🔎 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