📜 If you're explaining, you're losing

Create that connection between your policy ask and what politicians care about

David Cameron spoke a lot about being a parent and having to face the battles in the kitchen with his own kids about things like sugary drinks, which fuelled his support for child health policies. Nick Clegg came at free school meals from the education perspective. He cared about fairness in educational access - the idea that it shouldn't matter where you're from or what background you have, you should be given a fair opportunity. His advisers and Henry Dimbleby were key to convincing him by linking nutrition to educational outcomes. So you need these people who have done the deep thinking to make those arguments to the politicians, to then align them with their own perspectives and ideas.

Surround yourself with people who think differently

Do the research to understand how to frame your ideas so they align with decision-makers’ beliefs, principles and values, and appeal more broadly to the electorate. Some will have an instinctive sense of how to frame an issue, but more often than not you need to do the communications research to really identify a way forward that is not inhibited or shaped by our own individual biases. That includes how you do the research - working with those who don’t share your fundamental value set on work like this gives a real depth to your understanding that surrounding yourself with ideological bedfellows does not.

Don’t get stuck in explain mode

Lean into arguments that ignite an emotional response – people’s minds aren’t changed by statistics but stories. William Hague is right - if you're explaining, you're losing. Rather than spending a huge amount of political capital - time, energy, resources - explaining why something should be done, work on building compelling arguments that feel like “no-brainers” to people you want to persuade. Politicians have limited political capital, so if your issue requires a lot of it to be spent, they likely won’t adopt it.