Nick Clegg's call for a 'narrative' for the Liberal Democrats has aroused some interest and confusion.
I'm a recent convert to the joys of the narrative myself. What is one? It's the story that you tell to link things together and give them meaning.
What links Tony Blair's resignation, the Lib Dem policy on taxation, Ming Campbell's next speech, and last week's local elections? Whatever answer you give will almost certainly be a narrative. It might even be a narrative about the Liberal Democrats, and possibly is a positive narrative about us rather than a negative one.
Why should we have one? Quite simply, because it's in our interests to be talking about our narrative rather than anyone else's. We can be the heroes of our own narrative; we're not going to be cast the same way in Gordon Brown: The Movie, or How Dave Learned To Stop Being Nasty And Get Elected, which are the two big political motion pictures showing on at the moment.
People might say that we have the best policies, or the best leaflets, or other things which make us unique. And while those things are true, they should build our narrative rather than being seen as an alternative to it. What matters is not so much the detail of a policy debate but what our policy says about us as a party.
To give you an idea of the power of narrative I'd like to suggest a thought experiment. You only know Harry Potter through a narrative. Think for a moment what it would be like if Harry Potter was a real person (and the world was broadly as described by JK Rowling), but the books about him had never existed.
You might have read the odd bit about Harry Potter in the newspapers - after all he's been in them a fair bit. You probably followed the Quidditch world cup. You've heard of Hogwarts, a public school with an accident-prone reputation. But if you don't pay attention to wizard celebrities, then you have a very limited idea of who or what Harry Potter is. If you met him in person he'd probably be very different to the impression you have of him.
Taking it a step further - what if you're researching Harry Potter? You can find his birth certificate. You can read about him in Cornelius Fudge's memoirs. You can interview Ginny Weasley. You can run a Lexis Nexis search that will give you 99% of the mentions of him published in the Wizard media. You would amass a huge amount of data - dry, boring, partially contradictory and semi-incomprehensible data. You would probably if you tried get at least seven volumes of notes. They might make sense to you but you'd have a hard time explaining them to someone else.
JK Rowling could have published the Harry Potter novels in that format. She didn't. She published them as a seven-volume story. It's more entertaining, exciting, involving, emotional, inviting and comprehensible to tell a story than to present a collection of viewpoints and facts. The same is true in politics.
Monday, 14 May 2007
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6 comments:
It's an evocative analogy, but how do you trawl that back and turn it into something actually workable?
Unless, of course, you're suggesting that we should get someone to write a 7 volume series of Young Ming novels.
This is the first time I've read something about narratives in the context of politics that has roughly corresponded with what I think/thought a narrative was.
There seems to be a view (not sure where it comes from) that a single sentence/statement of a fairly abstract nature is what we're after, but I am not at all convinced the suggestions I have seen in that direction help very much.
I appreciate James is joking, but apart from being reasonably brief, I think where the challenge differs is that narratives typically are about individual lives (or even specific adventures) and a political party's can't be. Our leaders have had and do have de facto narratives of sorts, but one of the problems is that they don't relate to each other that well, and that's one face of the problem.
This hasn't been much help, but I would take the chronological thing at least from Chris, and start with one or two historical reference points to ground a critique of present arrangements which gives us some sense of permanence, possible relevance and general belonging.
The difficult thing is settling what the one or two historical moments that matter are. But at least that brings us firmly into real world things that happened and affected people rather than the kind of rubric that pads out manifestos (of all parties) but looks pretty empty on its own.
Sorry for going on a bit...
Seven volumes is too much.. and yet what Nick Clegg said is also about relationship building with the electorate. Or you could have the Campaigns version, the opposite of the pile of volumes - Boy With Scar Wins Cup.
That's quite a nice analogy. Of course (like all analogies) its not perfect, but it does illustrate a point.
What I think we should be doing is taking the core of liberalism (individual freedom) and developing our narrative around that. Where do our policies fit in? Why does this work better than state control?
There's room for the philosophers in there, but there's also room for the campaigners who should be injecting their leaflets with this narrative.
Not just 'we oppose this' or 'we support this', but 'we oppose/support this because it fits in with our narrative like so...'.
It doesn't need to be a lot, but it needs to be there.
It will also help prevent the base populism which starts to creep in if you're not careful...
@James/Duncan: The point is that we've got the seven volumes of material, the problem is that it's easier to sum up Harry Potter in a few sentences or a few pages than it is to sum up the Liberal Democrats...
Oh bloody hell, you've got a blog as well? Is everyone in the damn building somewhere online?
Not a bad analogy actually, and yes, even the Campaigns version would be useful. I think the main reason I rejoined was that Huhne managed to build up a sort of narrative perception in the leadership campaign; he really put across what the party should be or, the principles, not just the issue of the day.
We know w're Liberals, but most of the country doesn't even know what the word means (especially with the US usage really meaning socialist).
Ah well. Gods, another blog to add to the feeds, I'm doomed.
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