🔎 10 influencing lessons from political heavyweights

I’ve been through 195 pages of interview transcripts with British political leaders to find the insights that a Policy Unstuck reader may be interested in. The interviews were conducted by Dolly Van Tulleken (read her Policy Unstuck interview) and Henry Dimbleby to explore health and obesity policy as part of their Nourishing Britain report.

Change doesn’t happen from just publishing reports

“While scientific studies, reports from public health agencies and recommendations from experts provided a strong evidence basis to support government intervention, having the political will and building the political case upon these helped to make real policy change. You can write a lot of reports but if no one reads them, is convinced of the argument or understands why they should take action, change won’t happen.”

—Former Prime Minister, Sir Tony Blair

Put another way: if you can’t make it politically salient, don’t expect to get political attention

“The civil servants will push things through, but they have to implement policy, which is being pushed by the politicians…. They will have their sets of priorities and you need to have a collision of Number 10s priorities, Treasury’s priorities, the department, an individual minister and just the stars aligning. And people have got to stick at it, and I think the thing is… trying to get something through is hard… [It's] not politically salient, this is the issue.”

—Former Minister of State for Employment, Jo Churchill

Get the Prime Minister interested if your issue spans government departments

“It doesn't mean the Prime Minister has to focus on it every day [but] there has to be a minister who is focused on it every day, and… when they need help from the Prime Minister, they get it.”

—Former Leader of the Conservatives, Lord William Hague

Because if not, you won’t survive write round

“All government policy goes to write round as you know, right? When you have multiple influencers in multiple departments, the ability to get stuff through write round was virtually impossible in an area like this.”

—Former Minister of State for Employment, Jo Churchill

Be aware of what will hold decision-makers back

“There is one other thing as well [which prevented change], which is a big thing, which is the political fear of hypocrisy and the political fear of preaching.”

—Former Leader of the Conservatives, Lord William Hague

If you’re up against a barrier, the three things to focus on…

"The first thing is… a targeted and effective campaign by a charismatic figure drawing attention to a defect in public policy means the government feels that they have to answer.

The second thing is that you can argue or make the case in different ways. I would say, 'What is your ideal of a perfect school?' to a Conservative audience...'What's the other thing they do? They have universal school meals for everyone in a communal environment… That's what they have at Eton and Harrow. So, that doesn’t necessarily mean that [Conservatives] are convinced [to support universal free school meals], but you argue not by analogy, but you argue by situating the argument somewhere else.

The third thing is being able to make the argument linked to broader outcomes. So, social justice outcomes, and… the cost to the health service and the contribution to the economy.”

—Former Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove

→ Creating arguments that work for your audiences, not you, is a recurring theme of Policy Unstuck interviews, read Save the Children’s Alison Griffin for more.

But, "Spend to save" arguments won’t cut it with Treasury

“When you say, 'Spend to save,' [Treasury] say, 'No. I'll see the spending but the savings will never come.’”

—Former Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock

→ Read former Secretary of State for Education Gillian Keegan or former Deputy Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit James Nation for more on this.

So build out pilot projects

“That makes a tremendous difference, it makes a tremendous difference. It facilitates the politics enormously, enormously if you can point to a place and say kids there are doing better because of XYZ.”

—Former Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Nick Clegg

Tell the story of the pilot projects, don’t overplay the data

“It’s about making it sellable… It’s about telling the story internally. How do we tell the story to the media? How do we tell the story to the public? So there probably is a job of work to do around storytelling, rather than just data about diabetes and heart attacks.”

—Former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health Seema Kennedy

→ Hire Cast from Clay to help you with this.

Get the small wins in

“Don't let perfection be enemy of the good, right? Go with the lowest hanging fruit.”

—Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid

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