UK political parties and texting

This is a long post.

I have no political affiliation.  I once went to a Conservative party meeting in Chelsea (it was a business thing, they were interested in our texting services).  I arrived at the event straight from business meetings and was thus sporting the brightest, sharpest pinstripe Saville Row could muster.  My business partner Hetty was similarly dressed.  Almost immediately we were accosted by some Conservatives (or ‘Tories’) in their thirties. 

‘Are you Tory?’ one asked.  The congregation of about 6 of them waited, holding in their breath, to get my answer. 
‘Not at all,’ I responded.  Each of them drew in a little more breath, some eyes widened.
‘But, you’re.. er… a business man?  At a Tory event?’ one asserted.
‘I’m a Capitalist,’ I responded, then modified that to, ‘Caring Capitalist.’
‘Ahh so you are Tory then!!’ exclaimed one relieved and clearly excitable young lady with huge teeth.
‘No,’ and then I qualified this by explaining that I felt ‘They’re all [political parties] as bad as each other’.

Put someone like the British equivalent of Jack Welch in charge of UK Government.  That’d be good.  We’d all get an efficiently run, thoughtful and caring service run to a set of agreed objectives and principles on all levels. 

The real issue I have is that it doesn’t matter what I think or believe.  It doesn’t matter what ideas or thoughts I have.  What matters is that party A, B or C gets into power and then tries to stay there as much as possible.  At the last election, there were 5 different candidates standing for the local election as councillors.  None of which I’d met.  None of which came to the door.  None of which gave a hoot about my thoughts. 

I think there was a leaflet shoved through the door by the Labour Councillor.  I noticed that it was devoid of all mention of Tony Blair (as advised and architected centrally) lest that tar the councillor with a national political brush.

There’s probably a local council thing I can go to.  Some dusty hall, somewhere.  That doesn’t work for me though.  I don’t interact that way.   I don’t want to sit and listen to people on the elder side of 50 debate whether the local fishmongers should be allowed to install double glazing.   Time is precious.  I have Sky+ (‘tivo’) so that I can record the odd TV broadcast that is relevant to me.  Rarely do I ever watch anything live.  I have better things to do.  Life has moved on, the pace of life has changed.

Talk to me by email, blog,…. or text.

A few years ago in 2003, I began to get really, really annoyed that the political process in this country is limited to screaming at people in town hall meetings or watching political figures participate in stage managed television appearances. 

The grass around the town I’m currently living in needs cut.  It’s been left to grow knee high in some places.  Somebody fix it.  Who do I speak to?   I am not phoning the local council.  I’ve done it a few times.  A faceless jobsworth civil servant takes my call, transfers me through various departments where half the time, people are out at lunch, on fact finding trips to Jamaica or busy in ‘meetings’.  Eventually I leave a message with a clock-watcher who’s annoyed I’ve phoned at 4:58pm as they were already meant to be out the door. 

The issue is connecting with responsibility. 

Almost every single one of us in Britain has a mobile phone (according to the over saturation statistics).  Why can’t we text (or email) enquiries to our local councillors and get an immediate or quick response?

That would re-engage me.  I’d participate in the local and national debates.  IF I thought that a) someone was listening and b) that my participation could well have an effect.

Every house should have a little business card stuck on their Refridgerator containing the text number of the local councillor for their ward or area, the text number of the local MP and a national text number for national related issues and enquiries.  (Similarly with email — but I’m focusing here on text since it’s much more immediately available to everyone than email).

If I have an issue at 2am in the morning, I should be able to fire off a question to my local councillor and get an answer by 10am the next day.  That would make me feel engaged. 

On the other hand, this would give a proper mandate to those representing us. 

e.g. "I’ve had 400 texts from people in the town this morning complaining about the noise in the High Street last night."

Far more immediate.  Far more relevant and direct.

So it was with this view in mind that I worked with my colleague Hetty and crafted an array of mobile services for political parties here in the UK.  I wanted to help empower and engage and use our experience of managing and delivering communication between a wide array of participants via mobile. 
I was excited at the potential to actually play a part in changing the way politics is conducted for the better.  Text messaging represented the first time entire local or national communities could quickly, easily and cheaply voice opinions.  You didn’t need a £500 computer to join the debate.  Nor did you have to be constrained by time or location (to turn up to meetings). 

We met with as many MPs and political people as we could.  We emailed and phoned to get meetings.  We eventually connected with people right up the top of the Conservative party (hence my Chelsea experiences) but Labour was a fortress of "no", "sorry, no" and "errrrrrr no we don’t do that" whenever
we tried to get meetings.  Liberals had nothing to say to us.  The Green Party’s email system didn’t seem to like us.  So we focused on the Conservative party.   

The Big Conversation
Conveniently, the Labour Government had just launched it’s ‘Big Conversation’ (see BBC News article or the Internet Archive link) intended to engage the country in discussion.  I was excited at this because there was a text option.  Click the image to the left to see it in more detail.

I was scandalised by the fact it cost people £0.25 PLUS the cost of a standard rate text message (i.e. £0.35) to send a text to the service.  Outrageous!  There was no excuse.  Why should the Government be making revenue on opinions sent in?   The Big Conversation got some headlines and then disappeared from view.  Unfortunately I think that’s exactly what it was designed for. 

So we pushed ahead talking to the Tories.  I met up with their chief election strategist, a pleasant chap.  I explained the concept around the services we were offering.  He got it immediately. 

I’m paraphrasing now – he said something like ‘how do we get the mobile numbers and their permission?’  I was astonished that they didn’t have some sort of data capture strategy in place.  I discussed how I thought mobile numbers could be captured with permission — engage people on a local and national level, I said.  Challenge people to communicate with you — and then be absolutely 100% fantastic at responding and listening.  We can help with that bit.  Make sure you respond to every text message with an immediate acknowledgement ,I said.  Then follow it up with a personal response within the hour or within the day.  Demonstrate to people that they can have a personal dialog with you. 
Alas they had to use their funds for other purposes and we never managed to do anything with them.

I was agog. Shocked.  I thought political parties were smart.  I thought they’d have been loving the concept of using text to cut out mainstream media.

In fact, our trump card for converting politicians to texting was phenomenal.  At least I thought it was.  Here it is:  If you know a newspaper is planning a hatchet job on a candidate or the party — and you invariably know a few hours before the paper is distributed — you could use text to send a message to 500,000 people letting them know about the hatchet job and setting the record straight, … BEFORE they read the newspaper.

I thought that was extremely powerful.  I was expecting some political party somewhere to get this.  I was expecting someone, somewhere to say ‘right boys, 20% of all our expenditure is going on texting and blogging — this is the future of engagement’.

But no!  Once or twice I saw a few politicians use text messaging.  Here’s a PDF (link) about Tony Blair and London Mayoral candidate Simon Hughes using texting.

They just didn’t get it.  For some reason they seem to think that getting-people-to-text-you is a good thing.  It’s not about the number of messages. It’s the medium and the engagement.  It’s what you DO with the messages.  How you respond.  It’s a personal medium.  I text you.. I expect you to respond.  I don’t expect a ‘Thank you for your text please vote for me’ reply.  I expect to become part of the dialog and conversation — no different than if I was sat in front of Tony Blair or Simon Hughes for five minutes.

If it was just Tony and I, … I’d ask a question. He’d respond.  I’d follow-up.  I’d ask more.  He’d engage me.  I’d engage him.  We’d get somewhere.   This experience has to be mapped to the medium of text. 

Still, three years later, the political parties together with national and local government just don’t seem to have a clue.

We don’t bother talking to any nowadays.  We can certainly still provide the services.  If anything, I think the opportunity to use texting is quickly disappearing — leaving in place a nation of apathetic citizens sharing the universal viewpoint: ‘They’re all the same’.