Ashcroft’s poster saturation will not be enough to catapult his Melchester Rovers into victory

The Paul Richards column

Three things are becoming clearer with each passing day about the Tories’ election strategy.

The first is that they intend to go into the election free from the usual burdens of a detailed policy programme. Cameron’s strategists have correctly surmised that most people are appalled and repelled by Conservative policy, and so it is best not to mention it. When it does slip from under the cloak, Conservative policy tends to disintegrate under scrutiny, like an ancient scroll which turns to dust when you touch it. When they launched their ‘health manifesto’ on January 4th, it contained fewer policies than had previously been announced. A few decent questions from journalists about whether this meant the previous policies had been scrapped, and the entire Tory operation was thrown into panic and disarray.

So policy is the Tories’ greatest weakness, and Labour’s greatest strength. They will seek to avoid detailed policy announcements, preferring mood music, nods and winks and policy aromas. Oppositions can get away with this far more than governments, especially in an age when people don’t read manifestos and aren’t paying that much attention.

The second is that they intend to use old-fashioned advertising to thrust themselves into the popular consciousness. They are currently running advertising in newspapers and magazines, on phone boxes, and of course on billboards. They are spending millions of pounds every week, and have brought space across a range of media from now until May. The Tories’ advertising budget is almost certainly bigger than Labour’s entire campaign fund. Advertising has a cost in inverse proportion to its effectiveness. It is very expensive; but in politics, it is only slightly above useless. Philip Gould says in The Unfinished Revolution that:

“There is a myth about political advertising, largely spawned by the success of Saatchi’s. The Conservatives won four elections in a row, and Saatchi’s produced advertising for all the campaigns…Often it was very good, sometimes it was brilliant. Understandably a winning election campaign and good advertising points intelligent minds to cause and effect: good advertising produces election victories. But this is nonsense. Advertising has an effect, but it is small and rarely decisive.”

In 1997, the only memorable poster was Tony Blair’s “demon eyes”, which backfired on the Tories, and made no dent in Labour’s lead. Who can even remember what Labour’s posters were? They had little saliency in the overall campaign, and added nothing to the landslide. So Labour campaigners must take heart when they see their town centre infested with the spoils of Lord Ashcroft’s largesse. All those posters won’t change many minds or shift many votes. That’s not how election campaigns are won and lost.

That’s an important lesson for Labour’s campaign high command too. Labour can’t afford to run much of an advertising campaign. Reading former Labour general secretary Peter Watt’s book Inside Out it is clear that Labour has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for the past three years. The party cannot afford to blow millions on posters which only serve to aggrandise politicians. We should run a campaign based on social media (yes that includes Twitter and YouTube) and direct voter contact (going out and talking to people). Our communications should be edgy and insurgent. Let the Tories spend their millions: it simply reinforces their image as arrogant and plutocratic. They can appear on billboards, we can appear on the doorsteps and in town centres.

The third facet of the Tories’ campaign, as evidenced by their poster blitz, is the emphasis on David Cameron. David Cameron is the Tories’ campaign. Their campaign is built on his shoulders. It is fair to say that he seems perfectly plausible to the floating voter. He projects an image of a decent family man, who buys coriander in Waitrose and takes the kids swimming on a Saturday. He looks and sounds middle class, when really he is just slumming it in Middle England. He is more Fortnum’s than Waitrose, more Bentley than Mondeo. He belongs to a social class with experiences and expectations way above even the professional classes, never mind the majority of us who work for a living and are perpetually two pay cheques away from disaster. Yet nothing sticks – not the chameleon, nor the toff attack, nor even the charge of hypocrisy after the shoes-and-chauffeur expose.

I’ve been enjoying the mydavidcameron.com rewrites of the Tory campaign poster. There are some funny people out there. But I worry we are falling into a trap. By defacing Cameron, we draw attention to him. We make him the issue. We reinforce the central message from Conservative HQ that the election is all about Cameron. Older readers will remember the vast anti-Thatcher industry in the 80s (the only industry which grew). Ben Elton told his jokes, Steve Bell drew his cartoons, the Beat sang ‘Stand Down Margaret’, Fluck and Law made their puppets, placard-makers daubed their slogans, and left-wing journalists eviscerated her in the pages of the Guardian, New Socialist, and Marxism Today. But she won elections.

Our response to Cameron should not be to draw comedy moustaches on his face. It should be to shine a light on the people he brings with him. Osborne is plainly a weak link in the chain. We should gun for his lack of judgement and experience without mercy. But what of the rest of the Tory nowhere men and women? We should tell the voters: we understand why you may be tempted by Cameron. But if you vote Cameron, you get the Conservatives. Do you really want Greg Clark to be the man standing between you and global warming? Or Andrew Mitchell dishing out the overseas aid budget? Or Owen Patterson maintaining the fragile peace in Northern Ireland? Or Nick Herbert keeping Britain’s farms viable? These people are not even household names in their own households.

Labour’s strength is in depth. We are Manchester United, led by a Scotsman lacking in communications skills, prone to outbursts, but brilliant at strategy, with a squad steeled by triumph and adversity. The Tories are Melchester Rovers, with a single star striker, but no-one else in the team you’ve heard of.

In the 100 days of campaigning left, the Tories will try to avoid policy, focus on Cameron, and spend their way into Downing Street. From what I’ve seen of Labour’s candidates and campaigners, we are more than capable of spoiling their little game.