend more time on the internet than watching TV. The internet offers a brilliant opportunity to deliver negative video to voters in a way that will work.

Americans approach political negative campaigning much like they do celebrity gossip – we claim no interest, but seek it out and soak it in. As Fleet Street taught the States, ‘salacious’ sells, and there is no question that negative advertising would work in Britain.  

Accordingly, political professionals are tired of all the whining and moaning about negative advertising. Information is the basis of democracy, and it’s necessary for voters to know the good, the bad and the ugly about future leaders. It’s a fair guess that a candidate will not spell out the reasons he should not be elected, so it’s necessary for his opponent to do it. Negative campaigning works – if it didn’t, it would not be used.  

Is anyone served by not knowing that a candidate may have voted against the same social programmes that he used to get through school or have his family fed as a child? Is it negative to point out that a candidate doesn’t pay his personal taxes while he’s voting to raise your taxes? No.
As a phrase, negative advertising has the wrong connotation, so the word ‘contrast’ is more accurate. One candidate supports X and the other doesn’t. One candidate opposes Y and the other does not. Is it wrong to spell out those differences? No, it’s simply a contrast and often a difference you can vote on.

Also, the internet allows professionals to target more effectively. Websites and blogs are generally visited by a certain demographic, and readily-available research provides the key information as to where to find which group. Conservatives, Liberals, moderates, environmentalists, Labour are easily found on the net.  

The way to communicate online is evolving daily, but currently there are three most effective methods: pre-roll, Google search and Facebook ads. And the most effective way to communicate online is to have all three working hand-in-hand.  

Pre-roll is the short video that one watches prior to getting the information requested. It’s the commercial you suffer through to get the free content you expect. Research indicates that the optimum length of time a person will watch a pre-roll ad is around 10 seconds. The key is having a timer on the bottom of the ad showing how long the ad lasts so that viewers recognise they only have a few seconds until the programme begins.
Pre-roll is the vehicle that will bring contrastive advertising to your country. There is no law against it and, as the TV and computer become the same screen, either the law must be changed or you have bona fide political TV commercials.

One of the beauties of pre-roll is the possibility of clicking on an ad and being redirected to another page. Until recently, the viewer was generally directed to a candidate’s website or a splash page, which is a website created specifically around a certain issue. But increasingly people are being directed to Facebook rather than any other website when they click through.

Facebook’s success doesn’t need to be explained, but what is most fascinating about the site is that all of the information you provide is immediately mined by advertisers. As important is the fact that we can determine not only your mindset from what you provide in your profile information, but also that of your friends. For example, if your Facebook friends belong to a myriad of liberal sites, we can assume you are liberal, even if you didn’t suggest so on your Facebook page. Campaign consultants then direct ads to the side of your Facebook page that corresponds to your profile. You are providing us with a goldmine of information with your online stats, and we are using it every time you go online.  

The final – and perhaps most effective – way we find and target you on the internet is through Google search. We bid on and own search terms in a specific geographic region. It can be nationwide, but it can also be just your town or even your neighborhood. Once you type in a search word, we know you’re interested in a topic. For example, if you type ‘jobs’, we suspect you are looking for a job.  We then place ads on your results page about jobs, which encourages you to click through to our site or Facebook page. When you click through, we mark you, in essence, with invisible ink and can then track you around the internet.  

A campaign can collectively see where people travel on the net and can build a profile of those who click through on a certain word or term. The greatest beauty of Google search is that we can change the language of our advertisement repeatedly during the day to test which words or concepts work best. We are, in effect, running an online focus group, and often for virtually no outlay. It’s inexpensive, because you only pay Google when someone clicks on an ad. So it’s possible to have millions of impressions for free. An impression is also called an ‘eyeball’, in that people see an ad.  

Using new media, we are able not only to reach a target audience better than before, but also to hold onto the people who pass through our electronic campaign. We know who they are, where to find them and what interests them.

The possibilities are breathtaking. These techniques are being improved and honed every month in the States, although TV will continue being the largest expenditure and greatest focus of our political campaigns.  

But for yours, it’s a new day.

Dane Strother is a National Democratic media consultant in the US

This article is from the January issue of Total Politics

What did the No to AV campaign do right and what did the Yes to AV campaign do wrong?
The Yes campaign set up regional bases, regional hubs, regional websites, regional Twitter pages, YouTube… It focused heavily on its digital presence.

Early on, I was made head of press for the No to AV campaign. I asked journalists what would interest them about No to AV. They said it was as dry as a bone, but that the political context was interesting. The Yes campaign tried to divorce the concept of the alternative vote from its political context – major mistake. They hid their Lib Dem support. They had Jonathan Bartley and celebrities fronting the campaign. They had Colin Firth just when The King’s Speech was going nuclear. If it was all about celebrities, we could have been buried by that alone.

We saw the political context. By playing to that we got into the newspapers, which was where, ultimately, people would hear about the campaign. You’re shouting in a pretty empty room when you look at the social media strategy. If they’d got Justin Bieber, they’d be shouting to a crowded room but they wouldn’t necessarily get their point across.

Did they over-emphasise their social media and fail to recognise the importance of grassroots politics?
Well, they did see that they needed a grassroots campaign, and ploughed a lot of money into setting one up, but they thought they could remove their campaign from the political sphere. Once we had our Labour support, we went straight to the Labour CLPs and asked if they’d be supporting No or Yes. We went to local Conservatives and got them handing out No to AV stuff alongside their council leaflets.

If your team had run the Yes campaign and the Yes people had run the No campaign, would the result have been different?
We could have made it a lot more competitive. By focusing on the politics, we would have told Ed Miliband that he had to get the Labour Party onside, because if the party split, the Labour vote gets split. Then it’s anyone’s game.

And if they’d been able to line up Labour and the Lib Dems for AV, with only fringes of either supporting the No side, they’d have had a massive block. You can’t win by creating a whole new independent political agenda for the alternative vote, but it’s also about allocating resources.

In the early stages of the AV campaign, they had money and we had nothing. We ploughed all our money into staff and media coverage. And we kept pace with them. They could have blown us out the water, but were too busy establishing their small networks and massive online presence. They gave us enough time to hang in there so that we could hit back.

How important is digital? Could you get by without a good digital campaign?
No, because it would get picked up in the mainstream media, and if it gets reported, it’s an indication how your campaign is doing. If they’ve got a very glitzy website and you’re running on a Wordpress blog, commentators will jump on it.

Dylan Sharpe is head of media relations for the Countryside Alliance

The venue

Massimo at 10 Northumberland Avenue is a short walk from Parliament. It has an informal, charming oyster bar with all-day aperitivo and wines from France and Italy and cocktails.

We drank Negroni (gin and Campari vermouth); Gin and tonic.

We ate Linguine ‘Carmelo style’ with clams, prawns, squid, mussels and fresh tomatoes; potato gnocchi with oxtail ragu and five-year aged Parmesan.

To book a table at Massimo, visit www.massimo-restaurant.co.uk or call 020 7998 0555

This article is from the January issue of Total Politics

Obama’s use of social media during the 2008 presidential campaign was nothing short of revolutionary. Back then, he built his own social networking platform (MyBarackObama), gathered millions of pieces of data about supporters and the target voters, and built an army of online activists that helped deliver his historic victory.

It did not take long before other campaigns were on to it, and by the 2010 midterm elections the Republicans had surpassed the Democrats in their sophistication of organisation and vote-grabbing online. But, even then, there was a twist. Though Republicans managed to achieve the biggest power shift in more than 60 years, many of the candidates who won were not backed by the party establishment.

The infamous Tea Party activists stirred up dozens of grassroots movements, bubbling up from economic pessimism and a general disillusionment about politics, and delivered numerous high-profile wins. Their successes were only made possible by social networking outlets that enabled them to publicise their activities to millions of voters.

This year will see the first presidential campaign where candidates from the top to the bottom of a ticket will have these tools at their disposal. The question is, how will they use them? Campaigners will be more savvy about how to use data on supporters and voters for voter contact, and there are a number of new tools that enable campaigns to match voters’ data with the personal information supporters have about their contacts through social networking sites. By combining the information, a campaign can then ask its supporters to make direct contact with friends and family to promote the campaign’s messages and ask for support.

 A few thousand active supporters could have an exponential impact on increasing a campaign’s reach. And messages from those we know are more powerful than communications from a seemingly anonymous campaign organisation.

Obama’s 2008 campaign piloted the friend-to-friend approach, but this cycle’s outreach will be dramatically more precise, allowing campaigns to send individual, targeted messages through social channels. Previously, social media platforms were merely an adjunct; now they are the main form of interaction during a campaign.

Republican candidates have already participated in a live debate that enabled YouTube users to submit and vote on the questions put forward. Many candidates are also using their Twitter accounts to speak directly to voters, instead of just pushing out mini-campaign updates.
But perhaps a bigger question will be whether or not it will be campaigns themselves that are the most influential users of social networking during the election.

Putting aside American political campaigns, web 2.0 has unleashed a new force for democratic activism across the world. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, the street demonstrations in Israel, and the rioting in the UK, are just a few examples of movements that were made possible by a critical mass of like-minded people using social networking tools.  

Campaigns will need to contend with the possibility that small groups of opponents or disillusioned activists can use cyber-platforms to influence a candidate’s image, or even the entire course of a race. A quick Google search for the 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum offers a perfect example of how one person, who has an issue with a candidate, can make a definitive impact on his presidential fortunes using the internet.
For the political world, social networking has arrived, and the best candidates will devote significant resources to making sure they reach as many people as possible this way. But perhaps the bigger victory in 2012 will be for the active citizens who want to be heard: the internet has become their megaphone and candidates will have to listen.

This article is from the January issue of Total Politics

“I’ve been involved in tens of campaigns over the last 25 years,” reflected SNP chief executive Peter Murrell a few weeks after the 2011 Holyrood election, “[but in] that time I encountered very few that actually had a clear strategy.”

He continued: “A strategy that took five times as long to develop as it did to implement, a strategy that covered every aspect of the ‘battlefield’, every ‘weapon’ at one’s disposal, and every eventuality; a strategy that was delivered consistently and in detail to, and through, every participant… We had a race plan, we knew our speed, our tactics, how to compete, when to hit the front, when to sprint and, most importantly, what victory would look like.”

Victory, come 6 May, looked better than even the SNP had imagined. The party won 69 seats, giving it an unprecedented overall majority in the Scottish Parliament. Indeed, such an outcome had been widely believed to be impossible under Holyrood’s electoral system. “The SNP campaign team,” judged former adviser Ewan Crawford in The Scotsman, “can reflect on the greatest achievement in modern Scottish political history.”

So how did the SNP do it? The answer, of course, lies in a combination of factors. Strategically, a key moment had been a meeting of the party’s National Council back in 2000, just months before Alex Salmond resigned as leader (returning four years later). Then, the SNP voted by a narrow margin to decide the independence issue via a referendum rather than rely on winning an overall majority of Scottish seats (which, of course, they managed earlier this year).

Although not immediately significant, the referendum device enabled the SNP to neutralise independence in campaigning terms. The party fully understood that the issue had the ability to ‘scare’ voters, so being able to argue – as they did at every Scottish Parliament or UK general election from 2001 – that a vote for the SNP was not automatically a vote for independence, allowed them effectively to ringfence their raison d’être and gradually build broader political support.

Then, in 2006, the SNP initiated a surprising switch in tactics. Having long campaigned along broadly negative lines – repeatedly criticising the UK government for not governing Scotland well enough – party campaigners decided to sound a positive note. Although it would still critique its opponents, the SNP’s over-arching narrative would be relentlessly upbeat. A key figure in this respect was Stephen Noon, who had worked for the party, on and off, since the early 1990s.

Noon had imbibed an analysis of twentieth-century US election campaigns, which demonstrated that the most optimistic campaign generally won and, indeed (as Noon explained in a blog), “the more optimistic the campaign was, the bigger the eventual majority”. Having applied this rule to the 2007 Holyrood campaign and won the most seats of any party, in 2011 the SNP extended its positive message, while turbo-charging it with a record of achievement in government and a first-class team at the helm.

The latter two points, which, together with the party’s independence aim, comprised the election slogan “team, record, vision”, were the result of another significant aspect of the party’s campaign – detailed research. This was enabled through software called ‘Activate’, which allowed the SNP to track levels of public support (often well above that of newspaper polls) and delve into voters’ minds to a hitherto uncharted extent.

This research informed virtually every element of the ‘long campaign’, from posters advertising “A Scottish Government Working for Scotland” (interestingly, many of the party’s key messages didn’t use the word ‘SNP’) to individual tweets and third-party endorsements. Again, research had told strategists that non-politicians urging people to back the SNP would be particularly effective, something played out in a Monty Python-inspired broadcast, featuring pub regulars asking: “What has the Scottish government ever done for us?”

Although social media was certainly an important element of campaigning, the SNP’s social media guru Kirk J Torrance (no relation to this writer) doesn’t make any wild claims. Twitter and Facebook activity was not, he says, “a magic bullet”. Rather, it augmented an already strong political message and ensured it reached a wider audience, including many parts of rural Scotland where traditional political campaigning simply didn’t occur.

So the 2011 Holyrood election result confirmed that the SNP remained a formidable campaigning machine. There is an argument, however, that this tactical and strategic prowess disguises long-standing political and ideological weaknesses. During the election campaign, for example, there was precious little acknowledgement of a grim economic situation, yet voters didn’t appear to notice or care. A slick, well-funded campaign served to hide a multitude of sins.

Also aiding the SNP was the failure of the three opposition parties to campaign with any vigour or originality. SNP strategists were consistently shocked at the ineptitude of Labour’s campaign, which dramatically changed tack about two weeks from polling day. As one SNP adviser observed: “Labour began the campaign fighting a Westminster election, and ended it fighting a referendum campaign. We, however, fought a Scottish election campaign.”

 With the Liberal Democrats now a rump, and the Scottish Conservatives lacking (as ever) a coherent electoral strategy, this doesn’t seem likely to improve anytime soon. The three ‘unionist parties’ were woefully inept at using even relatively inexpensive campaigning techniques such as social media. And, more to the point, the SNP still has lots of money. Two recent donations (one a bequest, the other a gift from lottery winners) have given the party more than £2m for campaigning, which it didn’t expect to have.

So where would this leave the SNP in the independence referendum campaign that will take place towards the end of this five-year Holyrood term? In short, in a much better place than the three unionist parties. Party strategists are already building upon the 2007 and 2011 strategy blueprints and planning the political campaign to end all political campaigns. As one key adviser put it recently: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

This article is from the December issue of Total Politics

I am a local councillor in my 60s. I’m relatively computer literate and want to set up a blog to keep in touch with my local constituents. How much time do you reckon it will take to do it properly? Is there any evidence that such activity leads to better electoral results?
Very laudable, but be very clear what you want to achieve, and also the pitfalls. I’d guess that once you have the blog site set up or attached to your website, you’re looking at 45 minutes a day. Yes, that’s the point: a blog is constantly updated or it’s pointless and you won’t get return visits. Give your blog a big push by getting the local paper to flag up that you’re doing it. Your own email list and newsletter need to publicise it, as well as your page on the local council website. A health warning: once you write it, it’s out there, so treat your stream of consciousness like writing an election leaflet. So many well-meaning – and stupid – candidates have been brought down by some silly comment on a blog or Twitter. Finally… drum roll… your blog will not make one iota of difference in improving your election results. In fact, the only thing it will do if you’re careless is lead to worse results.

The vote for a referendum on Europe recently failed in Parliament, despite massive support in an online petition. What’s the next step for someone like me, a eurosceptic member of the public?
Be of good cheer; the world – Europe, anyway – is moving in your direction. These are golden times for eurosceptics. Don’t be too disappointed that the vote for a referendum ‘failed’ because the furore and public/media debate was manna from heaven for the eurosceptics. Your next step is the same as your previous steps: to engage in the political process as a member of a political party as well as one of the myriad eurosceptic pressure groups or organisations. Don’t get sucked into the modern way of thinking, which is that grown-up politics is just a version of The X Factor, and that because you have a view and express it there will be instant action (the abolition of slavery took decades). MPs are not delegates, they’re representatives (unsure of the difference? Check a dictionary). The eurosceptic campaign has to become more focused: are they anti-Europe or anti-Brussels? What powers are to be repatriated – or are we leaving the whole organisation? Clarity means MPs and government are then under pressure to respond precisely.

Looking at the interim report from the Boundary Commission, my ward looks set to be moved into a different seat. A friend of mine seems to be losing his council place altogether. What’s the best way to fight this early decision?
 Firstly, you’re slightly confused. The Boundary Commission has reported on parliamentary constituencies and has moved some wards around. However, this does not take away council wards, so your ‘friend’ is fine, or, at worst, slightly displaced. In your case, you have to decide whether you’re going to be parochial – some MPs are whingeing that their majority falls to 7,000, despite the fact that their party benefits in neighbouring seats. In my humble opinion, the complaining MP should be disciplined, fined and deselected – or look at the big picture. Is the moving of your ward genuinely bad for your party? If so, make sure your party HQ  knows the facts, then plan to object, via the Boundary Commission, to their proposals. There are hearings being held around the country (waste of time, but mandatory), but the most important thing is to submit in writing as detailed an argument as possible. Go to the Boundary Commission for England website, where there are a few simple steps to make your point.

I have been asked to do my first interview with a national newspaper. Any tips on how to handle it?
Be wary, nervous, and assume that the journalist is your enemy. That way, you’ll be in the right frame of mind to ensure this is not your last national interview, and is not terminal to your fledgling career. Advice on media interviews is like opinions; everyone has some, but most are worthless. I’d suggest that you’re clear on the following four matters:

1. Why are you being asked to do the interview? Are you an expert on the subject, or a known opponent? Have you done something interesting? The journalist is interviewing you to get a story, not for your wellbeing.
2. What is this journalist’s, or paper’s, record on these kinds of interviews? How do they report them? Get the cuttings and speak, if appropriate, to their subjects. Know your enemy.
3. Be very clear on what you want to get across in the interview, and stick to that. Don’t be tempted to ‘fill dead airtime’ with comments on other issues or ‘funny stories’.
4. There’s no such thing as ‘off the record’ – the journalist may say there is, but he or she is lying.

Enjoy the experience – and, if possible, have someone with you who can witness what you say. I hope it’s the first of many.

What’s the best way to say thank you to my campaign team? I want to treat them to something, but don’t have a massive budget. Times are tough.
The first step has already been taken; you actually do want to say thank you – well done. I’m not being entirely facetious either; saying thank you is probably enough for most people. Depending on your people, why not hire a room in a pub or club somewhere and invite your campaign team for a thank you drink and nibbles? Or do an afternoon cup of tea and cakes. It depends on your campaign team’s make-up.  Plan to say a few words, then that’s it, job done. The point is to make the effort, so produce a nice invitation, or handwrite a letter saying thank you and inviting them to your soirée. Not everyone will come – reduced cost – but everyone will feel thanked and appreciate that they were invited.

This article is from the December issue of Total Politics

Online politics is almost as old as the web: the US non-profit organisation e-democracy.org produced the first election information website back in 1994. In internet terms that’s a long time, but the net has been slower to make its mark on democratic politics than it has on friends’ networks or buying things you don’t need.

Maybe this says something about people’s motivation to pursue these respective tasks, but the issue runs deeper than that. While the internet is superb at linking people together in a free, unpredictable and often unregulated way, the official workings of electoral democracy are highly regulated and kept separate from anything that might be perceived as partisan campaigning activity.

Recently, however, pioneering projects overseas have been exploring greater linkage between online political discussion and election information and processes, paving the way for a powerful new phenomenon in online politics.

As with many examples of cutting-edge, online social projects, the countries where they are emerging – Latvia and New Zealand – are relatively small, allowing room for experiment on a manageable scale.

As voters in Latvia – population 2.3 million – went to the polls in mid September, thousands of them may have had their votes influenced by a website that allowed them to quiz almost half of all national candidates directly about their views.

GudrasGalvas.lv – literally, “smartheads” – is a social networking site allowing candidates to register their profile, state their motivation for becoming an MP and answer public questions. Devised to address the lack of an active campaigning culture in a country that only broke free from the shackles of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, the site also allowed users to “try on a party”.

In a questionnaire filled in both by the candidates and by the voters, participants are asked for their views in 21 different key policy areas, before voters are matched with their closest parties.

This is not a new concept: in the 2010 general election the Vote Match site, a non-partisan project run by the independent campaign organisation Unlock Democracy, played a similar role for UK voters. In fact, no element of the Latvia project is new in itself. What is new is the scale of the project – some 440 of the country’s 1,092 parliamentary candidates registered and engaged with citizens, including the prime minister and several cabinet members – and the combination of elements, including debate, candidate information, vote matching and social media interaction.

After the election the website was converted into a communication platform between the citizens and their newly-elected representatives, with more than half of MPs from all parties represented now using it to communicate with voters.

The implications for all democracies are fascinating. User feedback from Latvia has indicated that the website helped to decide which candidate or party to support, and also helped build trust between citizens and politicians, a commodity in short supply well beyond the former Eastern Bloc.
This new kind of multi-faceted electoral engagement is not just effective in societies that are newer to democracy: at the beginning of this month, a website went live in New Zealand profiling all candidates and parties standing in the country’s national elections on 26 November.

Vote.co.nz (tagline: “Decide/Who will reside/In the Hive”, referring to the country’s beehive-shaped government building) was developed by the independent council-owned body Local Government Online (LGOL). It offers voters the ability to ask a question of all candidates standing in a certain area, a feature that LGOL chief executive Cassandra Crowley says allows the public to make more direct comparisons across parties.
“Being e-based it recreates an electronic town hall or campaign meeting for our modern lives,” Crowley says. “It also allows candidates to reach out to disengaged or disinterested voters. It potentially has the ability to lower the cost of engagement for candidates and voters alike.”

Does the site mark a major shift in democratic politics? “Any shift in democratic processes is rarely attributable to a single concept or change,” she says. “What does have the potential to change the balance of democratic election is the pervasiveness, price and proximity of technology within our everyday lives, and the demand that this evolution should also apply to democratic processes.”

If this is true, then we’re witnessing the ‘evolution’ of a new model of politics where online tools are coming together to create stronger accountability and clearer links between policy and power.

One UK observer who supports this analysis is Mary Reid. She was one of the first UK councillors to have a website – self-built – and was for many years the blogging and social networking Liberal Democrat mayor of Kingston-upon-Thames at a time when this was unusual. She now chairs the international work of the same e-democracy.org that created the first US electoral website, and says the coming era of social media-driven politics will be characterised by a two-way exchange that politicians will have to embrace.

“Those who ‘get it’ are using the internet as a space where they can both get their messages out and go to to find out what people are thinking,” Reid says. “Of course, there is still fear in some quarters of losing control, but my advice is always to say to politicians, it’s there: you can’t ignore it or complain about it. Go where people are, and listen to them.

“At heart, the question is not about online media versus offline media: it’s about a person’s view about participatory democracy. Do you believe in participatory democracy or do you believe you have to go away and be ‘the representative’ from one election to the next, without referring back to your electorate?”

Some MPs might privately answer this question differently from the way they would in public. But as online politics evolves, their choice in the matter may be disappearing.

Just as the internet has changed so many other parts of our lives, so the changes it’s working on democratic politics are gradually shifting into place.

The consultation ends today, and is the first in the UK to consider same-sex marriage. It proposes that same-sex marriage should be introduced where religious groups are happy to perform the ceremony. The Scottish government will use the results as a guide for whether to forge ahead with legislation.

Should this happen, it would be hard for Westminster to ignore. The UK government is floating similar plans for England and Wales. In the meantime, same sex couples in these countries may be tempted to travel north to get married – think Gretna Green 2.0.

Heading the campaign for legalisation is the Campaign for Equal Marriage, which has been pushing for equal rights to civil partnerships and marriage since 2009. Opposing them is Scotland For Marriage, an umbrella group which includes the Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Evangelical Alliance.

As the consultation period draws to a close, both sides are pushing their message as hard as they can. But their methods have been very different.

Scotland For Marriage has harnessed traditional techniques to get its message across. Although it recently set up a website, much of the activism has been carried out by its constituent groups in congregations.

Paul Kearney, a spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference, emphasised the success of a postcard campaign, where hundreds of thousands of cards were handed out to parishioners. Similar campaigns were carried out by other faith groups.

According to Kearney, traditional methods are still the most meaningful. “I would say the most effective way, even in this electronic age, is to get out a bit of paper whether it is a leaflet or a postcard into someone’s hand. I would argue that 28,000 people signing and returning postcards shows a level of commitment that 28,000 emails doesn’t.”

By contrast, the Campaign for Equal Marriage has embraced digital media. While the organisation has won the backing of prominent trade unions, student LGBT campaigners and the Scottish youth parliament, its main mode of communication is the internet.

Visitors to the website are encouraged to fill in an online consultation form. The organisers then email them regular updates, urging them to spread the message among family and friends.

The project co-ordinator, Tom French, says that this last part of the strategy is the most effective. “You just have got to get the issue out on the social networks. These things can go viral.”

French denies that a postcard petition is more significant than an online consultation. “They’re literally pushing these postcards around the pews. That puts people under a lot of pressure.”

He insists that the Scottish Government will draw its conclusions primarily from the consultation responses, not the prewritten postcards. Equal Marriage, he says, has already received 18,000 mostly positive responses and hopes to have over 20,000 by the end of today.

Then there is the question of the press. Thanks to the speeches of high profile supporters such as Cardinal O’Brien, Scotland For Marriage has managed to make headlines on several occasions. A protest outside Holyrood gained media attention.

But although some supporters did show up for a counter-protest, French is sceptical about the benefits of press coverage. “The focus of the media has been very much the likes of Catholic Bishops who have said something negative. So you have the same sort of story repeated about a hundred times.”

On the other hand, coverage of the opposition can sometimes help the campaign. “Every time the opposition say something extreme, that’s a real incentive for people to respond.”

Once the consultation has closed, the government is likely to draft a bill proposing at least some of the changes it initially outlined.

But all this activism threatens to disguise the fact that for the majority of Scots, the question of same-sex marriage is not a particularly divisive issue at all. According to a recent Social Attitudes Survey, 60 per cent support it, while only 19 per cent are definitely against it.

And all the main parties voiced support for changing the law before the 2010 election. In October first minister Alex Salmond showed no signs of backing down, saying: “We want LGBT people in this country to be more visible and proud of who they are.” Holyrood will have the final say on this, however passionate outside pressure may be.

This article is from the December issue of Total Politics

The real tragedy of Gordon Brown’s career lay in his mistaken belief that stealing the keys to Downing Street would give him Blair’s power.

It was a fatal error: Blair’s powers came not from the keys to Downing Street but from his extraordinary powers of communication – his ability to convince, cajole and command. Language has been a vital instrument of power through the ages.

Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, bin Laden, Gaddafi were all cunning linguists: they knew just how to use language to plunge their followers into the darkest depth of despair before lifting them to the height of ecstasy.

Throughout history, one lesson is clear: where rhetorical skill leads, power and wealth follow. Just track back and see. It starts with the Romans. ‘Pax Romana’ must be one of the most audacious wordplays in history, a match for Orwell’s “War is peace” in its 180-degree spin on reality.

But so it continued: the Romans ran rhetorical rings around our ancestors for centuries. Petillius Cerealis, the governor of Britain in AD 61, was accustomed to beginning speeches with the gloriously disingenuous, “I have no capacity for public speaking… but I feel I must just make a few points.”

The logic that followed was Alice in Wonderland-esque: “We brought you peace to stop your tribal fighting. But we can’t keep peace unless we keep armies. And we can’t keep armies unless you give us money. And that means you must pay us taxes…” Genius! The spinmeisters in Iraq and Afghanistan could do worse than copy that word for word.

Eventually, rhetorical power shifted to those other Romans: the Catholic church. Pope Gregory and Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, found it equally easy to spin us into submission. Pope Gregory’s first words on arriving were wonderfully flattering and rhetorically beautiful: “These are not Angles [ie English], but angels!”

The language of the preacher remains deeply embedded in our national psyche even today, with political and business leaders often invoking religious imagery, from Thatcher’s Francis of Assisi and Blair’s preacher-style sermons to business ‘mission’ statements and corporate ‘creeds’.  
After the Norman Conquest, the baton of power passed to the monarchs. William the Conqueror was described by a contemporary monk as “fluent and persuasive, being skilled at all times in making known his will”.

And monarchs had no choice but to use rhetoric. They couldn’t rely on simple divine right to quell rebellions and repel foreign invaders. They needed strong words and images. The powerful images of Henry V speaking at Agincourt or Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury remain scorched on our collective national consciousness: “I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”  

As democracy took root, rhetorical power was slowly passed on to our politicians. Parliament was lacklustre at first, but eventually the words uttered there led the land. Wilberforce, Pitt and Gladstone were masterful rhetoricians, but no parliamentarian ever commanded the nation with greater power or more magnificent oratory than Churchill. Even today, his words send a shiver down the spine of even the most reluctant patriot.

But that was 70 years ago. Who leads the field today? And when we survey the rhetorical landscape, what does that tell us about the distribution of power in modern Britain? Clearly, power no longer rests with the monarchy. Her Majesty has only made one notable comment in my lifetime – about her “annus horribilis”. It sounded less like a call to arms than a call for Anusol. Nor does the future offer much hope for the royals: Charles’ most famous line concerned monstrous carbuncles, a term only previously understood by sufferers of staphylococcus.

Power no longer lies with the church. Rowan Williams has a phenomenal talent for saying the most controversial things in public, but doing so in a way that guarantees no one will notice, while Pope Benedict has all the oratorical impact of a flapjack – surprising perhaps, given his experience and training in Hitler Youth.

Nor does power sit with the political class any more, despite the growing numbers of communications professionals surrounding our leaders. The big society was always bound to fail in Britain – linguistically, if for no other reason. The trouble is, ‘big’ has universally negative connotations in Britain, from Big Brother to Big Business to Big Deal.

So royalty, the church and the politicians have lost their oratorical edge – which is why republicanism is rising, church attendance is plummeting and political turnout is stagnant. But that leaves the question: where today does linguistic power lie?

For my money, it lies with the press. Journalists and editors are now the ones who design our window on the world. They are the ones who determine what information we receive, who create the words, phrases and ideas that stick – from Brussels bureaucrats to mad Muslims. They are the new rulers of rhetoric.

But that might be about to change, particularly as the figureheads of the popular tabloid press – Coulson, Brooks and Murdoch, Senior and Junior – all now face a real prospect of prosecution. If the police go the whole way, it could prove to be a genuine turning point in the balance of power in Britain. And mastery of language will prove pivotal in that battle.

We’ve already had some taste of what’s to come. Murdoch Senior’s “This is the most humble day of my life” was up there with the greats – although it could be paraphrased: “I may have the wealth and status of a demi-god billionaire, but I have the heart and stomach of a human.”

Likewise, there has been some brilliant rhetoric on the other side of the interviewer’s recorder, with Hugh Grant slicing the debate as “goodies vs baddies” while Steve Coogan responded, super-swift, to examples of the press’s better deeds: “Even Hitler was nice to dogs.”

There’s more to come, for sure. Will we once again see the Murdoch camp claiming, “It was The Sun Wot Won it”? Or will it be the turn of Twitter-based celebrities to shout “Gotcha”? I lick my lips in anticipation. ■
 

This article appeared in the December issue of Total Politics

What have you been doing today?
I’ve been in court. My friend was charged with assaulting a police officer at a demonstration against David Willetts at SOAS, and I was charged with obstructing the officer during the arrest. Maximum sentence is a fine. Fortunately, we had a video that contradicted the testimony of six police officers, so there could be a nice little compensation claim in there.

Explain your role in Occupy LSX. It seems quite a fluid campaign.
I spent the first four nights there. There’s a media working group, an outreach working group, and a direct action working group. There’s a book by Joss Hands that talks about digitally-mediated activism, which he calls QARNs (quasi-autonomous recognition networks). He talks about the anti-war movement in this country being a huge catch-all, and that such movements tend to be more oppositional than propositional. QARNs help people come in and out very easily. There aren’t any particular spokespersons, fixed roles or competencies.

How do you get your key messages across?
This is going to become very big, because it’s part of a much bigger trend – a move away from representative politics and democracy. And we bring in people from last year’s anti-[tuition] fees movement through highly specified campaigns like the London Living Wage, green campaigns etc.

How much has the drama of St Paul’s overshadowed any messages you’re trying to get across?
It’s difficult to say if the whole St Paul’s thing has been a hindrance or a catalyst. We’ll know in six months or a year, but it’s got a debate going. They’re going to apply for an injunction and they’ll get a particular type of order in the next 48 hours, but that doesn’t mean very much. It’ll then take 10 months to implement

Who do you see as your opposition?
For UK Uncut, the shared enemy would be systemic tax avoiders and corporate tax avoiders. There’s a shared identity with Occupy LSX, and there’s so much support, it’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen such dissonance between the front pages of national newspapers and what I’m hearing on the ground.

You are doing a PhD in social movements, but day-to-day, what do you do campaigns-wise?
A lot of work towards the student demo. I’m up at 9am, in uni at 11am. Two hours’ reading, then a few hours’ leafleting at an FE college, then send out emails.

Do you try to engage with politicians?
I used to be a member of the Labour Party… Who would you recommend to engage with? Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, they’re both on side. Caroline Lucas, fine… the usual suspects, but who else? Nobody cares. We’re not the ‘expected package’ – not lobbying, or a think tank report.

You describe what’s currently happening as a social movement. Could you see it becoming a political movement?
I don’t think so – we wouldn’t seek to reproduce power at a Westminster level. Maybe at a local level.

What do you make of London Citizens or Movement for Change?
London Citizens is good, but doesn’t encourage its workers to strike over pay and conditions. Some cleaners at Guildhall were owed several thousand pounds between them. They went out on a wildcat strike, and next day got the money. London Citizens wouldn’t sanction that sort of thing.

How should people get involved if they’re interested?
If you want to know the facts – warts and all – about Occupy LSX or UK Uncut, you can’t get anything better than Twitter; it has a reasonably asymmetrical distribution of news, which you don’t get in the right-wing press. Research as much as you can – good websites like liberalconspiracy.org. Someone described Occupy LSX as a giant offline Wiki for political ideas, and that’s broadly true.

Aaron Peters is a student activist and writer

The venue

A 10-minute walk from Parliament, The Rose pub has stunning views over the Thames. Always buzzing, it mixes the atmosphere of a traditional pub with live DJs on a Friday night, and a range of signature cocktails.

What we drank
French 75 Gin, lemon juice and sugar topped with Veuve Joubert Champagne.

Polish Martini Bison Grass vodka shaken with Krupnik honey liqueur and apple juice.

The Rose, 35 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall, London SE1 7TL, 0207 735 3723

This article is from the November issue of Total Politics

What’s your advice for the new leaders of Scotland’s non-nationalist political parties? How do you face up to the personality of Alex Salmond?
Stop navel-gazing! Salmond is no doubt a big beast and has driven the other parties to think they need to undergo therapy. He has also ensured the debate in Scotland is on his terms. So the answer is change the debate. New faces allow for that to happen. New leaders need to show that they can compete on the issues the voters care about and not get dragged down the avenue of abstract visions and avoiding decisions that Salmond is so very good at. New leaders should not be tempted to try and denigrate Salmond personally as that is clearly counter-intuitive to public opinion. However, competence and the ability to deliver a stable future for people in difficult times do show his fallibility. Sadly the navel-gazing has allowed Salmond to get away with mistakes and incompetence. It won’t happen overnight but 2016 is a long way away.

If you were Brian Paddick’s campaign manager, what would you be doing to get attention and traction away from the Boris v Ken fight?
I would be ensuring that my candidate made the most of and focused exclusively on his one and only unique selling point (USP). Paddick has credibility and is an acknowledged expert on crime and policing. These are issues that top or come close to topping people’s concerns and actually drive them to vote. For my candidate to have a chance of elbowing his way into a two-cornered fight there is no point in trying to compete on every issue. Using his USP can earn him the right to be heard in every borough. His issue has the added bonus of being one where he can show that Boris has failed and Ken has no credibility. Discipline and focus is the holy grail of any campaign, even more so if you are the third candidate trying to get into a run-off.

How do you communicate a change to a Plan B to people while on the doorstep without looking untrustworthy?
If you are already making changes to Plan B then you are in trouble because it really begs the question – where did Plan A go? Although I’ll admit that is a slightly facetious way of putting it, it’s also an important point that needs to be made. Ask yourself why you changed Plan A and what reasons did you give to people at the time?

Review these to work out why you are changing to Plan B. Voters are not stupid so do not treat them as though they are. Be clear. If circumstances have changed then explain what has changed and why that impacts upon your Plan B. Don’t make excuses to your voters because that implies you are wriggling out of some kind of responsibility and therefore you come across as shifty and worse, especially for a politician, you don’t have a clue as to what to do about anything. Always give the impression that, even though things have changed, you have a plan to meet those changes that keeps, as much as possible, to your original objectives.

What should I do about a bank account for my campaign? I could use my personal account, but I’m don’t think that’s very sensible?
You are not sure that is sensible. Duh, well done! It’s nowhere close to being sensible on so many levels. With the whole reporting aspect of political donations, you wouldn’t want to be handing over your personal account details to the Electoral Commission.

Open a separate account for your campaign, explain to the bank what you want it for (always assuming you get to speak to a person face to face), name the account something snappy so it’s easy to remember and insert it into any communication you produce. It looks good on a website. Ideally you as the candidate should not be a signatory on the account (ie. not be able on your own to make payments).

I know this is not always practical and, in this age of reporting, not many people will queue up to do the ‘treasurer job’ but try to get someone to help.

If going through the hassles of opening up a formal bank account is just too much agony then get a PayPal account opened so it’s easy to pay into. You might be surprised how many suppliers will accept payments from the account.

Is there any campaign software you would recommend to someone running as an independent for parliament?
Clearly without knowing the individual circumstances it’s difficult to recommend one piece of software over another. However I would suggest, especially as we are looking at 2015, that you work out clearly what you want to do and, most importantly, what you can do and what you can afford.
The most important information you will obtain (by right) is the electoral roll. This is the data you need software to manipulate. You need to record voting intentions and add (as a minimum) email/telephone information that you gather. Then you need to be able to generate lists so that you can communicate. You could spend a large amount of money on some very sophisticated software to help you do this and then find that you do not have the resources to use the software you have purchased – they can be very time-intensive.

You might find that (talk to your local council to ensure they will be supplying the data in the format you need) using Excel and its twiddley bits means you can record information and then communicate. The other software you need is what can be attached to a website that allows you to capture information and communicate via the site and other social media like Twitter or Facebook. Again these days this can be purchased relatively cheaply. Don’t lose sight of the basics – gathering information from voters is as valuable as recording it – as long as you will then use that information. Be realistic as to what you can do.

Do you have a political problem? Email campaigndoctor@totalpolitics.com

The ad combines Ken's man-down-the-cafe charm with a geographical appeal, translating Boris's fare increases into the number of pints you can get down the Grape and Grain in Crystal Palace or portions of chips from Masterfish in Willesden Green.

Boris has already set out his plans for these areas in the shape of the Outer London Fund, announced in June, which will see £50m invested in outlying areas of the city that will benefit less from the 2012 Olympics.

A Conservative source described this ad to me as "the best ad Labour have done in ages by far". What do you think? Is this going to have Boris on the run?

Either way, there's now no doubt about the fact that next year's mayoral election will be won or lost in London's outer boroughs.

The Venue

Bedford & Strand is a basement bar and bistro just off the two roads from which it takes its name. With a buzzy atmosphere, it is an ideal spot for an after-work drink.

What we drank
Vinopolitan Patriarche Viognier white wine shaken with St Germain elderflower liqueur, fresh white grapes, redcurrant and a squeeze of lime.
Vesper Created for Ian Fleming who used it in his novel Casino Royale. Two parts of Sipsmith gin, one part of Vestal rye vodka and a touch of Lillet Blanc – shaken not stirred.

www.bedford-strand.com 1A Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9HH