Why progressive politicians should never talk about security

A common mistake communications professionals make when they’re crafting their messages is to think of the human mind as a blank slate. They imagine the process goes like this: campaigners come up with a message, they get it heard by the public, and if it’s a good message repeated often enough, the public will agree with it.

But the human mind is not a crisp, white space. It’s more like a rainforest. It’s a dense ecosystem of concepts, values, experiences and emotions that have been there for a long time, and are constantly interacting. If you introduce a new species into a rainforest without thinking about what already lives there, there might be unintended consequences. If you introduce an idea to people without thinking of the ways they already understand the world, they might end up coming to conclusions you never expected them to. Having “good messages” isn’t enough: there’s context to think about.

I say this because of the reaction to Keir Starmer’s speech in which he pledged Labour would become the party of “opportunity, family and security.” When leftwing figures expressed unease at this pledge, some commentators gave responses along the lines of, “there’s nothing wrong with appealing to people’s values!” as though these values are suspended in people’s heads in some kind of empty limbo, and haven’t been actively shaped by society outside. 

I’m specifically interested in Starmer’s appeal to “security.” There’s a lot of research into using “security” in comms already, which is good because it means we can hazard a pretty good guess as to what the effects of Starmer using it will be. 

So the first thing to acknowledge is that there are different types of security. Most commentators responding to Starmer’s speech assume he is referring to national security, presumably because the voters Labour lost in 2019 care about this issue - and because Labour recently abstained on the Overseas Operations Bill which relates to the UK’s armed forces. 

According to the strategic communications paper Common Cause, research suggests that individuals and cultures that attach importance to security tend to be, well, pretty reactionary. They are less concerned about human rights abuses, they’re more prejudiced to others on the basis of things like race, religion, or gender, and they’re not particularly keen on immigration. They’re not as worried about climate change, and are less likely to live in environmentally-friendly ways; in fact they’re even less likely to buy fair-trade products. 

I know it sounds over the top to argue that one little word can be associated with so much, but it’s because values don’t just exist as standalone things; they’re linked to other values. Values are learned, and they are formed by people’s interactions with the outside world. When you trigger one value, it has a knock-on effect to a load of other values. Triggering a value means opening a portal to a whole way of thinking. It’s introducing a new species into the rainforest. 

Does this mean progressive politicians should never talk about security? Well, sort of, yes. Let me explain why.

When we talk about why Labour lost the election, we tend to talk about different kinds of voters. When it comes to security, we might say, “this is Labour’s appeal to red wall voters.” But it’s more useful to talk about different values, and which ones are dominant in certain demographics of people. That’s because we all have the same values in our heads, because we all live in the same society. But some of us have certain values at the front of our minds, and some of us don’t. When you think of it in that way, it makes sense that Keir Starmer constantly talking about security will push that value further and further to the front of more people’s minds, and in doing so will trigger off all the other stuff I mention above - stuff that is not progressive.

You don’t actually have to be a comms genius to figure all this out. On some level, we already know that security carries all these implications. That’s why it was primarily progressive commentators who were anxious about Starmer using it, and more rightwing ones who tended to be relaxed about it. When have you ever heard the issue of national security being linked to anti-racist movements or women’s bodily autonomy? Never, I’d wager. You already know what national security gestures towards, if you live in British society. 

And if we are looking at this issue purely through the lens of how Labour wins an election, we should conclude - based on all the research - that focusing on security isn’t a very good idea from that perspective either. Talking about security reinforces frames that the Conservatives are stronger on; it moves politics onto their territory. Labour can never outflank the Conservatives on social conservatism, or climate change denial, because Labour’s base and all of its structures are made up of people and institutions who won’t tolerate that. Telling voters that security is the most important issue affirms the Conservatives’ worldview, encourages people to support Conservative policies and eventually vote for them in elections. 

But earlier on, I said there are different types of security. And there is one that progressive politicians can talk about, and that is human security. Human security means having financial security, not being discriminated against, being able to access healthcare and so on. According to PIRC, human security embodies concepts like “justice, interdependence, concern for vulnerable populations and the right to be free from harm.” But, warns PIRC, the word security itself is so bound up with reactionary ideas of national security that progressives shouldn’t use it. Instead, they should treat human security as an organising principle. 

A recent report from Tax Justice UK (for which I acted as a Strategic Communications Consultant) shows that people tend to associate wealth with the principle of human security. One participant in this research said that being wealthy means “not having to worry about being able to pay the bills and being able to treat your family and not worry about how to repay it.” The fact that participants in this research also saw wealth as aspirational means that they’re likely to see human security as aspirational, meaning that it is fertile ground from which progressives can build. 

But national security? I’ll finish with a quote from one of my mentors, Anat Shenker-Osorio:

Appealing to where (we think) people are has become the norm among progressives, especially as we’ve become ever-more wedded to the proclamations of pollsters. This is what gives rise and lends credence to unhelpful slogans like “Work hard and play by the rules.” Since people are afraid of terrorists, let’s call our climate change efforts an antiterrorism program. Since people don’t want to shell out for art programs in schools, let’s tout how knowing music correlates to good math performance.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen time and again, evoking our opponents’ worldview in service of our policies only serves to push people further away from our beliefs. And, in turn, makes our policies seem less and less logical.