Hello voter

Gordon Brown’s phone calls to people who write to him are provoking mass ridicule. Apparently he’s been making them since he became Chancellor in 1997. While there are obviously some ridiculous stories (why would any normal person phone someone at 6am?), I think this is actually a good thing.

One of the problems of being Prime Minister is that you forget how normal people live. Hence Blair’s astonished reaction when the woman on Newsnight told him about how the 48hr target to see a GP was being implemented. 

Another problem is that as Prime Minister, your staff often want to shield you from the worst of what’s going on. 

And finally, the thing that makes you a great Prime Minister is your understanding of and empathy with your voters. 

Phoning people who have written in is a great way to try to counteract some of these problems. But there are some pre-requisites. Firstly, you need to start early (when you’re popular) and keep doing it. Secondly you need to be absolutely clear that you want a representative sample of people to call – no avoiding the nutters or the angry people. And thirdly you need to engage properly. 

If I wrote to Gordon Brown and got a phone call back, I would be enraged to hear the same old platitudes about ‘getting on with the job’, ‘taking the hard decisions for the country’, the ‘worldwide economic downturn’ – I might as well watch one of his many interviews. 

For this to work, he’s got to talk with people, not at them. He’s got to realise that if he says he’ll do something, he needs to do it – straightforwardly, without dissembling. He needs to understand what it is that is making voters turn away from him – and do something about it.

Related posts:

1. Gordon Brown cannot be the change the country needs