Communications Presentation by Ed Davey MP

8.28.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 18th Sep 2006

Edward Davey MP

Ed Davey MP, the Liberal Campaigns and Communications Chair spoke to Conference today outlining our Communications plan. I also managed to have a chat with Ed whilst at Conference about our e-campaigning and the EARS database - which all sounds very techie but was very useful and I hope to either get Ed to make a presentation to the West Midlands Moving Forward Seats or indeed make a presentation myself. Anyway below is what he said, obviously there is much more going on than what he could publicly say but it gives a flavour.

Conference, I want to let you into a secret, right from the start: there's been a lot of preparation work for this week. Ming has been insistent that, whatever we do, whenever we do it, we do our very best.

And he's right - no more so, than when it comes to campaigning.

For, if you look at the evidence, it's clear we can win at the next election, anywhere in Britain - if we do the right things now.

We can overtake Labour in their heartland seats. That's why William Rennie defeated Labour in Dunfermline, Brown's backyard, with a swing of 16 per cent.

But we are challenging the Conservatives too, in their heartland seats. That is why Ben Abbotts scared the life out of them in Bromley - their 17th safest seat - with a swing of 14 per cent.

Look at the evidence of the local elections. Nationwide, our council candidates beat Labour into third place. We run councils in Liverpool and Lewes, Cardiff and Cornwall - all over the country.

The fact is we are the national party now. We are capable of winning in any part of the country. Labour and Tories are not. They are becoming localized parties as we are becoming Britain's party.

We have a huge opportunity.

And my argument today is that there are 3 reasons we can be more optimistic than ever about our future.

Technology. Community Politics. And our Leader.

Let me start with Ming. Just compare the leaders. Ours - captain of the British Olympic team. For 7 years, the fastest man in Britain. Today, we'll just settle for the country's best leader.

Better than Blair of Baghdad. Even the generals criticize him. So we have a Prime Minister who can't control his generals - and a Deputy Prime Minister who can't control his privates.

Better than Brown - he's so hungry for power he looks at Blair like a cannibal looks at a missionary. That's no way to treat George Bush's butler.

Better than David Cameron - all spin and no substance. And such an irredeemable toff that when he does a PR stunt with his bicycle - he has his shoes chauffeur-driven to the House of Commons.

David Cameron blows with the prevailing wind. He's flipped on Iraq. And flopped on Europe. He flipped to the Right to draft Michael Howard's manifesto. Now he's flopped back to hug a hoodie. You can't say Cameron doesn't stand for anything - because he'll stand for anything you like.

Under Ming Campbell, we are putting forward the politics of substance - radical policies to make Britain fairer. Like Vince Cable's income tax cuts for the low paid, so that everyone can earn £7,000 a year tax free. Like our plans on more affordable childcare for families.

And we are sticking to our environmental principles. With our Green Tax Switch, and our determination to say No to Nuclear Power.

But it is not enough to have the best Leader and the best policies. We owe it to our council candidates, our Parliamentary candidates, our members and our millions of supporters to organize our campaigning in the most professional way possible.

So that's why Ming asked me to undertake the Campaign Review.

I hope you have copies of this background note. It focuses on Community Politics and on technology.

Let me give one example from it. The new tool to build single issue websites.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to integrate web campaigning into normal campaigning. So if you are campaigning against local NHS cuts or to save an open space from development, you can have a special website, just for that campaign.

At no cost. That can be set up in 10 minutes. By someone whose technical IT knowledge is so small, they don't know the difference between a url and http. In other words, people like me. Try it out!

We're still experimenting with much of this - and we will need feedback to improve as we go. But I'm clear that we have to press ahead with this now: there's no time to lose. We have vital elections next May - in Scotland, Wales and most of England. And - get ready for this - we could face a snap General Election next year.

But while pressing ahead fast, we must also engage party-wide in a debate on campaigning - and above all, in a debate on the future of Community Politics.

Sometimes in our campaigning, I think we can forget that we campaign for much more than just electoral victory. We campaign for our communities.

Let me give you an example of the problem I mean. Sometimes there's a danger that our campaigning becomes like a formula.

This many leaflets. This many target letters. This many doors knocked on. Equals victory?

And the politics, the enthusiasm and the motivation is wrung out of tired activists - and even bright-eyed fresh recruits like me.

Don't misunderstand me. I still believe we must do all that hard work. But we have to ensure that the campaigning itself delivers a more Liberal Democrat society - informing people, listening hard to people and giving people back power over their own community.

Sometimes, in some places, we have been in danger of replicating the machine politics of Labour and the Tories. When Liberal Democrats must be a movement.

We must be a movement that engages voters with politics. A political movement that leads with our values. That inspires people to act in politics for the very first time.

So when all local parties in an area are campaigning to save a post office, open a new school or clean up graffiti, people can see that the Liberal Democrat approach, what drives us, is genuinely different.

The New Liberal political thinkers behind the 1906 Liberal landslide 100 years ago said similar things. Hobhouse talked about the active community. His was an insight about how an organic politics - built from the grassroots - could bring more people into party politics, yes, but also many more into taking responsibility for their own lives and the world around them.

That surely is Community Politics. Something this party developed and practices. Many here have been brilliant community politicians for decades.

But I think we've work to do on our Community Politics.

That's why I believe we should have a party-wide training push on what we might call "Community Politics in the 21st Century". Developing the new skills of Community Politics made possible through e-campaigning. With training sessions not just at conferences, but in local constituencies, with MPs and campaigners training about grassroots politics, at the grassroots.

I hope the launch at this Conference, this evening, by ALDC, of essays entitled "Community Politics Today" will help kick off a debate. About the changing natures and shapes of community. About the impact of technology. And about how a Liberal Democrat government would support and enable Community Politics to thrive.

But if we are going to succeed further with Community Politics in the decades to come, we can't just talk about it.

We have to organise better - with more integrated campaigning. And the launch of the Green Tax Switch campaign, by Ming yesterday, is our first attempt to do just that.

But, above all, we have to embrace new campaign techniques.

None of us knows where political campaigning will be in 20 years' time. But we do know that our party has to embrace the political changes brought by all this new media - whether it's the internet or mobile phones.

I visited South Korea recently. Mainly because I have the largest concentration of Koreans living in my constituency anywhere in western Europe. But South Korea is also the most wired nation on earth. With over 70% of households with high speed internet.

That's changed their politics. In 2002, the third placed presidential candidate came from behind to win. And his party then won the parliamentary elections in 2004. There, the internet and mobile phones all helped Korea's most progressive party circumvent the traditional conservative media, to challenge the establishment.

Interested?

Well, people rather more technically knowledgeable than me have been working hard. Thinking hard. Learning. And the background note sets out some of what we've done and are planning to do on e-campaigning.

The note isn't comprehensive. Our opponents tell us that WE have taught them everything they know about Community Politics. So we're not going to teach them everything we're learning now. We'll keep some surprises in our laptops.

But, perhaps you remain skeptical about all this - the emails, texts and blogging?

Well, remember this. More people use the internet than voted at the General Election.

Amongst the 18 to 25 age group, internet usage is already a staggering 81%.

For increasing numbers, the internet is their main source of news.

That's why I believe we've got to target people like Online Olly.

The youthful graduate. In their first or second jobs. Caring passionately about the environment. International in their outlook.

We seldom canvas Online Olly. They share a letterbox with their flatmates and 5 other households in the block. They don't read our leaflets, let alone direct mail, which to them is worse than spam.

They do surf the net. They often have 2 or more email addresses. And they do read text messages.

Online Olly helped us win in Bristol West, Hornsey and Wood Green and Manchester Withington. And she and he can help us win many more seats next time.

You see, a major part of this thinking on e-campaigning, is to see how the national party can reach out beyond the target seats. Winning the marginals must remain central to the strategy. Yet, if we can use technology to train, support and enthuse all Liberal Democrats, everywhere, that must be even better.

Here's the point: technology is politics' great leveler. It's where the money of Labour and the Tories can't win so easily. We must use it.

Not least, because some day, we will get proportional representation for Westminster. Just as we've won it for the European elections, Scotland, Wales and London. So the national party needs a strategy to support our campaigns in every constituency. I like to call this, the "winning under PR" strategy.

To ensure this review isn't just a one-off exercise, and it becomes embedded within our culture, we're establishing a completely new Department in Cowley Street, called the Innovations Department. So we get ahead and stay ahead.

Then we have data. Canvas data. Census data. Survey data. You know how important all this is to successful campaigning. Yet nationally, we have no database for this. Yes, we have EARS locally - in most constituencies. But bringing that data together is not easy or quick.

This is even more serious, when you remember we are increasingly fighting elections across party boundaries - for Europe and the devolved assemblies.

We need to bring data together and share data across the party more efficiently - so we can take sensible decisions - often in the heat of polling day.

It's clear our opponents have such systems. It's clear from our visit to Canada and the USA this is happening elsewhere. They are collecting more and more data. Data on age. On household income. A range of demographic and lifestyle data.

I read an article in the Washington Post titled, "The Republican Party knows you don't like anchovies".

Now, I've never fought an election on anchovies - but you take my point.

We will be scrupulous in meeting data protection obligations, but anyone who has witnessed the ferocious target mail of the Tories and Labour these days, must recognise the need for Liberal Democrats to develop our own approach.

So, to complement EARS, we are building a national database - to be called the Woodings Database. Why Woodings? Well, to remember a Chris Rennard of 100 years ago - a William Woodings, who wrote the then standard campaign manual. This was a time of great campaign innovation. The 1906 Liberal landslide was the first election of the motor car - and Woodings was central to all the new thinking.

Now the Woodings Database won't be completed by next May. But we've started. And we are looking for database specialists across the party to assist our project team.

Which actually is the review's final theme - the need to make it easier for members to contribute.

We are the only fully democratic party in British politics. The members are the party. Yet, locally and nationally, too often the membership can seem like an afterthought.

Yet the ideas now being rolled out - online policy consultations, as standard; a healthy Lib Dem blogging community; the plan to build a members' bulletin board on the members' only website - all these must be embraced. Just look at the party's bloggers. This year we held the first Lib Dem blogger of the year - and congratulations to Stephen Tall for winning it.

For as we campaign with less cash than our competitors, we must act smarter, using all these talents across the party.

That's why I've set up the Communications Agency, to enable members who are professionals in advertising, PR, market research etc, to contribute pro bono, their time and skills. Some of the leading talents in these fields, working for us, for free.

It's why the Innovations Department will use skilled members as volunteers to help deliver its work on new campaign techniques.

All of these initiatives will remain - and must remain - accountable to the party's elected bodies. Yet as the Federal Policy Committee has shown, we can engage members outside any narrow committee structure.

You see, if we are going to campaign better, we have to work, talk and act our values.

We are different.

Tony Blair preaches at people. David Cameron sells to people. Liberal Democrats put Trust in People.

That must never change. And my message today is that, with our new Leader, through our Community Politics and with the power of new technology, we can campaign for the Liberal Democrat Britain we want, with even greater confidence than before.

We have a country to be proud of and a Government to be ashamed of. Isn't it time

Britain had a Government even half as good as its people?

That imposes on us a duty - to apply serious campaigning to match our serious policies and our serious leaders. That is how to stop being the Nearly People of British politics. That is how to give British voters a real choice at last. That is how to win.

It's time. We have the campaign tools now. Let's do the job. Fellow Liberal Democrats, let's start now.