The deepest cruelty of politics is its simplicity: pose with a banana and you are bang in trouble. The obverse truth is that a straightforward and positive image can work wonders: David Cameron’s tree- and huskie-hugging photo-ops in the initial months of his leadership were widely mocked, but they worked wonders in cementing the notion that Dave was both new and green. We do indeed live in the first-impressions world brilliantly described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink.
It follows from this that complexity kills. When a Government begins to disaggregate, the problem is not only the intrinsic one of division (this lot are more concerned with fighting each other than helping me) but the related danger of competing voices (which of these idiots should I listen to? Probably none of them). Part of the New Labour project was to put behind the party once and for all the days when, in answer to the question “What is your defence policy?”, its spokesman would answer: “Which one would you like?”.
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