Page 170 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

In the wake of the 1983 defeat, not only did Labour transform its
approach to advertising and public relations in general, it selected
in Neil Kinnock a leader whom it was felt could compete with
the Conservatives, on the terrain of image as well as policy. Like
Margaret Thatcher, he permitted his dress-sense, hair-style, and
voice to be coached and shaped. His successor, John Smith, was
equally adept at image-management, although the constituents of
his image (intelligent, reliable, safe) were different from Kinnock’s
(passionate, tough). Smith’s successor, Tony Blair, was elected
largely because of his perceived ability to look and sound good for
the cameras, and to communicate, with his image, to the electorally
crucial voters of southern England. Nick Jones argues that Blair was
indeed the first UK party leader to have been chosen for his ability
to say ‘only what he wanted to say and what he believed to be true’
(1997, p. 9).
It may be, of course, that the importance of image is overstated,
and that audiences have gradually learned to ‘read’ the practices of
image-management and discount them. Thatcher’s successor John
Major was widely perceived as ‘lacking’ in image, meaning that his
style was rather plain and simple. During the 1992 general election
campaign Major adopted the old-fashioned practice of addressing
the public from a ‘soapbox’ erected outside his campaign bus.
Notwithstanding the occasional egg or flour bomb, Major’s simple,
homely style of campaigning did not prevent victory on 9 April and
may indeed have contributed to it. In the view of some commen-
tators the ascendancy of John Major as Conservative leader and
Prime Minister signified a retreat from – or backlash against – the
sophisticated image management techniques which characterised
British politics in the 1980s. On the other hand, Major’s ‘lack’ of
image may in itself be read as a careful construction, calculated to
position him, brand-like, in the political marketplace. While Neil
Kinnock displayed a slick and glossy self, John Major would be seen
as the ‘real thing’, unadorned and transparent.
In Brendan Bruce’s view, Major’s image comprised the following
elements: comparative youth; good looks; modest social back-
ground; courteousness; ‘ordinariness’ and the common touch
(considered to be an advantage after eleven years of Thatcher). In
short, Major was all the things which Mrs Thatcher was not.
Major’s image-managers also stressed his love of cricket (Bruce,
1992, p. 93). Under the chairmanship of Chris Patten, the Tories’
public relations strategy was to portray Major as representing
‘Thatcherism with a human face’. As Patten put it, ‘we are trying to

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