After Margaret Thatcher died, this leaflet from her third (but first successful) parliamentary campaign did the rounds on Twitter:
As an editor, I can't help noticing that there are four pages of the stuff, not to mention the usual assortment of random and pointless capitalisations (some things don't change).
I doubt, by the end of her political career, she would have stood on a platform of 'BENEFITS UP' — but I think, policy aside, it tells us a lot about how political communication changed in the second half of the 20th century. Fast forward to her leadership of the Conservative Party and her time as prime minister, and compare her first endearingly amateur leaflet with these very influential, clear and direct adverts. First, the Saatchi campaign that got her elected:
I doubt, by the end of her political career, she would have stood on a platform of 'BENEFITS UP' — but I think, policy aside, it tells us a lot about how political communication changed in the second half of the 20th century. Fast forward to her leadership of the Conservative Party and her time as prime minister, and compare her first endearingly amateur leaflet with these very influential, clear and direct adverts. First, the Saatchi campaign that got her elected:
We don't tend to think of Thatcher as one of the great political communicators — admirers and detractors both point more to her unshakeable ideology and her force of personality as the secrets of her success — but we might remember how much of the professionalised media management Blair, Mandelson and Campbell perfected in the New Labour era began with her and her press secretary Bernard Ingham. Perhaps, also, her dislike for nuance, subtlety and intellectual contortion allowed her to present simplified, easily understood messages in a way that has often eluded highbrow leftwing opponents.
The one epitaph being consistently applied by both friends and enemies is that 'you always knew what she stood for'. In politics I'd prefer to live by Keynes' maxim, and my instincts would always favour consensus over a 51% strategy: but we can't deny the power that the Thatcher brand held for so many people for a remarkably long time. The appeal of that uncomplicated approach, and the way her image personified her ideas, surely holds lessons for today's corporate and organisational communicators. Like Supermac, and in a way her biggest rivals Tarzan and the Welsh Windbag never matched, the Iron Lady embraced an opponent's epithet and turned it greatly to her own advantage.
However, I think today marks the moment the brand overreached itself; achieved Thatcheration point. A ceremonial funeral (a state funeral in all but name), complete with several hundred serving members of the armed forces, a cancellation of PMQs and a silencing of Big Ben, seems to me fitting only for a head of state, not a former head of government. That conservatives fail to grasp the difference shows the hold she still has on their worldview.
I hope, then, I won't upset anyone by suggesting that now is the time to lay the brand to rest, not to immortalise it.
