Britain is in a safety-first mood

Political rhetoric has a basic problem. It is devised by political obsessives to influence normal voters, who are far too sensible to indulge in any such obsession. This can easily condemn it to irrelevance. Back in 2001, at the Camerons’ kitchen table, Sam Cameron announced that she was fed up with William Hague’s fascist rhetoric. “What fascist rhetoric?” David enquired. “Chance would be a fine thing,” I thought. She snapped back: “All this stuff about ‘one nation’.”  We laughed and explained. Sam was unabashed. She does not do abashed. “I may not have read history at Oxbridge, but I know as much as most people and it means nothing to me.”

That made me think of “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and the way the Spaniards swear at each other in shorthand. “Your mother” – meaning “may your mother be raped by a hundred Moors and then…” “Your sister” – something similar. No-one took any notice. From long over-use, these hideous imprecations had lost all potency. The same is true of many of the gentler phrases which British politicians deploy. This makes it vital that the rhetoricians produce new-minted language. They seldom succeed.

The gap between the obsessives and the easily bored also creates difficulties for opinion polls. In the early Eighties, wanting to learn more, I spent a couple of hours on the streets with an opinion-poll researcher. She was to  target female voters in social class B (whatever that meant). We concentrated on shoppers. In that backward era, they would have been described as housewives. So, a quick whispered exchange -“would you say she’s a B?” – and then: “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Madam, but if there were a General Election tomorrow, how would you vote?”

There was no rudeness: no-one came up with the obvious retort: “There isn’t going to be an Election tomorrow.” But I rarely felt that we were commanding a full share of attention. Competing with “lamb or pork for the Sunday joint?” or “why is Johnny struggling with maths?” – let alone with “I bet that bloody husband of mine’s up to no good with the new secretary” – we did not stand a chance.

I recently told that tale to a current pollster, whose response was insufferably patronising. It was as if I had been comparing medicine in the age of leeches with current methods such as antibiotics and anaesthetics. I was assured that polling techniques had improved immeasurably over the past few decades. “Oh yes,” I replied. “And the results?” The political class still uses opinion polls for the same reason that Macbeth went back to the witches: what is the alternative? But techniques, schtechniqes: there is nothing reliable, for one simple reason. Real people are not reliable.

With rhetoric, there is one way of minimising unreliability: clarity. So the Tories have decided on a clear message which has Lynton Crosby’s dabs all over it: “strength and stability”. Simplicity itself, it also invites comparison with Jeremy Corbyn: poor old Corby. “Shall I compare thee to… a rag doll left out in the rain?” In 2015, Sir Lynton earned his knighthood by a two-pronged attack. First, “vote Labour, get SNP”; second, “you don’t want to give the car keys back to the people who crashed it last time.”

If Theresa May is Geoff Boycott, Lynton Crosby is Alan Border: stocky, tough, nuggety, with an unswerving belief in concentration and discipline. Discipline, in a fellow from the penal colony? Transportation works. But will this latest slogan? One of the shrewder observers of politics whom I know has doubts. Although he is ultimately a tribal Tory, his approach to politics is a blend of the cynical and the sardonic, tinged with exasperation. He is already bored with strength and stability.

Thus far, he is a lone voice among those whom I have been consulting, who could all be classed as wary obsessives. They would make two points. The first is that in one respect, real people have the defects of their qualities. As they are not concentrating on the obsessives’ messages, their rate of absorption is slow. So there is no alternative to repetition. The could cite a number of precedents. Think of Mr Obama’s “Yes we can”. He spent eight years proving that no, he couldn’t – but no matter. What does anyone remember from the hapless Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, which he could have won? He was cruel to a dog. He had a lot of motor cars. That was about it. He couldn’t, either, because he could not find a message.

Then there was Labour’s stroll to victory in 1997, with the help of two constantly repeated slogans, “Boom and Bust” plus “Twenty-two Tory Tax Rises”. Just as the campaign was heating up, a bright youngster went into a meeting of the high command with a note and an eager expression. “It’s no longer twenty-two tax rises. It’s up to twenty-four.” He was asked if he had circulated the note. “Not yet.” “Don’t. Twenty-two alliterates perfectly off the tongue.” In recent years, Labour came up with another cracking slogan, prepared for Gordon Brown’s bottled Election in 2007. “Not Flash: just Gordon.” That could have been dangerous. Repetition does not kill a good slogan.

The wary obsessives’ second point relates to Mrs May. Strength and stability is just her. All the evidence suggests that the country is in a safety-first mood. From what I hear, she is going down extremely well on the doorstep: more popular than her party. With five-and-a-half weeks until polling day, there is the danger of boredom. If her team could come up with the odd joke, that would not hurt, as long as it was in character (I bet that where humour is concerned, she would be quicker on the up-take than Mrs Thatcher was). But it is important that Theresa May plays to her own strengths. Anyway, if the Tories are looking for an odd joke, there is always Jeremy Corbyn. Above all, even a little tedium is not going to exhaust the public’s appetite for safety first.