Page 177 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

relations between the Prime Minister and the party
chairman; there would be a coherent communications
strategy to which all party spokesmen would be expected
to adhere; there would be no battle between rival adver-
tising agencies, for advertising was exclusively in the
hands of Saatchi and Saatchi; there would be a major
effort to co-ordinate the content and timing of ministers’
speeches, press conferences, election broadcasts, and
photo-opportunities, and key ministers would accord
priority to appearing on regional television.
(Ibid., p. 86)

In so far as this strategy resulted in electoral victory, it was
undeniably successful. While, as we have seen, John Major’s image
was self-consciously ‘unconstructed’, the co-ordination and
synchronisation of the Tories’ overall political message was
carefully planned and expertly executed.
Between 1992 and 1997, however, it all went wrong for the
Conservatives. As noted above, a series of ‘sleaze’ scandals and major
policy differences over European union destroyed its capacity to
control and shape the news agenda, leaving the leadership helpless
in the face of self-inflicted, self-destructive division and in-fighting.
When the 1997 election campaign began, it was, we can now see
with hindsight, already over, with the Tories reduced to their worst
electoral showing for more than a century. Much of this collapse
was the product of poor internal communication, as candidates
failed to receive adequate leadership from the party’s central office
and factions developed around contrasting approaches to Europe.
In 1997 the Tories were as ineffectual in their internal communi-
cation and campaign co-ordination as the Labour Party had ever
been.
Following the 1997 defeat the Tories elected a new leader,
William Hague, but remained unable to mount a serious challenge
to Tony Blair’s government. As was to be expected, the scale of the
1997 defeat set in motion a process of reform and renewal in both
the content and the style of Conservative communication which
was always going to be difficult (even if Labour had been weak and
vulnerable to an effective challenge, which it was not), and which
by the election of 2001 was far from complete. As this book went
to press the Conservative Party remained in a state of confusion as
to its message, confusion which seemed unlikely to be resolved in
time for the next likely election in 2005 or 2006.

156