First Draft #7: a newsletter on public language
On the perils of policy and Powerpoint
When no policy is the best policy
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer sought to reset his leadership with a major speech and “policy blitz”. Leaving aside the merit of his proposals, it’s worth considering if policy announcements are in fact a good way to appeal to voters. Politicians in the mire often turn to policy to get them out. But do voters care?
One of the best political books of the last ten years argues: not so much. Berkeley professor Gabriel Lenz’s data-rich Follow the Leader? (2012) outlines distinct visions of democracy, “optimistic” and “pessimistic”, and tests which better reflects reality. In the optimistic case, voter preferences are determined by reasoned consideration of policies. On the pessimistic view, they are shaped by frivolities — anything from blind party loyalty to a politician’s looks to rum punch at polling stations (to use an example from 18th century America).
Lenz tracks voter attitudes over decades and finds policy rarely accounts for shifting views. Even when policy issues dominate the news, voters seldom switch allegiance to politicians whose positions match their own. Instead they “follow rather blindly, forming attachments to politicians for various reasons and then adopting those politicians’ policies”. Lenz concludes that democracy is “inverted”. Instead of politicians following the will of the people, the people seem to follow the will of politicians.
But perhaps there’s a third way. In The New Working Class (2018), Starmer’s policy chief Claire Ainsley argues convincingly that voters are neither rational judges of policy nor totally frivolous. Instead, she says, citing psychologist Jonathan Haidt, they vote based on social and psychological attachments to groups. It is important, therefore, for the leader of the opposition to tell a story that resonates with voters’ group identification. Policy, she writes, should be “part of that story, rather than the story itself.”
If building a case as leader of the opposition is like building a skyscraper, policy is the neon light at the apex. It can turn heads, but only because of the edifice beneath. Successful opposition leaders recognise this, and tend to spend a lot of time rebuffing calls for more detail. Wilson, Blair and Cameron each fended off accusations of vagueness. Starmer would do well to follow their lead. Rather than get in the weeds, he should focus on building an emotional connection with an electorate yet to work him out. That will take time, but time, with the election years away, is on his side. (AD)
Death by powerpoint
Powerpoint isn’t just bad. It kills. The forefather of data visualisation, Edward Tufte, published an extraordinary essay in 2003 documenting Powerpoint’s power to mislead, laying at least some of the blame for the Challenger Disaster at its door. “Many, many years ago, we outlawed Powerpoint presentations at Amazon,” said Jeff Bezos in 2018, “and it’s probably the smartest thing we ever did.” Think what you like of Bezos, he stands down as Amazon CEO having run the company rather well. I like to think the reason was the premium he placed on the written word, which he (rightly) believed far more comprehensively conveys an idea. Spared the slides, Amazon executives write 6-page prose memos before meetings, which begin in silence as the attendees read them. While most of us will only ever be metaphorically killed by powerpoint, it is worth remembering that no-one need suffer that fate. (JW)
Jargon Busters: Close of Play
As those who surreptitiously watch cricket at their desk well know, work happens when play doesn’t. The end of the working day is, therefore, certainly not the “close of play”. In fact, the close of play was precisely the moment I stopped looking at the cricket and started looking at my work again. Better to catch me before play begins. (JW)
The Spartan art of concision
In ancient Greece, Spartans were known for their brevity as much as their bravery. Masters of the pithy one-liner and put-down, it is from Lacedaemon — the name of a mythical Spartan king — that we derive the modern word “laconic”, meaning excessive briefness in speech or writing.
A story from Herodotus, the historian, illustrates the point. He tells of the arrival of exiled Samians in Sparta. Starving, the Samians give a lengthy speech appealing for grain, only to be dismissed by the impatient Spartans. They return with an empty sack and a much shorter speech — a single sentence, reading, simply, “sack needs grain”. For the Spartans it was still too wordy. The word “sack” is redundant, they respond. “Needs grain” would have done the job. Touché. When making a speech or presentation, be Spartan. (ZH)
NEW BOOK: Conflicted by Ian Leslie
Ad-strategist-turned-writer Ian Leslie has long been a voice of reason on the internet and his new book, Conflicted, can help you be more like him. The problem isn’t that we have too much disagreement, Leslie argues, but that we disagree badly. Disagreement can engender knowledge, happiness, better relationships — but only if we’re good-humoured, aware of our biases and open to admitting when we are wrong. Leslie’s excellent piece for the Guardian last week on how to disagree better online is a good taster. The book is out now. (AD)
Jargon Busters: Straw Man
In 1520, Martin Luther accused the Catholic Church of attacking a “man of straw” instead of his true arguments, by which he meant a caricature designed to be easily dismantled. Those of us who write other people’s arguments for a living know straw men all too well. They beckon to us constantly, though are really a terrible way of making an argument (good perhaps for firing up your side, less good if you actually want to convince anyone else). How strange then that a “straw man” has now come to mean a “first draft” in Business English. I hope our First Draft amounts to a little more than that. (JW)
Language and beyond
In arguments, most people instinctively “preach or prosecute”, writes psychologist Adam Grant in the New York Times. To change someone’s mind, however, you need to help them find their own motivation to change. That begins with asking questions and listening attentively.
“But what really kept her going – gave her the keenest sense of the relationship between engulfment and mastery – was the quest for perfect prose. ” A brilliant essay on the life and writing of Joan Didion, marking the release of her new essay collection.
A beautifully clear and true account of Starmer’s predicament in The Economist’s most recent Bagehot column (£). Bagehot observes the great lawyer politicians of the era — Clinton, Blair, Obama — were “storytellers and preachers”; it’s not enough to build an iron-clad case. The Horrid Henry/Perfect Peter analogy is perfect, too.
Insightful reflections on empire from Stephen Bush in his excellent review of two new books on the subject from Sathnam Sanghera and Kehinde Andrews.
Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker essay on Lucian Freud is a sumptuous read. Descriptions of mid-20th century bohemian London are a treat: “...a fever dream of racetracks and Soho clubs, with literary and political and artistic lives mixed, mostly in a lake of alcohol.”
The high criticism continues with Phil’s close-reading of a rhetorical battle for the ages at Handforth Parish Council.
The Daily’s episode on the legacy of US shock jock Rush Limbaugh is full of interesting details. It was Limbaugh who popularised the word “feminazi”. And his rise was made possible by a single act of deregulation: Reagan’s 1987 scrapping of the Fairness Doctrine, which forced balance on broadcasters. In 1960, there were only two talk radio stations in America; by 1995, there were 1,130.
Development expert Duncan Green on jargon in the aid sector. He’s right about the puffed up machismo of many jargon terms.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta was raised by poor undocumented Dominican immigrants in New York and is now a leading Rome scholar and assistant professor at Princeton. This NYT story tells of his lonely battle to resist the whitewashing of antiquity.
On a recent episode of Vox’s excellent media podcast, Recode, the host asks NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen to grade the collective performance of reporters covering Trump. His answer: A minus for investigations; for everything else, D. He blames what he calls the “Savvy Style” of reporting, which he defines as the quality of “being shrewd, practical, hyper-informed, perceptive, ironic, ‘with it,’ and unsentimental in all things political”. The pervasiveness of the savvy style, says Prof Rosen, means serious reporters struggle to capture outrageous corruption. An interesting listen.
New from us
Phil’s New Statesman column on the under-reported pleasures of lockdown.
Phil in the Standard on the thinking behind the Tory culture wars.
And Phil’s analysis of the Prime Minister’s (un)lockdown address on Monday.
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