Why are so many people unconvincing?

Or: We're all political actors whether we like it or not

A few weeks ago my good pal Dr Larry Newport wrote a piece that’s been rattling around my head ever since.

In it he argues that in order to achieve many political or policy goals, its necessary to frame your argument in a way that can convince your opponents. In short, he describes the ideal approach as:

“choose what you want to achieve and speak in the language of those who want to achieve the opposite”.

Instead, he points out, many political actors prefer choosing failure to sullying the sanctity of their argument.

I subscribe to a soft version of this thesis. As Dr Newport notes, when considering a policy problem like increasing the uptake of vaccines, it’s important to meet people halfway by addressing their concerns, or even making arguments framed in their belief system. In this case, the end goal is getting jabs in arms and, within reason, arguments that help increase this are net-good.

Where I think the thesis falls down is in electoral politics, where it’s never necessary to win anything more than 50.1% of a given population. In fact, in political systems like the UK and the USA, you can comprehensively win by convincing a much smaller percentage of the population, with the location of your votes often being as important as how many of them there are. This is an obvious point, but one worth highlighting.

In electoral politics an approach of speaking in the language of your opponents is often totally unhelpful for holding together a complex coalition of voters. At the 2019 General Election, the UK Conservatives didn’t need to win over self-defined leftists to win, but they did need to keep onside a small proportion of the group who had traditionally voted Conservative, thought Brexit was a bad idea but were also sick to death of the whole rigmarole surrounding it- “Get Brexit Done” was a helpful framing to achieving this.

For this reason, I’d amend Dr Newport’s adage to something like:

“choose what you want to achieve and speak in the language of those you need to convince to achieve your goal.”

Electoral politics is in essence about coalition building within the constraints of the rules of the game. The rules of the game are the framework in which messaging and campaigning operate- they’re why convincing 100 voters in Lincoln is far more important than 1000 voters in Liverpool.

I don’t think this is a particularly ground-breaking political insight. But it does beg an interesting question: why are so many people online that are interested in politics so bad at convincing people?

You see this across the political spectrum: from leftists using isolating language like “All Cops are Bastards”, to right wingers bleating on about “green crap”, to whatever the hell the FBPE expanded universe is obsessed with today. It’s remarkable that people spend endless hours tweeting single-mindedly about politics, with no thought given as to how they can change the minds of those they need to convince to achieve their goals. Why?

I think the reason is that they’re not really trying to convince anyone. When I tweet about how great it is that Nottingham Forest are back in the Premier League after 23 years, I’m not trying to convince you to become a Nottingham Forest fan. Instead I’m lording it up over Derby County fans, reaching out to people who agree, and exhibiting classic hubristic pride before a fall. Some losers would probably call this “signalling” or something.

In the same way, when some dusted FBPE boomer rants on about Liz Truss, they’re not trying to convince you to change your vote. They’re finding their tribe and unleashing a howl of anguish against a Government and electorate they feel has done them bad. It’s akin to moaning in the pub.

The problem is that, unlike moaning in the pub, millions of people can hear what you’re saying online. A random tweet from a 65 follower account can be amplified thousands of times and become “representative” of a political tendency’s views.

In some ways, this is unjust. Relatively normal people shouldn’t feel the need to think “tactically” about what they post like they’re some grand political strategist. Yet the central tension of the democratising effect of social media is that it makes people political actors whether they like it or not. A political activist can knock only knock on so many doors, but a TikTok can reach thousands.

As the norms of social media continue to mutate, it will be interesting to see how political parties and campaigns evolve to deal with this problem. Just this month we saw Sinn Fein reminding their members of their social media guidelines upon the death of the Queen.

The problem those who want to effect change face is that it’s near impossible to expect message discipline from someone who doesn’t even realise that they’re a political actor. People are unconvincing because they don’t realise they should be convincing.