Corporate and Public Affairs

Political honeymoons aren't what they used to be

One year into office, President Barack Obama’s popularity rating is at an all-time low with some 41% of Americans strongly disapproving of his performance. Afghanistan, US health care reform, and over expectation have all played their part but, ultimately, political honeymoons just aren’t what they used to be. Is it really only 12 months since the ‘Yes we can’ enthusiasm?

So consider this. Come Christmas 2010 is there any reason to think that David Cameron will not be suffering a similar fate? The Number 10 in-tray for 2010 looks lousy already. Cameron’s red box will be full of painful spending cuts, intractable problems surrounding public services reforms, industrial unrest, and numerous foreign policy head aches. Like Obama, Cameron seeks to project himself as the change candidate, but the circumstances he inherits are not auspicious and his room for maneuver quite limited. Even now, before he has taken even one potentially unpopular decision as Prime Minister, the Conservatives hover at around only 39% in the polls.

We may be in bonfire season, but the plumes of smoke in Westminster are also fuelled by bridges being burned with Labour. This is risky and presumptive in the short term given the Tories relatively low lead, Labour registered more like 50% support six months before the 1997 election; it is short sighted and naïve in failing to adequately take into account the difficult agenda Cameron inherits; it is unsophisticated by underestimating the impact and momentum which could soon grow under a Labour leader who is not Gordon Brown. Each of these points invites debate. They may be right or may be wrong, but the advice that business needs to do more to hedge its bets on the next five years is sound. There isn’t a senior Conservative in the land who won’t happily reflect on the businesses who ditched contact with them during the Tories wilderness years only to brazenly re-appear, back slapping them as the May election looms nearer. No business should make that mistake again as Labour looks to a period of opposition. Their post poll gloom may come and with it the inevitable infighting but the cycle will turn, opposition will frustrate, memories fade and Labour will be back as the party of ideas.

‘It’s about the strategy, stupid’ seems the most appropriate pin board notice for corporate communications and public affairs advisers. Heading Lansons public affairs team, my advice is that those organisations who have been most successful in recent years were not necessarily those who were ever present on the political canapé circuit. It was those who went to the politicians with ideas, solutions, expertise and credibility. The coming six months offers fantastic opportunities for businesses and organisations to promote their objectives. The risk is of positioning which only works for the short term. The bigger challenge is to properly anticipate the likelihood of a Conservative administration, but at the same time it builds alliances, promotes thinking and galvanises a cross section of public policy makers with a strategy which endures.

Ben Abbotts is Head of Public Affairs at Lansons