A poster reading "Vote Green Party" on the back of a chair

There’s been a lot of talk in the leadership and deputy leadership contests about “cutting through”. But what does that mean? What does “cutting through” look like?

When we talk about cutting through), I guess we mean having a high profile in the media and in general public awareness. For me, one key thing would be no longer having to tell anyone who our leader(s) is (are). Chatting to friends recently who are not by any means politically unaware, it became clear that one of them still thinks Caroline Lucas is leader of the Green Party. I’m guessing this is not uncommon. How do we change that?

One answer is: ask our members. Get their views in a giant brainstorming exercise. Use the commitment and creativity of our members – but give them the help they need to take action. For instance: every local party should be providing its local media with content every week that talks about our key messages. A revamped national communications strategy should include giving local parties that content as a matter of course every week.

I see this as part of the deputy leader’s role: connecting local parties with the centre and using their vision to boost us at every level. As Transition Town co-founder Rob Hopkins makes clear in his book “How to fall in love with the future”, you need to imagine the future to bring it into being. We’re failing to communicate a positive vision – partly because our media thrives on disaster – and as a result we’re falling behind the curve.

Is it all doom and gloom? Of course not. But we are failing to connect with “ordinary” people at the scale that is so desperately needed. For instance, we should be talking about our economic vision: we should be banging on about how a national economy cannot be compared to a household budget. Again and again until the message hits home.

Migration? You can’t neutralise the argument – you have to face it. There are always going to be a few free-riders in any economy. End of story. The vast majority of people who come to this country want to contribute and have a good life. And they will also fight to keep their vision alive. I know – I’ve been a migrant several times.

So we need to be robust and honest, not pushing the ordinary voter away. There has been some talk of engaging in “class struggle” or class war. That’s ill-conceived – we are not intending to turn into the Socialist Worker Party, I hope. Let’s cut through by all means – but let’s cut through to a broad swathe of the public.

Image credit: Jon Craig – Creative Commons