General Election 2019: Two sides to every story

Listening is a best practice if often underutilised PR tactic. In this guest post I asked agency owner and Conservative Party campaigner Graham Robb to write about this experience of the 2019 General Election.

By Graham Robb

Thanks to Stephen for allowing me to blog about the election, I think it is fair to say we took a different viewpoint. I’m a Conservative in the North East, and used my PR experience to volunteer to help the Conservative Party.

Here is my take on some of the PR points from the 2019 campaign.

The main campaign image

Stephen Dunn didn’t intend to be the face of the 2019 election, but he was nevertheless. Stephen is the manufacturing worker from Wilton Engineering who defiantly held up a massive hand-made ‘We Love Boris’ sign, when the Prime Minister visited in the second week of the campaign.

I was there when it happened and I helped to organise that particular visit, but I don’t mind telling you I cannot take credit for the sign or the photo. In truth, the image is more powerful for being entirely authentic. The lads were told of the visit with only two hours’ notice, they were allowed to ask the Prime Minister any question they wanted, there was no attempt to fix the questions. The only condition attached was no swearing or abusive language as the company was live on TV.

The questions came thick and fast: Was Boris going to keep trident, as these workers supported the defence sector? Was he going to cut tax just for the rich? Which led to his NI cut announcement. Was he going to sell the NHS to Donald Trump? (that was Stephen’s question.) After undertaking a set of the usual sceptical TV interviews Boris was about to get on the bus when Stephen, with his sign, asked for a picture with the lads. Boris readily agreed.

The photo was featured in every newspaper the next day and even placed on the cover of the manifesto. It is gritty, honest and depicts a connection between this Prime Minister and the people that words fail to express.

It was tweeted by Boris on election night, just after the exit poll predicted his huge win.

Boris, visible in your local area

We should not underestimate the power of local media. It is certainly true that sales of local newspapers have declined but their websites and other local websites want to carry images of high profile people making their local area special. So it proved in the North of England. Boris and the Conservatives love-bombed these regions. The coverage they got for paying them attention was remarkable.

Boris visited the North East – an area with only three Conservative MPs, four weeks in a row. When he visited the Conservatives made sure the visits were covered well, including visiting the offices of at least two newspapers. As a result there are now, nine Conservative MPs in the North East and an equal number of Conservatives in the North East and Cumbria – 20 each.

As part of the digital strategy, short films were made of each visit and were soon circulating on local Facebook posts, sort of mini-viral films mostly re-shared by Facebook users in the areas he visited. The visits combined ultra-local messages with the big national message, the local ones were often missed by national commentators.

One of the most successful of these films did go national, the film of a visit to a kosher bakery in Golders Green.

Digital dimension

It is often said that Labour and its satellite supporters have more traction on line than the Conservatives. Anybody following twitter would think that we were about to have a Corbyn Government, even I was taken in. Businesses people I deal who are also on twitter, were actively making plans for Corbyn and the ‘Corbyn clause’ was reported in Estates Gazette with commercial property agreements struck in the election period having a cooling off period if the Government changed.

But in other digital spheres, the Conservatives were scoring some successes. Some catchy videos were garnering interest; Boris making a cuppa and answering a combination of fun and policy questions set a quirky tone; Brexit Actually (a parody of Love Actually) was re-shared millions of times and the serious and hard hitting ‘End the Argument, Get Brexit Done’ advert was on the You Tube home page in a surge of digital advertising in the final week of the campaign.

The Conservatives used Facebook very effectively, and video rather, than written posts, was the most engaging part of their campaign.

Labour had good videos too, they were supplemented by more overt propaganda videos from Momentum. In one of these a 50+ white man, who was designed to represent people like me, was portrayed as an evil millennial-hating employer, a rogue landlord and energy company owner, who was ripping off young people. The message was so crude it was laughable. After the election Momentum boasted its videos were viewed by 70 million people. They weren’t that effective as only 10 million people voted Labour.

The fake news election

There were dishonest players in the 2019 election. Fake news stories were cast around the internet for all to see. One of the worst examples was the assertion was that the story of the child who was photographed on the floor of the Leeds General Infirmary was not true. It was true, no Conservative politician denied it. Their answer – that the LGI is getting a new children’s hospital as part of the Government’s investment in NHS – was drowned out by the images and comments around of the pocketing of the reporter’s phone by Boris, his only significant gaff.

The Parties themselves were rightly hammered for some digital stunts, the Conservatives so-called Fact Check website during the first debate, the Labour Party’s wealth check site that suggested average families would be thousands better off when in fact the average family chosen didn’t exist, the Lib Dems local bar charts based on the Euro elections, and their fake local newspapers that were so similar to the real thing they ended up in local newsagents.

There was a cheeky digital stunt, when the Conservatives redirected google searches about the Labour Manifesto to a site filled with a Conservative version of it and some disgraceful leaflets, which some claimed were from Labour, that were crude and cruel depictions of Conservative NHS policies.

Extreme trolls

This election was the election of extreme trolling. The trolling of Rachel Riley demonstrated what a woman who has stood up to anti-Semitism had to put up with, culminating on threats to her unborn child.

The trolling of Laura Kuensberg, the BBC Political editor was relentless, political and almost always from the left. Whatever she posted on twitter, however innocuous, was instantly and systematically hijacked by trolls seeking to undermine her impartiality and harass her. It even led to her being booed at a Labour Press conference, despite appeals from Jeremy Corbyn for members to be polite. One female Conservative candidate I know in the North of England received vile and disgusting abuse on Twitter.

The effect over the long-term, is to undermine democracy, as digital intimidation causes people of goodwill to avoid standing for election. Twitter is among the worst platforms; its permitted anonymity is a key component of its unpleasant side.

No where to hide

There are many, many elements of the campaign I’ve missed, not least the importance, or not in some cases, of broadcasters. Also, despite the claims of a biased press, there is more plurality among newspapers than there was in previous generations. Murdoch papers, The Express, The Telegraph and The Mail were clearly Conservative; meanwhile the Financial Times, The Mirror, The Guardian, The i, Metro and all local newspapers took a different stance. The 2019 election was different and decisive. It changed Britain for a generation, in my view for the better.

The campaign was ugly, but as a veteran of campaigns since 1983, I can tell you that it only looked uglier than other campaigns. The internet and the digital savvy of the average voter has led to much more of campaigns being exposed. Thankfully, there are few hiding places for dirty tricks. I the long term I would hope the result will be cleaner campaigns. The big strategic message are the most important, in this respect the Conservatives won hands down with ‘Get Brexit Done’. Boris ‘the clown’, is now Boris the Prime Minister. I hope he grows into his role and makes a success of it.

About Graham Robb

Graham is the owner of Recognition PR and promoter of entrepreneurship on various bodies. You can connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.