BREXIT BALLS UP - How David Cameron lost a debate he really should have won with one hand tied behind his back

I know he is a good general, but is he lucky?  -  Napoleon

Poor Master Cameron!

With 2 general elections and one (Scottish) referendum victory already under his belt, you could have been forgiven for thinking that, like Napoleon, David Cameron had been a brilliant tactitioner. But the truth is he has just been a lucky general.

On 23rd June 2016, his luck finally ran out.

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Whether the Brexit vote will prove to be a smart or foolish decision, only time and history will tell. But one thing we can certainly pass judgment on today, is the calamitously crappy communication of Cameron and crew (don't you just love the alliteration) in presiding over possibly the single biggest failure of persuasion in the country's political history.

First, let's remind ourselves how strong a hand Cameron actually had: 

At his disposal was the entire resource of the British government including its communications arm; a good number of newspapers in tow; pretty much every single economist, economic institution, financial analyst and academic on record saying that leaving the EU would have a devastating economic impact on the country; and every world leader (except Putin and Donald Trump - so I'm obviously stretching the definition of leader) in support of Remain. 

Added to that the opposition was a cobbled together trio of Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, and Nigel Farage, the Three Brexiteers, none of whom had so much as the semblance of a plan for what would happen if they actually won, such was the unlikeliness of a Brexit victory. And up until a month before the referendum, the polls had Remain up by as much as 10-15%.

How much more of an advantage could anyone want? Surely, even a bad general with those odds couldn't screw it up! 

Yet screw it up Cameron did. 

The vote was lost by a margin of just under 4%, which means if he had persuaded just 2% of voters to his way of thinking, victory would have been his. But he didn't.

Assessing the Prime Minister's performance in military tactical terms, here are 3 big mistakes he made from a communication and persuasion perspective (and believe me, there were others):

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Cameron's Communication Cock-Ups

1) Abandoning the high ground.

Every general knows that you should always fight from the high ground and force your enemy down into the marshy valley.

Cameron did the exact opposite.

He started in the gutter and stayed there all the way through.

His entire narrative was relentlessly negative, with prophecies of economic Armageddon, implications that World War III would break out, and threats of an emergency punitive tax raising budget if people dared to vote Leave. He even managed to drag the prince of positive politics, Barack 'yes, we can' Obama, down with him, roping him in to threaten the so called UK/US special relationship in the event of a Brexit. It didn't work.

There was no compelling vision of Britain's place within the EU; he didn't outline any of the huge range of benefits of EU membership with any degree of conviction; he didn't talk up Britain's role as an international leader in a global world or as the unique hub connecting America and Asia with Europe.  

Worse than that, rather than leave the negative dirty campaigning to other attack dogs, he chose to wallow and immerse himself in it. The result - everything he said was just dismissed by the opposition as 'Project Fear' (a devastating critique he was never able to overcome).

This was tactically foolish: For a country that prides itself on its steadfastness in the face of terrible odds, Project Fear only served to provoke voters into defying him; and defy him they did, because that is what the British do best.

By contrast, the Leave campaign had a simple mantra 'Lets Take Back Control'.

Call it empty rhetoric,, it was at least positive, easy to remember and clearly compelling. Immigrants? Lets take back control of our borders; sovereignty? Lets take back control of our democracy; Taxes? Lets take back control of our finances.

If you want people to fight, fear is an effective motivator.But if you want people to vote, they need something to believe in. The Leave Campaign gave the people Hope. Cameron gave them nothing but dread.

2) Complicating what should have been simple

Wars and battles may be highly complicated beasts, but a general's duty is to keep it simple enough for the people around him to understand. 

In 1979 at the height of economic turmoil, Margaret Thatcher used a simple analogy: "any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country."

In one simple statement, she helped make the complex problems of the country's macroeconomics seem familiar and accessible to the general public.

Anyone remember Cameron even attempting this?

It is instructive that the big questions trending on Google immediately after the Brexit vote were 'what is the EU?' and 'how does the EU benefit the UK?'. 

Cameron talked in big numbers - 500 million customers in the single market; billions in trade etc, when he should have broken things down to digestible chunks with simple stories and analogies to make it easy for people to understand.

He could have referred to the EU as a Family of Nations and maintained this analogy throughout i.e. we're brothers, sisters and cousins, sometimes we fight, sometimes we laugh, some of us do better than others, but all in all we are better together. 

At the same time, he could have been more creative in painting the Brexiteers as reckless by comparing them to the directors of a successful company, who decided to leave to form a new start up but with no business plan, no market research, and no customer contracts in place.

To stop the immigration debate becoming so poisonous, he should have used storytelling to humanise the migrants so that they became people not just numbers. He could have told them about Anya, a Latvian nurse, who left her 2 young children and a disabled husband back home to travel to the UK and is now a care worker for an elderly man with dementia and no family, who no one else was willing to work with; or Bogdan an expert carpenter from Poland, who donated his skills to help renovate a small nursery for free, keeping that nursery open for struggling parents. (Yes, I've made these ones up, but he should have had real examples out of the thousands of stories available).

Instead, it was all stats & facts, generalities and fear. Nothing memorable, and nothing to make you care.

And because people make decisions based on emotions, not reasoning, he did nothing to capture their hearts, and motivate them to vote for his cause.

3) Not speaking their language 

From the minute he announced the referendum, Cameron should have embarked on a grand listening tour of the entire country, getting out of London to the regions where  people are far removed from Westminster politics. 

It's the same way that generals will often walk amongst their troops to get a sense of their thoughts and feelings so that they can manage those emotions in the all important eve of battle speech.

If Cameron had done this properly, he would have heard the type of words and sentiments being used by his countrymen and women. It would have helped him tune out the crazy racism of the few, and tune into the legitimate concerns of the many, who were unnerved by the changes in their communities and the impact on local services that immigration seemed to bring.

By getting familiar with their true concerns, and the language they used to express them, it would have helped him reflect that language, in a way that showed that he got it. He could have told them that he understood how unnerving change can be, and why it can be tempting to blame their problems on newcomers. But then he could have reminded them what it was like to be the new kid in school or the new employee at work, and called on the famous British sense of fairness to give immigrants a fair shot.

This would have shown his empathy. Empathy begets trust and trust begets votes.  

It wouldn't have worked with everyone, or even most of them, but all he needed was 2% of people. Just 2%!

But did he show empathy? Did he 'eck? (cos I know how people outside London speak!:) 

He spent the entire campaign speaking in a posh voice (not much he can do about that), using posh words (avoidable) and deriding anyone with immigration concerns as 'Little Englanders' (insulting).

As a result he alienated the very people he should have been courting, meaning he had no hope of recovering voters in areas like Castle Point in Essex with Canvey Island, which had a grand net total immigrant inflow of just 81 immigrants in the whole of 2015, voted 72% for Brexit - their number 1 concern? Immigration.

I've never known anyone convince another person by insulting them. 

So there's 3 Biggies, and there were more, not to talk of the political tactical mistakes.

Mr Cameron has been a poor persuader throughout.

Though blessed with favourable circumstances  and weak opposition (think Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn), I cannot recall a single great speech given by him that really shifted political opinion, or an era defining statement that changed minds.

Perhaps it was a tougher vote to win than I am giving credit for; perhaps I have been harsher on Cameron than is fair because I am by political inclination left of centre, where Cameron is on the right.

He is a nice guy to be sure, but he was no Great Debater; and we all know where nice guys finish!

Ironically, as bad a communicator as I think he has been, he will probably now follow the golden path of all ex Presidents and Prime Ministers and go on to make a fortune as... a public speaker. Go figure!

Kolarele Sonaike

Founder, Elevator Pitch School

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