influencing policy Archives - Thoughtful Campaigner

Some campaign reflections from Labour Party Conference

Last week, I joined 30,000 others in Liverpool for Labour Party Conference – I was attending in my role at Save the Children UK.

I’ll not add to the hot-takes because you can’t seem to avoid LinkedIn for them, but as someone with a background in campaigning it was interesting to think about how to most effectively use ‘outsider’ tactics at a political conference which is often viewed as a peak ‘insider’ influencing moment.

Conference is a really controlled space centered around the Secure Zone where most of the fringe events and main conference hall is. You can only get in with a pass.

Understandably there are lots of staff from the Labour Party and others making sure the event runs as planned. That’s fair enough it’s their conference and they want to do what they can make sure it follows the aims and objectives they have for it. But it really limits what you can do as a campaigner inside the conference.

For example on one of my ways through security I had to show them what was on a rolled-up poster I’d bought about joining a union inside the conference (by the way you should also join a Union). There are ways to get campaign messages visible but it’s often about getting it on lanyards, badges, t-shirts, etc.

Most key ministers and advisers stay in the Secure Zone for the whole conference – it’s a real bubble, so lots of things that happen outside just don’t get noticed so it’s helpful to be realistic about what can be achieved.

You spend most of your day getting between venues for fringe meetings, 1:1 conversations, receptions, and other events – to get into the Secure Zone you generally had to walk past a range of different protests who were happening just outside.

They came on all issues – from pro-EU campaigners with a very loud sound system and flags, to protest on Gaza, plus a range of other issues – although to be honest it wasn’t always easy to work out what the campaign was on in the moments you had as you walked in.

If you’re going to protest outside the entrance – make sure it’s really clear what your message is, and try to make how you amplify it different from everyone else.

You also find as you go into the venue you’ll get handed flyers for a whole range of topics – some are campaigns trying to influence the internal votes/motions that are being debated by Labour members, others are for fringe events, and others are on a range of concerns – I’ll be honest I can only remember a few of the flyers as they often contained lots of information in them.

The most effective campaign outside the entrance was from the NEU (more on them below) where on one morning they had a whole class of school children encouraging us to sign a petition on free school meals – it worked as it was different, the children wanted to talk with you, and they had an action you could take.

I saw loads of campaigns using ad vans across the week – I tried to do a little thread of them over on BlueSky. I noticed them, and others must do as well as I had a couple of people mention they’d seen some vans that Save the Children had hired on the two-child limit on Sunday.

I don’t think billboards worked well at this conference – but that’s probably a result of the fact that the Waterfront in Liverpool is beautiful and doesn’t have any billboard sites. I saw some further away in the city center so you would only see if you were getting the train/bus into the city or walking back to a hotel – but that might be different at other cities like Manchester or Birmingham where there are more spaces close to the venue.

I didn’t see any projections in person – but I know 38 Degrees and others did a some around the city.

The most effective campaign during the week was from the NEU on Free School Meals because it was so joined up – they had ad vans, the school children outside, their stall in the exhibition area, delegates with sticker, and their conference fringe events were linked to the issue. You couldn’t miss it. And that projected into their digital campaigning as well during the week. It was an excellent approach.

The Daily Mirror did the best campaigning panels – the highlight of my fringe was an event with these young people, that in part as they able to bring the campaigning brand the paper has with it’s political contacts to get those with power to listen to those who have been involved in their campaigns.

There are definitely opportunities here for campaigning organisation to do more with fringe events – for example thinking creatively about who’s invited to be on a panel, but the risk is that lots of work can go into planning an event only for your key political target to pull out.

It’s important to remember that alongside the fringe events and networking is a political conference happening – that includes Labour members voting on and discussing motions on a range of issues. It’s a complicated process to use – but Unite used it effectively to get conference to vote against cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Everyone spends lots of time on their phones at conference – everything is arranged via WhatsApp, and most people seem to following what’s happening on Twitter/X. I think there are tactics/approaches which could get campaigning content shared and spread that way – perhaps paying for geolocated adverts, or trying to seed content that’s shared via WhatsApp. Something to think about.

Getting Ahead of the Curve – 6 Considerations for Campaigners ahead of the next UK General Election

I spend a lot of time thinking about the Labour Party – my wife would suggest at times it’s been way too much time!

But as we’re now around 18 months out from the last possible date for a General Election, and with Labour holding a solid lead in opinion polls, it’s something that I’ve started to think about more and more in my campaigning work.

As I’ve thought about it, I’ve considered some areas that campaigners need to consider in their approach.

1. Too much focus on policy as opposed to politics – it’s very easy for campaigners and changemakers to spend lots of energy focusing on a list of what they’d like to see a future government do on their issue.

Of course, you need to engage in a process to try to influence manifestos, but that needs to be done with a focused look at the politics of the election.

The Labour leadership has a clear sense of what they think they need to do to win the election: the constituencies, voters, and issues that are going to matter. So any thinking about policies needs to be ruthlessly considered through that political lens.

Right now, Labour is focused on demonstrating economic credibility in its approach and appears to have an interest in pursuing a similar ‘small shield’ strategy with a narrow focus on a few issues and pledges running up to the election, like the approach taken by the Australian Labor Party in 2022.

But beyond that, they’re certainly doing more polling than you are about what matters to voters. So ensuring that you spend time understanding what matters to those key voters that Labour needs and how your ask might fit is vital.

I try to keep on top of this on my semi-regular polling threads over on Twitter, but at the very least, I’d recommend a regular review of the monthly issues tracking data from Ipsos and More in Common.

2. Assuming it’ll be easy to influence policy under a Labour government – It’s been 13+ years since we had a Labour government, so there are fewer campaigners around who’ll remember what it was like. It was early in my career, and I think I’d characterize it as ‘easier but certainly not easy’

Now admittedly, on lots of issues, the starting point for influencing will be more favorable, so getting a meeting or finding a sympathetic backbench government MP to push your cause might be easier.

But the economic conditions that the next Government is going to inherit will lead to tough choices. Those campaigners who can offer policy ideas that don’t require significant funding are likely to find a warmer reception.

Any changemaker approaching the next year with a ‘fingers crossed’ strategy – hoping that if Labour wins, they’ll do the right thing on their issue – is, in my view, making a mistake.

Any incoming government is going to find itself in a tight spot economically, with potentially limited bandwidth to do much else.

3. That today’s Labour is the same as it was in 1997, 2015, or 2019 – From the outside, Labour might look like one large happy political family, but like any political party, it’s really a group of different factions, groups, and viewpoints who are working with each other – sometimes together and sometimes against each other.

While the formal policy-making processes of the party are largely the same as they have been at previous elections – with the National Policy Forum process currently ongoing ahead of the conference in the autumn and the formal ‘Clause V’ meeting once the election is called to approve the manifesto.

Beyond that, this is a new edition of the Labour Party with a new leader and new individuals influencing him. So spending time understanding which groups/factions are growing in influence, and which aren’t, matters as it’ll give you key insight.

You can draw some of this from the background of the candidates getting selected (I’d recommend the Tomorrow’s MP Twitter feed), the announcements that are being made from the leader of the opposition office as they’re the ones that are approved and ‘on the grid’ (the media planning process that political parties use), and who is advising key ministers – see here for one example of a briefing from a public affairs agency which provides some of that.

So while some of the individuals might have been involved in previous editions of the Labour Party, and there might be parallels with previous elections that Labour has fought – campaigners need to start with a blank piece of paper when it comes to power mapping.

4. That your reputational shadow will be enough – I’m a huge fan of the writing of David Karpf, and I especially like the concept of the ‘reputational shadow’ that he writes about – the sense that politicians judge your influence based on their past experiences of the constituency of support for your issue that you’ve been able to demonstrate.

As we know, the Labour leadership will be doing a huge amount of polling at the moment, so they know where the public, especially those they hope will vote for them, stand on issues.

Campaigns need to be careful not to assume that previously mobilised support for an issue still exists and is seen as influential.

Some groups, especially the trade union movement, which is a constituent part of the Labour Party (they’re literally part of the family), will always be central to thinking when decisions on policy and approach are being made. But the views and concerns of other sectors and groups will only be there if they are seen to be important to an influential part of the electorate.

5. The election is a foregone conclusion – Sure, the polls currently point to a sizeable win for the Labour Party, and it’s right to plan with that as the most likely outcome.

But, if we look at polls taken at this moment ahead of both the 2010 and 2015 elections, we’ll find leads that didn’t translate into the final result on election day. For example, 18 months out from May 2010, David Cameron’s Conservatives had a +6/8% lead, and the result was a coalition government.

Now, lots has changed since those elections, and the circumstances will be different. But campaigners need to constantly evaluate what’s happening and adapt their plans and approach, including engaging with smaller parties who could become important if the polls narrow and a hung Parliament looks like a potential outcome.

6. Overlooking the Conservative Party – Not only will they be the party of Government until the election which could still be over a year away – and could plausibly win the next General Election – but they will also be one of the major political forces in the UK for years to come.

So while it might be tempting to pause or stop engagement with the Conservative Party, that feels like a mistake, especially if a period after an election defeat leads to some very public discussions about the direction of the party.

Smart mapping of who is likely to be influential in the future leadership of the Conservative Party and ongoing engagement needs to continue.

The Engagement – 10 lessons from the US campaign for same-sex marriage

The Engagement is Sasha Isssenberg’s (author of the Victory Lab which is another must-read) latest book, and it’s the authoritative book on the campaign for same-sex marriage in the USA,

An absorbing if long read that wonderfully intertwines the stories of those involved in the campaign, with the lessons and reflections on what did and didn’t work for the campaign.

It’s a great contribution to a lot of other useful writing on the campaign (I’d also recommend this) and I’d really recommend a watch of some of the online discussions that Sasha did as part of the promotion of the book, or a read of this.

As I read the book I noted down a few of the lessons that I think are applicable to all movements – most from the winning side, and one from those who opposed it.

Set out a clear plan for victory – advocates came together on multiple times to set out their shared strategy and playbook. The book makes it clear they didn’t always agree on the approach, but nevertheless spent time developing collective plans together and understood the role that different actors were going to play.
Together they set out a ’10-10-10-20′ strategy looking at how the approaches in different States and the tactics and resources needed. I was struck by the sense of farsighted the movement had been.
If you’re not getting anywhere with political processes, build pressure from outside politics – advocates for a time focused on corporates to try to recognise the rights of their gay staff to access healthcare for their partners and other rights to grow pressure from other routes on political decision-makers.
Build a funding infrastructure committed to the 4 ‘multis’ – multi-year, multi-state, multi-partner and multi-methodology. I hope many movement funder will read the book – it’s a reminder that if we just aim to fund a slice of what we think is needed we will probably fail.
Learn from past issues and campaigns – advocates spent time learning from the success or failures of others movements in the US such as abortion rights activists. We need to be students of what others have done, so we can learn and apply what might work for us.
Recognise the importance of divergent tactics – “there are many methodologies for social change and we really need them all pulled together in partnership and working to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts”. That can be uncomfortable when working in movements, but we shouldn’t forget it’s importance for our collective impact.
Obsess about what works – advocates established the Movement Advancement Project to assess the effectiveness of what approaches were working and not – and help funders to surge behind those that were.
Focus on messaging as well as operations – ensure you’re clear on who your audience is, and continuously develop your messaging. “no matter how many people you train and deploy to go canvassing, if you can’t figure out your message, you are dead in the water”
Try new approaches – that helped the movement develop it’s ‘deep canvassing’ approach which focused on interactions that where seeking to change the views of voters as opposed to simply focus on identifying new and existing voters.
And one lesson from the opponents – trendspotting – opponents of equal marriage had a well resourced campaign, but also benefitted from a network of individuals within their network who effectively acted as trend-spotters. Looking for up-and-coming issues ready to make the jump from niche policy interest to mass concern.

10. Ask tough questions – finally, reading the book reminded me of this excellent article on questions proponents were forced to ask themselves and honestly answer, which seem vital to any successful

When a NGO admits it’s wrong. WWF and it’s (non) involvement in the Save Our Forests campaign

It’s not often you see a big NGO come out in public and admit that they got something wrong.
So it’s great to see WWF put out a statement today effectively apologising for its lack of public action and clarifying its stance on UK forest sell-off in response to some harsh criticism it’s received in the press this week.
It’s a spat that started in the Guardian on Monday when environmentalist Jonathan Porritt accused major charities, including WWF, RSPB and the National Trust of “collectively betrayed” for their failure to support the grassroots campaign that has grown in the recent weeks to halt the sale of English forests, while Polly Toynbee put the boot in on Tuesday accusing green groups of ‘keeping their heads down over selling off forests’.
Today, WWF have responded with an excellent statement on their website confessing that they should have done more from the start.
Porrit stated “There have been no statements, no mobilisation of its massive membership, no recognition that this is an absolutely critical issue for the future wellbeing of conservation in the UK. Nothing”.
Suggesting that the lack of action had “made themselves look foolish and irrelevant as one of the largest grassroots protests this country has seen for a long time grows and grows without them – indeed, despite them.”
There is no doubt that the campaign mounted by 38 degrees and others has gathered a huge amount of momentum in a short time, it’s petition has just gone over the half a million mark.
Perhaps most interestingly, it feels like it’s not only the ‘usual suspects’ who are signing on. A non-campaigning friend of mine posted the link to the petition on Facebook tonight encouraging people to sign, and the Observer reported of the opposition of many land owners last weekend.
So I’m impressed to see the response from WWF today, who write of the statement that ‘It’s fair to say this is a bit overdue as loads of you have asked us what we’re doing about the proposed government sell-off (or long-term leasing) of UK forests’
Going on to explain ‘Not having much of a history working on UK forests, we did most of our work behind the scenes and focused our public firepower on issues like illegal logging via our ‘What Wood You Choose?’ campaign. We are working with peers getting an amendment tabled in the House of Lords and had questions asked in parliament, but to be honest we did precious little in public’ (emphasis mine)
In time it might be right to ask if criticising environmental NGOs in such a public way was the right approach by Porritt? As an unnamed source in the original article says ‘Rule one of clever campaigning is that you don’t criticise members of your team, at least not in public’ and WWF say they’ve been working on this behind the scenes.
But for me this spat has once again highlights some of the challenges that the more ‘traditional’ NGOs need to address in their campaigning.
1. Agility
Movements like 38 degrees are so well placed, because they can respond within hours not days. They lack the restrictions of charitable status and often no desire for a seat at the table in ongoing consultation. Combine this with a phenomenal e-mail network mean that they can be ‘first to market’. The challenge that many ‘traditional’ NGOs face is that they’re not set up to turn around a response in the time that online campaigns like 38 degrees.
No doubt heated discussions have been happening at all the NGOs that Porritt choose to criticise (as you can see implied by the response from WWF), but the very nature of these organisations mean that multiple departments need to be involved and opportunities and risks needs to be carefully calculated, but that whole process takes time, and internal compromises often have to be negotiated. In this digital age waiting even 24 hours to respond or act can be too long.
2 – Collaboration
Within a day or so 38 degrees had already collected the first 50,000+ names on its petition, and then you have to ask how much value there is in starting a second competing petition. This for me is the second challenge are traditional NGO prepared to ‘brand’ and ‘profile’ aside and collaborate for the common good when situations like this arise?
Would the NGOs named be prepared to promote the 38 degrees petition assuming they agreed with the essence of what it was calling for?
On this regard I’ve got a huge amount of respect for WWF for saying in their statement ‘To their great credit, 38 Degrees organised a massive public response (sign here if you haven’t already)’ but no doubt that line will cause some anxiety in the organisation as supporters are encouraged to share their valuable data with others.
Collaboration is essential, and to do it well campaigners need to recognise the different roles and approaches needed for effective campaigns.
Save our Forests is no different, surely it’d be of huge value to have organisations with both years of experience in nature conservation joining the campaign and impressive contacts within Parliament to be involved. But to do that requires someone to initiate the collaboration, and in situations like this perhaps it’s not clear who that should be.
3. Accountability
Perhaps it wasn’t Porritt’s criticism and the Guardian articles that lead WWF to clarify their position. The statement from WWF certainly indicates that they’ve also been hearing complaints from supporters saying ‘The scale of passion around this issue has led to a lot of emails as to WWF’s role’.
This case seems to be another example of the increasingly complex relationship that organisations have with their supporters. The tools of collaboration and campaigning aren’t just in the hands of a few professionalised campaigners, they’re available to supporters to lobby the organisations they belong to. It also shows that many campaigners are active in more than one campaigning network.
So congratulation on an excellent response from WWF, a response that already seems to be yielding appreciation from supporters with one writing;
Thank you. As a WWF member and supporter of the Save Our Forests campaign, I’m very glad you’ve joined the campaign. The statement above is everything we could have hoped for.
Now I’m left wondering if we’ll see the National Trust and RSPB come out with a statement in recent days.

Are top ministers avoiding meetings with NGOs?

Tom Watson has shared a treasure trove of information about who’s getting meetings with the new government on his blog.
Publishing documents previously available only to those with access to the House of Commons library. It shows who advice is being sought and who’s being locked out.
The first few months of a governments matter, because they set the tone, it’s a time when departments are being bombarded with requests for meetings, so only those whose views are really wanted are invited in.
The information from the three of the ministries of state (No 10, Foreign Office and Home Office) makes for unhappy reading for civil society groups, despite the focus on the ‘Big Society’ their hasn’t been a lot of space created for meetings with representatives from CSOs.
The PM has held just one meeting with civil society, a roundtable with 16 organisations to discuss the ‘Big Society’. The only other non-business or media interest was a meeting with the TUC in July and Bob Geldof to discuss ‘development issues’ in June (presumably ahead of the G8) although many NGOs will remember with horror the way the Geldof threw away the script and fell out with many involved in the Make Poverty History after the G8 summit in 2005.
Compare that to meetings with Rupert Murdoch, Phizer, Facebook and Wikimedia, amongst others that the PM has had and it shows more of an enthusiasm to meet with foreign companies and representatives of News International.
Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, seems to have done a little better, attending the same meeting with Cameron to discuss ‘The Big Society’, and also receiving petitions from ‘Take Back Parliament’ and the Maternal Mortality Campaign, along with holding meeting with The Elders, Gates Foundation and the British Overseas Aid Group (a group of the biggest 5 development NGOs).
The same patterns seems to be repeating itself across at the FCO, William Hague hasn’t found time to meet with any campaigning organisations, although he made space for BAE Systems, delegating to junior minister meetings on a whole range of issues including elections in Burma, human rights and Zimbabwe.
The Home Office appear to have done better, with Home Secretary Thresea May holding ‘Introductions’ with Stonewall, Hillsborough Family Support Group, Migration Watch UK and a large group of equalities organisations. Other minister in the department also appear to have been busy meeting with a whole range of campaigning groups, like Refugee Watch, NSPCC and Women’s Aid.
As an aside my favourite entry from the Home Office is a meeting in July that Human Rights Watch held with Baroness Neville-Jones, the purpose of the meeting ‘Discuss report no questions asked’. It raises interesting questions about how the meeting was conducted, and if a cup of coffee was offered to those attending!
Meetings held by other departments are, as yet unavailable, although Tom Watson has promised to publish them if they are. It’ll be interesting to see if the pattern of senior ministers not meeting with CSOs has been happening at other departments, and if this trend continues in the coming months.

Lists of people who matter

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m a big fan of lists. Although I’m not a natural Daily Telegraph reader, their annual profiles of the top 100 most influential people in each of the political parties is an invaluable resource when it comes to planning routes to influence.
100 Most influential Left-wingers – 1 to 25, 26 to 50, 51 to 75 and 76 to 100

100 Most influential Right-wingers – 1 to 25, 26 to 50, 51 to 75 and 76 to 100

Top 50 Lib Dems – 1 to 25 and 26 to 50

Other lists produced in time for Conference season include;
– Left Foot Forward – most influential left-wing thinkers
– New Statesman – 50 people who matter
Has anyone else found any useful lists?

Twitter – here to stay

So, after a very long summer break I’m back…one of my first blogs back in February was about twitter I asked if it was going to catch on.
I was cautiously optimistic, I wanted it to work, but was wary that it could go the way of other social media phenomena. Well what a 6 months Twitter has had. The numbers of people using it are still growing, and it’s not hyperbole to say that it’s changed the face of campaigning.
Changing Policy – Lots has been written about the role of twitter in mobilising people, but last week was perhaps a high-water mark for twitter.
On Monday, we had the Trafigura story exploding on twitter, within hours of the Guardian publishing a cryptic article on its website about an injunction we saw people starting to tweet what the parliamentary question was. Before long the story was leading on the mainstream news, and a scandal that was only going to get noticed by a few who had been following the story was everywhere, a very public PR disaster! Liam from louder.org.uk has a good post on this.
Then on Friday, we saw twitter mobilise a record 22,000 people to complain to the Press Complaints Commission about an article in the Daily Mail on the death of Stephen Gatley.
Before that we had the organisation BeThatChange organising a day of action which saw thousands of people trying to get Gordon Brown to go to COP, the response was that Ed Miliband put up a poll on his Ed’s Pledge website asking people to vote for their political priority ahead of Copenhagen. A few days later, and Gordon Brown announced he was going to COP.
No doubt there are many other examples that one could point to over the last few months, ILovetheNHS for example. Two thoughts about what these examples have in common, an immediacy within moments someone has picked up on the story, and in hours they’ve reached a tipping point that forces the target to respond. Secondly, few of these campaigns have been initiated by organisations but instead twitter has put the ability to mobilise in the hands of people with lots of followers on twitter. Some more agile movements may have been able to pick up on them (for example 38degrees around Trafigura), but twitter is helping to put mobilising power to those with virtual networks.
Engaging with policy makers – Today, two people I know got responses from @EdMilibandMP to their questions/comment and I’ve seen an interesting discussion with @SadiqKhan about an announcement he was making on parking. So what? Well unlike most communications with ministers/MPs, the chances are those policy makers have actually responded themselves, Twitter has cut out the comms department, the secretary and allowed people to share what they’re thinking directly with those holding the red box. No doubt this phenomena will come to an end when the number of followers becomes overwhelming, but for the time its a great opportunity to take advantage of.
Two others useful things;
– Back in the summer the people who matter in Whitehall issued these guidelines about how government department should be using twitter, while they were ridiculed for being too long, they’re the best set of guidelines I’ve found if you need to persuade senior management in your organisation to understand and use twitter.
– I’ve been experimenting with act.ly as a way of getting supporters to use twitter to show their support for a campaign, initial experience is good.

Ministerial Correspondence

It has long been believed that getting an MP to write to minister is a more effective than sending postcards directly to a government department. Why? Because protocol dictates that a letter from an MPs requires a ministerial response, but how many items of correspondence are government departments getting?
This ministerial statement from last month gives details of the number of ministerial correspondence (letters from MPs and Lords) each department receives in 2008. The top 10 departments and agencies are;
1. UK Border Agency – 51,905
2. Department of Health – 20,242
3. Department for Children, Schools and Families – 15,810
4. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – 14526
5. HM Treasury – 14,057
6. Foreign and Commonwealth Office – 10,334
7. Department for Communities and Local Government – 10,227
8. Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform – 9,875
9. Department for Transport – 8,393
10. Child Support Agency – 7,313
A couple of others to note included DECC which received over 2,500 letters in the few months after it was created, and DFID which recieved 3,100.
Many of the letters recieved by agencies (like the UK Border Agency where a large number of the enquiries will be individual imigration and asylum requests) from MPs won’t ever be seen by a minister so will have little or no political impact.
Taking out agencies the average government department receives just under 7,000 letters per year. When you divide that between 4 ministers (an average number of ministers per department based on a quick look at this Cabinet Office list) it means that each minister is dealing with about 34 letters each week but many will be signing many more.
This is a useful briefing for civil servants about how to draft responses to ministerial correspondence.

The life of a junior minister

I’ve be reading the very enjoyable diaries of Chris Mullin MP over the Easter weekend, entitled ‘A View from the Foothills‘ they’re a great look at life somewhere down the ministerial pecking order.
Mullin was a junior minister at the Department for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), DFiD and the Foreign Office. It’d be fair to say that Mullin isn’t a great advocate of the lower rungs of ministerial responsibility, but reading the book provides some useful insights into what the work of junior minister is like. Something of tremendous use given that much of the engagement campaigners and lobbyist often have is with junior ministers.
A few key lessons stand out;
1. Junior ministers aren’t often particularly interested in the brief they have. Mullin, who before becoming a minister was a influential chair of the Home Affairs Select committee, implies he knew next to nothing about the environment when he started in that job, and kept up simply from reading the briefs provided to him.
So we shouldn’t be surprised when they’re not especially interested, Mullin seems to infer at times that the best issues to deal with are the ones that are trouble free, uncontroversial and mean that they won’t cause any embarrassment. Some lobby for the post they really want but most don’t get it.
2. Ministers sign lots of letters. Mullin talks about spending hours at the office often late at night signing letters from MPs. Few get mentioned, although he does despair when thanks to a Friends of the Earth campaign he has to sign over 500 letter. A good way to make a point, but perhaps a quick way to loose good will?
3. They spend lots of time giving speeches – part of the life of a junior minister is to go out and about around the country and give speeches to organisations which have some link. Mullin suggests most aren’t very well written and he was often embarrassed to deliver them. So the next time you hold an event and the minister doesn’t give the barnstorming speech you expect after watching too much West Wing, it probably isn’t their fault.
4. They don’t have huge amounts of access to the Secretary of State or the PM. This obviously depends on the department they’re posted to (so access seems to be better at the Foreign Office under Jack Straw than at DETR under John Prescott) but most seem only to have access to the Secretary of State at weekly departmental meeting and occasional rushed conversations here and there. Generally Mullin doesn’t give the impression that they get to set a departments agenda, this comes from the Secretary of State (or often even higher up government).
5. They are advised to pick a few issues to change policy on – Mullin while at the environment and region chose try to deal with leylandii hedges, rent paid to absent landlords and getting away without a ministerial car. All valuable but hardly groundbreaking, and even then it was hard work navigating between special interests, civil servants and government priorities to make progress.
6. So much of politics is informal – from the diaries you get the impression that many decisions are made through quiet conversations in tea rooms, chats in the lobby, a call to a friend who is a friend with another minister or a written note slipped into a box.
7. MPs spend lots of time on the train! Mullin is often talking about catching the 20.00 back to Sunderland and bumping into this or that MP. I think my next campaign strategy is going to map the MPs my target might catch the train home with!

The death of the local paper

Should campaigners be concerned at the rapid death of local newspapers?
As the Guardian reported on Monday many titles are looking to make significant cuts as sales of their publications fall and advertising starts to dry up. While most of the big regional titles don’t appear to be at risk of closing in the near future, they’re facing a bleak future.
Living in London its easy to overlook the importance and reach of many of the regional papers, some like the Yorkshire Post, Eastern Daily Mail, Manchester Evening News and the Kent Messenger have impressive circulation figures. While weekly titles and the free papers that are delivered through letter boxes are read by millions more. While campaigns are often disappointed when they register little or no national media coverage, acres of local and regional coverage could reach as many people.
Local papers are also trusted source of news and information. I’ve heard of surveys that indicate that the letters page of a local paper is the most trusted section of any paper, because they are seen to speak for a community in the way other news sources can’t. Moreover for many MPs local papers provide an important way of communicating with constituents, as well as acting as a barometer for local opinion. MPs might not have time to read all the national papers, but you can be sure that their likely to at least browse the pages of their local paper, which means they’re vital places to be trying to place our campaign messages.
So we should be concerned about the potential death of local newspapers. In the short-term, a reduction in the number of journalists might even be good news for campaigns, as those who remain will increasingly be looking for the easy win that lightly rewriting a campaign press release provides.
Over time some will evolve looking to place more of the emphasis on digital media, but the decline of the local paper from our newsagents shelves means the death of powerful tool in our campaigning toolkit.
UPDATED – This article from Labour List argues losinig local papers means a loss of local democracy