Apart from who will win, the really interesting thing about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is the virulently anti-toff character of Labour’s campaign. One has to wonder whether Labour’s election machine has simply gone mad – or whether there is nevertheless some method here.
It is obviously a measure of desperation to use such an attack, but it is based on some elementary rules of persuasion. As it happens the current issue of New Scientist lists eight research-backed persuasive techniques and the current Labour strategy fits four of them:
- There’s ‘framing’, turning the voting issue into something you feel comfortable with (class, instead of the government’s record).
- There’s simplicity: giving lots of reasons for making a particular decision works less well than giving just one or two.
- There’s a variation of mimicry, saying ‘we’re more like you, the other guys are different’.
- And there’s anger, rousing negative feelings such as envy. The only problem is that people aren’t so well persuaded once they see that manipulative techniques are being used, and in this case they’re pretty crass.
My guess is that Labour are quite deliberately experimenting with the class issue for future use. This is a weapons-test: they think maybe they have a nuclear device with Tory Toffs. The real target, of course, is David Cameron. The Bullingdon photo in the silo for deployment in the general election, and they want to use Crewe to see if it works.