How to explain Labour’s policy on cuts

By Asher Dresner / @asherdresner

‘Cutting, but not too far and too fast’ is a tricky policy to communicate. To do it, Ed needs to reframe the issue from a ‘household’ metaphor to a ‘mortgage’ metaphor.

So far, the government have been justifying the cuts using an implicit metaphor between government finances and household finances. They say they are just doing what any household would do – cutting back on things the state can’t afford. For most non-politicos, especially any families who have had to cut their own finances recently, that idea makes intuitive sense. Labour, meanwhile, have not found a way to express their policy that resonates. Here’s how Ed did it in his speech on Sunday:

“There is a need for difficult choices, and some cuts. But, this government is going too far and too fast…”

Some have little sympathy for this policy to begin with. But given that that is Labour’s policy, what’s the best way to explain it?

Experts in political language such as George Lakoff and Doug Westen, agree that one of the most potent ways to persuade people is to ‘reframe’ the issue. In other words, change how the speaker describes something in order to change how the listener reacts to it.

As long as the ‘household’ frame remains unchallenged, it will be hard for Labour’s argument to gain traction with the public, because it goes against the grain of the frame.

But those same theorists also explain how to dislodge a frame: replace it with one that fits the situation better. To dislodge the ‘household’ frame, Ed needs to start talking about Labour’s policy in terms of a mortgage.

Plugging the deficit is like paying off a mortgage: money is owed, you pay it back regularly, and although you can’t choose not to pay it, you can choose how fast you pay it.

Ordinary, sane, hard-working people pay off the mortgage only at a rate they can afford. They don’t choose to pay it off at such a high monthly rate that they can’t afford to buy basics, like the bus fare, books to read their kids a bedtime story, or paying a plumber to fix a leak that’s flooding their bedroom.

But, of course, that’s exactly what the government is doing.

By choosing to end the deficit in just five years, they have chosen to ‘pay off the mortgage just five years after moving into the house.’ Of course, that means paying it off at a monthly rate so high that there’s no money left for the things which the most vulnerable people in society need. Things like bus services in the countryside where there’s no other way for old people to get around, libraries, or even flood defences for whole towns. Things like frontline nurses and police, or repairs to school buildings.

The attack is straightforward: the government want to pay off the ‘mortgage so fast that they have to cut the basics.

The government will find this argument hard to counter for two reasons. Firstly, because there is no evidence that their decision to pay it off so fast has helped the economy in any way whatsoever.

But even more devastatingly, if it had chosen to go just a little bit slower, it wouldn’t have needed to make any new cuts at all. I find that an incredible fact in itself, and one that bears repeating. If it had set the target date for eliminating the deficit just three years further into the future, there would be enough money left to prevent all the cuts apart from those already set out by the previous Labour government down to 2014. And it would have been able to keep spending constant in real terms in the subsequent three years too.

And if that message hits home, and in a few months’ time this is conventional wisdom, Ed can move on to the next charge: that they only chose that date for self-interested political reasons. In other words, they hoped that by causing avoidable suffering to the weakest and most vulnerable people in society, they would be rewarded with another five years in power.