EU Referendum


The Harrogate Agenda: communicating the message


04/04/2014



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A post published on Autonomous Mind yesterday has so far attracted four comments. But then, it didn't criticise UKIP. Had it done so, it might have seen responses in the high double figures, exceptionally high for a relatively low-circulation blog.

Similarly, my critical "take" on that debate was a record high for the newly installed Disqus system, with 82 posts (some of them mine), comparing with the five comments on my analysis of the impact of the WTO's Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, a ground-breaking piece of work introducing issues which are rarely discussed in anti-EU circles, coupled with constructive criticism of Farage, of the type we are told is wanted.

The truth is that there is a strong element of hypocrisy here. The party isn't really interested in constructive criticism.  Its main concern is to suppress criticism altogether, the commentariat ganging up on the threads to howl down anything it doesn't like.

And such is the rout of the independent blogs that the vacuous Hannan piece on the debate gets an unreadable volume of over 3,000 comments, this site having become the playground for the commentariat following Dellingpole's departure from the Telegraph, most of the comments - as always - having nothing to do with the subject of the post.

The mistake made by the AM piece is to take a constructive look at the future of the anti-EU movement, and how we need to progress the campaign. My piece makes a similar mistake.  It actually addresses real isues: the WTO agreement and how it could facilitate our early exit from the EU, and provide us with a battle-winning argument.

On the blogosphere, if an issue takes off, hits on even an obscure blog can lift from a few hundred a day, to hundreds of thousands. We had this happen on this blog over "Qanagate", when we did more than a million hits in one week. So hit rate is a good measure of interest, from which the comments then flow.

We can deduce from all this that, whatever else excites it, the commentariat is not actually interested in nuts and bolts issues to do with the EU. It will rise up to defend its champion and it loves discussing itself. But, with only a few exceptions, there is no serious concern about the arguments needed to defeat the enemy. Give it a serious issue to debate and it will run a mile.

This, of course, has always been the case. For the footsoldiers, messages have to be simplified and popularised to be accessible, then turned into slogans which can be chanted at the barricades and splatted on comment threads.  Polysyllabic words need to be avoided: even "vote UKIP!" is probably stretching the literacy skills of some posters.

So it is that we have to suffer the condescension of earnest posters, who advise us with all the gravitas of those who believe that they have just discovered the wheel, that our posts are too complex for ordinary people and that we must focus on projecting simple messages for the [simple] masses.

What our advisors neglect, however, is that there are no short cuts to developing the popular message. Behind the apparently simple slogans must lie fundamental truths, ferreted out with blood, sweat and tears, synthesised, refined and then crafted into their final form that is accessible to everyone.

Thus, the election-winning slogan "Labour isn't working" did not succeed just because it was a clever play on words. It spoke a fundamental truth, based on the distillation of thousands of statistics, gathered by hundreds of people over time, and distilled down into that single phrase, to form a succinct, coherent message.

The trouble with the anti-EU movement, though, is that it doesn't really have a coherent message, In its absence, we build a lexicon of slogans that mean different things to different people. Even the title "eurosceptic" - which we no longer use, preferring "anti-EU movement" - has wildly different meanings.

As to slogans, take the one I coined: "We want our country back!" As a slogan, that is fine - as far as it goes. But what country is it that we want? Is it the imagined perfect England of maidens on bicycles, passing the cricket on the village green on their way to church? Or is it some Brave New Britain, yet to be imagined? Or is it just a return to the status quo, whatever that might be?

When it then comes to leaving the EU, what exactly does that mean? Does it mean that we stand alone, relying on the WTO and on expanding world trade, turning our back on the EU? Does it mean the Norway option, or bilateral agreements on Swiss lines? And if not any of those, what does it entail? The anti-EU movement does not have a single answer, and the biggest single player, UKIP, doesn't have a coherent answer at all. 

With twenty-plus years of existence behind it, we can deduce that if UKIP members were passionately (or at all) interested in an exit plan, it would have one by now. But rather than there being any great pressure for one, the greatest disturb comes when [now] external critics point out its absence. Then, the pressure is directed at the critics, aimed at shutting them up.  In UKIP, the answer to criticism is to stop the criticism.

So we return to Autonomous Mind, one haven of reflective calm amid the baying mob, who has concluded that The Harrogate Agenda cannot stand aloof from the anti-EU movement, and wait until it has achieved it aim, in order that we should be able to progress ours.

Further, having developed what a group of us feel is the definitive exit plan, it has become very clear that it is not going to be discussed and promoted unless we do it ourselves. With UKIP especially, not only has it not developed its own exit plan, it has no real interest in any others from outside the fold.

Following the euro-elections, therefore, when we will be better informed of the state of play by the election results, a small group of us are to meet to discuss integrating the anti-EU agenda with The Harrogate Agenda.

Nothing is cast in stone yet, but the likely outcome is that our workshop sessions will be changed to include a full exposition of our EU exit plan, the one we have come to call "Flexcit".

There are those who then come to us to sneer and jeer, telling us that The Harrogate Agenda is almost completely unknown, as if that is news to us. Yet we intend it to be that way. We have quite deliberately set our face against a high-profile launch and rapid development, in favour of slow, cautious growth on the back of a well-prepared and coherent message.

The irony of all this though, however slight the knowledge is of The Harrogate Agenda, if you want something that is completely unknown to the public, it is the UKIP EU exit plan. And, when it comes to a message, we have the head start, as THA actually exists, unlike the UKIP exit plan.

At least we actually have something to communicate (and can do so, unlike in the pic, where there is no communication because the string is not taut, symbolising UKIP perhaps, which is all dressed up with nowhere to go, speaking to itself).

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