What to expect when you're Brexpecting: An insight into Boris Johnson's election campaigning

Against the the backdrop of a looming No-Deal Brexit, a 'phoney war' has broken out over the last month as the UK's major political parties prepare to break the political deadlock in the event of a General Election.

After losing his working majority, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be gambling on winning it back through an election. Here I investigate what to expect from Number 10's Communications strategy and campaigning in the run-up to a popular vote.

Hidden In Plain Sight

You'll be seeing a lot of Boris Johnson over the next few weeks, albeit very much on his own terms as his handlers try to ensure that he is perceived as charismatic, enigmatic and headstrong as opposed to repetitive, rambling and evasive.

Like Donald Trump using his Twitter feed, Johnson's advisors have seeked to move him to an environment where him and his team have more control over the narrative. This has proven controversial as Johnson has been shunning traditional media scrutiny in favour of carefully managed public appearances. From an early trip to Wales which saw both BBC Wales and ITV Wales “refused the opportunity to ask a single question on camera”, to the recent trip to Dublin which saw him refusing to take any questions from British print media, Johnson has been largely sheltered from accountability.

You will also be seeing a lot more of him online, especially with People's PMQs, where Boris answers a set of pre-selected questions on Facebook. Expect to see major policy announced and discussed on this format as his team uses available social media accounts and sympathetic press organs to drive traffic away from more objective interrogation.

The Prime Minister of the UK also has access to a number of official promotional tools online and off that can be used. Of course Boris Johnson won't be the first Prime Minister to promote policy through official channels, but it will be very firmly targeted towards voters as the recent promotion of duty-free beer, spirits, wine and tobacco shopping in the event of a No-Deal Brexit illustrates.

Number 10 has already been delivering party political messaging through more set-piece events such as a recent speech at a police training college in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. With a more flexible schedule as a result of the prorogation of Parliament, Johnson's team will have arranged events tied to goverment 'giveaways' with a particular focus on the farming and manufacturing sectors - sectors likely to be seriously hit by a Hard or No-Deal Brexit. Johnson will be more than happy to work (and be photographed) with children and animals although the 'walkabouts' will be more hermetically sealed as an election approaches. Between EU negotiations you can expect to see him both in camouflage and with a hard hat on a construction sight - visual metaphors for authoritarian and dynamic leadership that will play well to right-wing and centre voters and that party publicists will surely be unable to resist.

There will also of course be a steady flow of soft PR, of which recent examples include the Prime Minister kissing Barbara Windsor and the new dog that has been moved into Downing Street.

A Man For All Seasons

Currently, political advertising online is weakly regulated. The Electoral Commission focuses on campaign finance, the Information Commissioner's Office concentrates on personal data and the Advertising Standards Authority doesn't do political ads.

This lack of oversight essentially leaves the path clear for contrasting adverts using big data to help present tailored (and contradictory) messages to different people. For all the talk of Dominic Cummings and his game theory strategising, Johnson brought him in to the fold because he helped to kick-off a new age of psychologically profiled data-driven political advertising. In terms of targeting and messaging Boris Johnson will want to get as far away as possible from the weak, aloof efforts that burdened Theresa May's 2017 election efforts and as close as possible to the efforts of the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum.

In a variety of separate adverts specifically targeted at different cohorts of the population, the Leave campaign reverse-engineered a 'connection' between everything from cups of tea, Netflix, animal rights, polar bears, and immigration to the benefits of leaving the EU. These were all distributed online according to an individuals data and assumed preferences, with messages targeted at voters deemed to be amenable. One of the important factors to consider here was that as well as the people who got out and voted on the strength of the adverts, there would have been plenty of people who chose not to vote to remain in the EU on account of the cognitive dissonance.

According to reports in Buzzfeed News, Cummings's plan is gaining momentum with Boris Johnson secretly ordering the Cabinet Office to turn the government’s public internet service (the gov.uk site - already being used to promote the Government's No-Deal Brexit aspirations) into a platform to gather further “targeted and personalised information” ostensibly to be used in the run-up to Brexit.

In order to win the Conservative Party an election, Boris Johnson will need to be different things to different people and Cummings and his online engineering is effectively the Prime Minister's 'Hail Mary' to regain majority support in parliament. Whereas he could solely target his base of pro-Brexit socially conservative voters, that is unlikely to be enough and he will need to use Cummings's help to convince different voters that he is not only keen to leave the EU whatever it takes but is also an ender of austerity, remainer's friend, top-end tax-cutter, NHS saviour, One Nation Tory, and progressive former Mayor of London depending on his audience.

Getting away with it

Cummings worked on the Vote Leave campaign which targeted 7 million people on Facebook including one and half billion adverts in the last four days of the Referendum campaign (holding back most of their budget to do so). You can expect to see a similar strategy to keep Boris Johnson in Number 10 in the event of an elections. Although Cummings will not want to be a general fighting the last war, a repeat of this tactic could prove effective as the opposition doesn't have time to respond and any misconduct is difficult to reel back once everyone - including voters - has invested psychologically in the results. If the winning party was responsible for the adverts, any lawbreaking may result little more than a slap on the wrist, especially as it is tricky to quantify gains in an election scenario where you have dozens of swing constituencies and interactions between parties and voters.

Mr Big Stuff

Expect to see populist announcements aplenty from the Prime Minister. There will be 'big' announcements and 'big' numbers. There will be something on the environment. There will be more on the NHS. There will be something on schools. There will be a general approach is that, if it polls well with the public at large, Boris Johnson will make an announcement on it.

Also it would be unwise to expect detailed, evidence based-policy backing up any announcements. The recent ￡3m grant to help UK nationals living in the EU with residency applications equated to little over ￡2 per person but gained much needed publicity (see also the ￡57 million of new funding for farmers until 2022). I think that it's realistic to say that the majority of voters don't peformed any detailed statistical analysis of policy decisions and if Dominic Cummings is indeed 'the brains behind the operation' as commentators seem overly keen to point out, then those brains will have their work cut out on keeping Boris in power and not untangling a mess of botched policy specifics.

We know from his time as London Mayor that Johnson is not a details man but is a fan of large flagship projects such as the proposed Garden Bridge, the Emirates Cable Car and the New Routemaster buses. Now he is Prime Minister, Johnson's spending will be under far more scrutiny given the financial impact of Brexit and his legacy as mayor of London (the three water cannon bought for more than ￡320,000 were sold at a loss of ￡310,000, the failed Garden Bridge project cost ￡53 million and the Mayor's handling of the deal with West Ham United for the former Olympic Stadium cost the taxpayers an estimated ￡20 million per year).

Despite this, a Boris-branded headline project (aside from a No-Deal Brexit) predominantly paid for out of the public purse is a strong possibility. A bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland has apparently been mooted and, unlikely as it seems, would fit Boris Johnson's Thatcherite aspirations (think Channel Tunnel). With HS2 overspend in focus after a number of convenient recent leaks, cancelling the project - which already exists in a party political 'no man's land' - and redistributing these funds is a real possibility. As a longer shot, Boris could pursue something that plays well to his base and comes at no upfront cost, such as making St George's Day a National Holiday. Depending on the timings, one of these 'unity project' promises could be used to formally kick off an election campaign to help distract from any Brexit-related turmoil. The Conservatives have form on this - David Cameron's Big Society and Green Deal projects may have failed in practice, but as pre-election PR announcements they helped edge the public image of the Conservatives away from 'the nasty party' and enabled them to outflank Labour's social and environmental messaging.

Bang and Blame

Both Boris and his girlfriend, former Conservative Party Press Officer Carrie Symonds, share a history of personal attacks on the Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn. The attack ads focusing on Corbyn will become more prominent as the campaign progresses. It's already been evident with the clumsily delivered characterisation of Corbyn as a chicken which helped provide a narrative to deflect attention from Boris's brother Jo Johnson leaving the cabinet (see also Lynton Crosby's 'Dead Cat' strategy). Personal attacks tend to be a trademark of Conservative strategy often delivered via proxy campaigning in sympathetic newspapers such as The Telegraph, The Sun or The Daily Mail. This can be effective - notable examples included the attacks on Ed Miliband and Neil Kinnock which helped to sway public opinion but there are risks associated with them. Boris Johnson may be happy to juxtapose himself to Jeremy Corbyn, but direct attack ads can backfire if the attacker is not seen as credible can help to leave a candidate on the campaign trail high and dry as public opinion begins to solidify against them, as in the case of Theresa May.

Corbyn won't be the only one in the firing line as Johnson will continue to attack the EU, using issues such as the Irish backstop as leverage for a No-Deal Brexit and fostering a strategy of 'plausible deniability' that he is or was targeting a No-Deal Brexit. Boris Johnson may have voted for Theresa May's deal but has had no qualms in contentiously labelling the backstop clause undemocratic.

Barring a change of course as the findings of 'Operation Yellowhammer' filter into the public domain, Johnson will seek to blame any failure in negotiating a deal firmly on the EU, although this strategy has been somewhat undermined by Dominic Cummings recent leaked description of negotiations with the EU as a 'sham' and Angela Merkel's challenge to Johnson to find a credible alternative for the Irish Border Backstop within 30 days of 21 August. Recent revelations from Amber Rudd have also not helped, but losing an element of deniability will not harm Boris Johnson's chances among the eurosceptic voters that he is seeking to win over.

In initially demanding the complete removal of the backstop and for all arrangements for the Irish border to be negotiated during the transition period, Johnson has but himself on a collision course with the EU as a hard border would undermine the Good Friday Agreement but an open border between the Republic of Ireland (an EU member in both the single market and the customs union) and the UK could undermine the EU's free trade area.

I suspect Boris Johnson would be prepared to propose and install de minimis measures at the border, putting the onus on the EU and the Republic of Ireland to work on more stringent border measures to protect their single market and customs union (the UK accounts for an estimated 12% of total exports of goods in Ireland and 24% of total goods imports). This, however would but Boris in an incredibly antagonistic and potentially expensive negotiating position with regard to the UK's future relationship with the EU.

One man, two guvnors

So now we come to the elephant in the room. Why, when UK attitudes to a No-Deal Brexit appear to be increasingly unfavourable, doesn't Johnson adopt a more conciliatory approach, genuinely embracing instead of alienating the One-nation Toryism probably best personified by Michael Heseltine and political commentator Matthew D'Ancona?

There are a number of reasons for this but the internal and external threat of No-Deal Brexit hardliners has meant that Johnson has become a servant of two masters.

Internally, the extraordinary hardening of attitudes looks to have been boosted with the party’s membership increasing by 36,000 to 160,000 in the year to May 2019 with an estimated 44.5% of Conservative Party members joining after the 2016 EU referendum.

On a local level exercises such as Arron Banks's 'Unite the Right' campaign have helped to increase the number of members in local associations with more hardline views - crucial for selecting and deselecting parliamentary candidates. The campaign has seen Leave.EU encouraging their activists (including former UKIP councillors), to join the local associations in order to deselect MPs who don't support a No-Deal Brexit. This pressure left veteran MPs such as Dame Caroline Spelman and Dominic Grieve under early threat of deselection (former Attorney General Grieve has had the whip removed by Johnson and now sits as an independent). One of a number of eye-opening recent poll findings from Yougov indicated that almost half (46%) of Conservative members would be happy to see Nigel Farage take over the reins of their party.

For as long as I can remember, the Conservative party as always been an uneasy alliance between eurosceptic social conservatives and pro-EU more socially liberal 'One Nation' tories. With Brexit the prominent issue of the day, traditional eurosceptic Conservative voters have been swayed by the Brexit Party's campaigning along tribal lines for a quick No-Deal Brexit. The UK's European parliamentary election results showed that the Brexit Party could convert a number of Tory seats and even though recent successes for UKIP (the Brexit Party's spiritual predecessor) were not carried over to General Elections, they led to significant concessions in Conservative policy. So unless the Conservatives can assert themselves to these voters with the same hard-right messaging and radical approach to leaving the EU (I'm not going to address the ethics of this here), then it puts the party at a real risk of losing seats to the Brexit Party. It simply can't spread to occupy the centre ground operationally (hence the importance of Cummings's tailored messaging) when even Theresa May's deal which catalysed the Brexit Party's success still meant leaving the Customs Union and Single Market.

This view shared is within the Conservative membership where two thirds now believe that targeting Brexit Party and UKIP voters is the best move at the next general election, while only a quarter think they would be better off going after Labour and Lib Dem supporters.

In setting out his stall to the Conservative members that have backed him and the Brexit Party supporters that still could, Johnson's Brexiteer-heavy original cabinet promoted a number of individuals who were recently been banished from the top circle of goverment due to misconduct. For this show of faith, Johnson would have expected undivided loyalty to enact his plans.

Better Together

With a Remain Alliance and strategic voting likely, there is a possibility that Johnson will attempt to counteract this by forming an electoral pact with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party. The Conservatives have, naturally, denied this but the party leaders and remaining Conservative Cabinet members share plenty of common policy ground on Brexit as well as their views on cutting top-level taxation and reducing the civil service. Farage's offer to work with the Conservatives in order to get a free run at over 80 seats may be political grandstanding, but if polling suggests that the Brexit Party continue to threaten the Conservative vote, then a pact seems inevitable.

The other option is to 'out-Brexit' the Brexit Party. With the public dismissal of Pro-EU candidates as moaners and collaborators, Johnson's team is already mirroring Farage's style in an effort to mobilise their shared base of supporters. Whereas I don't think Johnson will go fully into Nigel Farage territory, by which I mean dog-whistle references to 'population growth' and 'George Soros', he'll certainly embrace the 'anti-establishment' and 'people vs parliament' messaging. It's also important to remember that the Brexit Party emerged as a credible electoral force in the last European elections on the back of a successful social media campaign and Johnson's team has already sought to replicate the same style of clean visual branding and simple messages in order to elevate his campaigning.

Johnson will be keen to reinforce these messages but won't want to get his fingers dirty, so will leave these to Pro-Brexit Conservative-supporting media outlets. From a communications perspective, expect to see further dovetailing from the Telegraph and The Sun in much the same way as Vote Leave and Leave.EU did during the EU Referendum campaign. An electoral pact with Farage would also enable the Brexit Party to purvey the less savoury messaging, but it would come with strings attached...