It has taken a little time, but the evident, present, unwillingness of voters to change their mind no matter what the would be stars attempt in order to do so, it appears that boredom has set in.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. The politicians may yet come to regret setting fixed five year terms on Parliament. In the ICE age, unfulfilled expectations for quantity and quality of information, poor communication, and a developing sameness in the practice of entertainment, are surely greater than, even, five years ago.
Certainly, the blushing reluctance of the politicians to give detail; such as the former, (and perhaps future?), chancellor of the exchequer, the finance minister, to give even clues to how he would save a further 12bn pounds from welfare spending if re-elected, jars with even, possibly especially, the really engaged voters.
The fact that my snail mail letterbox has received the free communications permitted to candidates from only three, and those, primitive in format and content seems representative of the level of communication. And my online box, only a few desultory mails from Labour, instantly as deletable as the snail mail was binned for recycling.
Mass media may well benefit party leaders, but it certainly doesn’t do much for local candidates, and it seems unsurprising that no sign of motorcades or canvassing has reached communities such as that in which I live.
And mass media, of course, has its limitations. As a parliamentary candidate at the time of the 1979 referenda on regional devolution in UK, I well remember being given a ticking off by prime minister, Jim Callaghan, for telling him that the vote was going to be lost. I explained to the evidently bemused premier that, on the doorstep, it was being lost because it was being inadequately argued.
“But I am on TV every day, explaining it,” he expostulated. “Yes,” I responded,” but lectures on TV give no opportunity for questions to amplify your explanations.”
And, of course, despite the internet, politicians seem, if anything, even more addicted to talking at people, rather than with them.
Major party leaders are being carefully shielded from any contact with any other than carefully vetted, loyal gatherings. Election campaigns seem to have come to reflect the academic approach to debate, in which original, or off the wall thought is not permitted; as a result there is, of course, no real engagement on the part of those whose votes are being sought.
The consequence of real education, of course, is that our present genre of politicians, as people who have never made the mistakes that would be sought and exposed by media opponents, the great jury of journos who seldom engage, either, with their readers, and who are ever ready, in a high-minded way, to expose the shortcomings of everyone else.
As they say: “The man or woman who never made a mistake, never did anything.” Early in my days in active politics, I received the interesting mentorship of one very successful local politician who told me: “Everyone has a skeleton in their cupboard; if you find your opponents, you’ve got them beat.”
It has resonated with me through the years, and I guess we are now seeing the logical consequence of that philosophy.
That rather unpleasant truism, offered to me in the 1960s, has evidently come home to roost. Only the most able, like Bill Clinton, have the strength and power to resist such sordid stuff, and overcome.
So, we should not be surprised that our politicians are more uninteresting cardboard cut-outs of people, than most of us. Or that they are so afraid of mis-speaking, or being misreported, that they avoid unscripted speech, anywhere, and are certainly reluctant to respond to questions, unless anticipated, with rehearsed responses.
That ennui has set should be no surprise. The sense of having seen and heard it all before, and believing little of it, seems widespread in the electorate, which presumably accounts for lack of movement in the polls.
The Blair years may have been introduced with some real advertising and PR appeal, which generated, in part, the 1997 landslide for Labour, but, somehow, today’s generation of politicians, perhaps having lived through the tumultuous disillusionment, seem reluctant to adopt any really effective methods of communication and persuasion.
Such advertising techniques as product endorsement have been tried and tested in the commercial world, and the perils of it clearly demonstrated, but that hasn’t deterred the Conservatives from giving it a try.
Perhaps memories of the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement and appeal so successfully used by Labour in the 90s and early noughties have spurred their partnership with the once respectable The Daily Telegraph to produce such non-events as, “100 successful businessmen” letter of endorsement; it seemed to play well until it was discovered to be badly researched and prepared.
That, however, didn’t deter the Conservatives from an attempt at a rerun, a letter from “5,000” entrepreneurs, expressing their wish for another Conservative-dominated government; this attempt also proved to be fallible. From that, the campaign has moved on to the national statistics revealing that the much heralded recovery is not, with GDP growth faltering badly for the second quarter in a row. All bad background music!
However, despite the evident improvement in the personal ratings of Labour leader, Ed Milliband, he still trails, in all polls, ratings for his party, and lies far behind those for David Cameron, his adversary, the Conservative leader.
What the polls ... and there are far more of them in this election than ever before, which tends to diminish any appearance of progress by any party ... are more clearly suggesting is that the electoral turnout this time could well fall even lower than the last election, when it was an all time low of 65%.
Commentators, after the high turnout in the Scottish Independence Referendum last autumn, suggested there were signs of re-engagement by voters in the political process. What none of them seemed to understand was that in the Referendum, voters were voting for a big idea, the fundamental element of any effective communication. Offering a clear and simple decision to either remain in the Union, or seek independence.
It is no great surprise to hear vox pop subjects on radio telling of voting for Independence then, and Labour, who led the no vote campaign, this time. It probably simply reflects the low credibility and unappealing personalities of politicians, especially politicians, despite the lack of credibility, promising an ever-increasing and bewildering array of policies as the campaign continues.
When training political speakers, especially those heading onto the small screen, in the early 80s, we always tried to get them to understand that, to be effective, they needed to remember that listeners often simply have a low interest, and a lower capacity to retain ideas.
“Keep it simple, stupid,” has become a widely-recognised principle of communication. But evidently, not one that appeals to a highly opinionated community of communicators.
In Bangladesh, I have often experienced the clear belief of politicians and other would be communicators, that a very long speech is likely to be more effective than a short one.
In UK today we seem to be experiencing both the live spectacle, and in the media, of politicians who seem to be moving swiftly into the Bangladesh ... and, to be fair, having experienced elections elsewhere in South Asia, perhaps regional ... school of communication.
Whether the Conservatives are shrewd enough to appreciate that confusion maintains the level of uncertainty about voting intentions, with a significant proportion of those who do vote deciding on the day, and even inside the polling station, with research suggestion that such decisions tend to break, two to one in favour of incumbents, can only work to their advantage is unclear.
There seems little doubt that, if they win, or are at least able to lead a coalition on May 7, a large majority of voters will not be happy. And there are likely consequences for such alienation.