#05 - Split Messaging: Part 1
It's time to disrupt the UK's political communications consensus
Welcome to the first of a two-part article on ‘split messaging’ – how and why politicians should adopt decentralised communications strategies that rely on divergent, and sometimes contradictory, messaging. In Part One, we will explore the current model of British political communications and how it came about, before considering some of the advantages split messaging could have for the Labour government. In Part Two, we will deal with some of the key objections to split messaging, and consider how ‘strongmen’ leaders have used it to cement their rule.
Cast your mind back to the halcyon days of 2017. In the general election of that year, the UK faced a choice: between strong and stable leadership and a coalition of chaos led by Jeremy Corbyn.
That, at least, was what the British public was told repeatedly and insistently by every single Conservative MP, ally or strategist appearing on national radio or television. Even in a political world well-accustomed to sloganeering, the Conservative campaign was notorious for its robotic repetitiveness. Infamously, when challenged not to use soundbites, Theresa May couldn’t manage thirty seconds of an interview without dropping in a reference to her ‘strong and stable leadership’.
Apart from being profoundly boring, May’s campaign was not overly successful: she lost 13 seats and her overall majority, with Labour gaining 30 seats. But the subsequent election in 2019, under Boris Johnson, proved a much more successful execution of a similar strategy: Boris was so wedded to his (fantastically successful) ‘get Brexit done’ slogan, that when asked the innocuous question of what he was going to get girlfriend Carrie Symonds for Christmas, he replied simply: ‘to get Brexit done’. In an almost single-issue election, Johnson trounced Labour to win 365 seats.
Although almost everyone loathes this kind of politics – how many times have you pleaded at the TV for a politician to stop giving the same answer to every question? – it has become widely entrenched in the UK. Over the last fifteen years, the Tories have been masters of the technique: simple, repeated, universal messaging. They used it to win four elections in a row, including two led by their Aussie attack dog Lynton Crosby (2015, 2017), until Labour finally won the day with their ineffably boring ‘change’ slogan in 2024. The advantages of this approach are clear: the average voter – particularly the average swing voter – may only access a few minutes or seconds of political content across the entire campaign. By constantly emphasising the same message, you create the maximum chance of it cutting through with the minimum risk of misunderstanding.
Such strategies are inherently centralised. They require central units – the leader’s office with its political strategists – to devise clear messages that are then disseminated without alteration (or imagination) by cohorts of well-drilled MPs. This reflects not just a structure of communications (who says what) but a structure of decision-making (who decides who will say what), which has been made possible through a much broader centralisation of power in British politics.
The UK does not have a presidential system. Initially, the prime minister was exactly that – primus inter pares, first of the Monarch’s ministers. However, over time, the power of the prime minister has grown substantially, while other ministers were organised, and eventually relegated, into the ‘Cabinet’. Under Thatcher, the Cabinet Office – traditionally responsible for facilitating Cabinet decision-making – took on some of the functions of the Civil Service Department, and has subsequently become a catch-all body for projecting central influence across government. Meanwhile, Blair’s media-savvy operation placed greater emphasis on communications, handing significant political decision-making power to figures such as Alastair Campbell.
In a highly over-simplified way, this structure is summarised by the diagram below. Decision-making and messaging – and therefore the allocation of risk and reward – flows neatly up and down the structure from the PM and the central bureaucracy into the departments.
The contemporary model of British governmental communications, much over-simplified.
At the level of discourse, this reorganisation is reflected in the increased prominence of party leaders, for instance in TV debates, and the wider fetishisation of ‘strong leadership’ – the idea that the party leader should take key decisions and ensure political stability. Unlike in most of Europe, where coalitions are common, these discourses are rarely tempered by the political realities of compromise with other parties. Meanwhile, ministers – who in a stable government are largely appointed and dispensed with at the PM’s will – have taken on the role of parroting centrally-agreed talking points. They are also bound by ‘collective responsibility’: the principle that, no matter their private viewpoints, they must always side publicly with the government’s decisions.
What we might call the ‘Campbell-Crosby’ method of political communications has proved highly effective in an era in which the electorate was split fairly evenly between two major parties and most people accessed their news through newspapers, radio and TV. I would argue, however, that changing circumstances are starting to render this strategy increasingly ineffective – a reality that is playing out in the struggle of the current Labour government to maintain its polling coalition.
To begin with, the UK now has three major political parties (Labour, Conservatives, Reform), plus a host of smaller ones (Lib Dems, SNP, Greens), competing over a more fragmented electorate. Moreover, this electorate is accessing more diverse news (mostly through social media, but also represented by insurgent right-wing TV news). And finally, the combination of greater political polarisation and the UK’s dire fiscal situation means that what you might call the ‘political superposition’ – i.e., the net result of what happens when you ask everyone what they want and how they would be willing to go about achieving it – has become increasingly contradictory and undeliverable.
In this environment, it is harder and harder to pick out a simple, unified message that enough voters will like. That means politicians face a choice: either pick a sliver of the electorate to relentlessly pursue (as is common in the European coalition model) or, if you have ambitions of building a broad-based electoral coalition, start communicating different things to different people. This latter technique is what I call ‘split messaging’.
‘Split messaging’ itself is nothing new. There is a reason, for instance, that when Wes Streeting talks to progressive think tanks, he emphasises the importance of community healthcare, while when he talks to the Telegraph, he extols the benefits of bringing in private providers to the NHS. The problem is, however, that Wes Streeting still exists in a world where these ideas must ultimately be reconciled. This happens all the time, for instance in parliament or on TV, where one member of a party must justify and draw together statements made by all other members of a party, even if these statements are fundamentally contradictory. But what if the structural and ideological constraints underpinning this system – the requirement to put out a single, leader-endorsed ‘corporate’ vision of party or government truth – could be loosened?
An obvious starting point would be to formally abolish collective responsibility (of voice, at least, not of voting). This, in fact, is exactly what has happened in the ongoing free vote over assisted dying: each MP has been able to voice their own opinion, and consequently there has been – shock horror – an open debate on an important social issue. I am not aware of any significant criticism of the government for allowing this debate. In fact, it is likely that opponents of assisted dying will be less likely to blame the government if the bill succeeds, while proponents may nonetheless credit Labour.
An end to – or at least a loosening of – collective responsibility would help Labour to navigate contentious issues such as welfare, climate and workers’ rights, where potential voters are split. Labour’s flagship Employment Rights Bill, for instance, championed by Deputy PM Angela Rayner, is not unsurprisingly controversial: some view the bill as essential to protect workers from unfair treatment, while others regard it as a drag on growth. Accordingly, as with many issues, Labour have attempted to develop a unified position that bridges the gap: workers’ rights, they say, are actually good for both workers and the economy! So that’s all right then.
Except that this position is rather limiting. Firstly, it has no bite: it takes the age-old political divide between bosses and workers and simply tosses it out the window. But half the reason people might actually support a workers’ rights bill is because of the implied attack on big corporations and employers – that’s the ideological heft to it. ‘Big multinational companies like Uber have been exploiting British workers for too long and the Tories have let them get away with it.’ At the same time, Labour’s tepid reasoning is unlikely to convince those who think that workers’ rights are inherently regressive/socialist/anti-growth. If Labour is serious about competing for these voters, it needs to give them something more to chew on.
Enter split messaging. Currently, Reeves, Rayner and Starmer like to constantly reiterate that they are in ‘lockstep’ on this and other important issues. But again, this is terribly limiting to their political personalities: if Reeves, for instance, wants to be the pro-business ‘iron chancellor’, then having her defend workers’ rights isn’t a very sensible way to go about it. Better to let Reeves come out against some of the proposals – stating, for instance, that ‘the number one priority of a Labour government is to get Britain’s economy moving, and that means cutting regulations for business’ – while Rayner doggedly stickers her corner: ‘Labour must and will be the party of working people’. The policy can remain exactly the same – simply paint it as the product of a Starmer-brokered compromise – but voters on both sides of the argument might now believe they have a personality in government to champion their cause.
On climate, Labour has similarly attempted to square the circle by arguing that its policies on clean power will lower bills and deliver growth by embracing ‘the economic opportunity of the twenty-first century’. Once more, however, this limits their ability to target more climate-conscious voters – who may prefer the language of ‘climate emergency’ and ‘ecological collapse’ – while promising an abstract, long-term solution to those motivated primarily by bills.
In Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a high-profile figure who is liked by Labour voters and already loathed on the right, the government has a potentially useful weapon. Miliband could be empowered to promote more enthusiastically ‘green’ messaging to younger voters on social media – ‘the climate crisis is already here, that’s why Labour is delivering the biggest boost to green energy in the UK’s history’ – while Reeves, or perhaps Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, could warn a right-wing newspaper that ‘stopping climate change must not mean rising bills’. Then, rather than collating different policies into an overarching strategy, they should be separated: alongside new investment in renewables, announced by Miliband, the government could identify an area where they can claim that bill impacts are being scaled back (e.g., by limiting hydrogen or carbon capture projects, or moving some green levies onto general taxation) and present this as a Reeves-back win for billpayers.
Exactly how far you want to take split messaging will depend on your political inclinations. In its ‘liberal’ formulation, ministers will shake hands and reiterate that ‘a diverse cabinet means a strong cabinet’ and that ‘we are united in taking the country forward’. In a ‘populist’ formulation, division can become the very lifeblood of government, with politicians championing the people’s interests through a storm of competing ideologies, floated proposals and obstructionist forces (vested social interests, political corruption, reluctant bureaucracy etc.). Either way, split messaging can enable a party to appeal to a broader base, sharpen individual messages, and unlock the personalities of individual politicians.
In the second part of this article, we will deal with some of the key objections and challenges facing split messaging, including what it means for party leaders. In answering these challenges, we will look to unexpected sources: ‘strongmen’ politicians who revel in ambiguity and weaponised chaos.
Yours, plotting a coalition of chaos,
LoR