8th February 2023
There are different kinds of political – and legal – advocacy.
One form of advocacy is to make as positive a case as you can for something you think your audience will want you to do anyway.
Here you identify the values and beliefs (and prejudices) of your audience, and tell them what they want to hear.
Another form of advocacy makes no pretence at being positive: you warn of consequences, and thereby manipulate or even coerce your audience into going along with what you want them to do.
But there is another form of advocacy – perhaps the most difficult.
And that is to make your audience feel intellectually – or emotionally – uncomfortable about deciding against you.
This cannot be done by mere warnings, or threats, or by promises and smiles.
It can only be done by making a better case than the one which – but for the advocacy – the audience would normally go for.
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Today we saw in Westminster Hall an extraordinary exercise in advocacy by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The concrete policy goal of the advocacy was simple: the supply of military aircraft.
He needed to shift the policy of the government of the United Kingdom, which is currently not minded to supply military aircraft.
I am no specialist in military strategy – and nor are you likely to be – and so I have no idea whether, in the round such supply would be a wise or a foolish or even a feasible thing.
But the one outcome of today’s speech is that unless there is a compelling reason otherwise, it would be uncomfortable for any politician to disagree with Zelensky’s request.
The mark of a great advocate is not so much to get a person to agree, but to make it harder for a person to disagree.
And it seems to have worked: the government position appears to have shifted.
"Nothing is off the table" after Ukraine request for British fighter jets, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says https://t.co/05Q2RqBvdD pic.twitter.com/MIXOQS09kI
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) February 8, 2023
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The gift of the signed pilot helmet was also an example of how useful physical artefacts can be in persuasion – especially as it was first presented as a gift, with the gradual reveal of the handwritten message.
This blog has previously told the story of how senior people at the British Library once persuaded Margaret Thatcher of the urgent need for the move of the library to a new purpose-built building.
They did not rely on reports and tables and words.
They just put in front of her a selection of books that were falling apart, including a novel by one of her favourite authors.
And they told her that unless they got the requested investment, that would be what the national collection of books would all end up like.
She stared at the dilapidated books.
They got the investment.
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Words, words, words can only get you so far.
And Zelensky realised that there is more to persuasion than mere words, or promises, or threats.
Rarely will we see such an outstanding piece of oral and physical rhetoric at Westminster, or indeed elsewhere.
It was a Westminster speech for the ages.
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Yep. Good points, here. Thanks!
Zelensky reminds me of the old saw that politicians are people who wanted to be actors but weren’t good looking enough. Here we have a successful actor transformed into a supremely persuasive politician.
For me his most telling argument is that his country is fighting a war on behalf of us all in the West. This plays on my feelings of guilt that Ukrainians are dying for us when we aren’t willing to put our own lives at risk.
It was mesmerising. Every emotional button pressed without the recipient feeling remotely tweaked. Definitely the man for this moment.
Zelensky combines humility with emotional intelligence. Our own politicians could learn a lot from him.
Also, a speech not in his own language. Some of us here will speak passable French, or Spanish, or German, or another language. I do. But how many of us could speak outside our own language with such rhetoric and persuasion?
I couldn’t do it in my own language!
If only our lot were a tenth as good!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CoaPTfrYIF/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
I don’t think the link works. Matt cartoon of man being interviewed by press, saying “Later in the day President Zelensky met the brave heroes working in Dominic Raab’s office”.
Superficially funny of course, but generally I think it is a mistake to try and downplay things through comparison.
There will always be someone else in the world who is suffering more, but it should never excuse bullying and mistreatment, if that is what has happened in Raab’s case, which seems increasingly likely.
I wouldn’t say Matt was either downplaying or excusing anything. Surely humour frequently works on a knife edge. I enjoy Matt because I find him never cruel, or crude.
It will soon be the first anniversary of Zelensky’s polite refusal of Biden’s offer of a lift out of Kiev.
The guy is persuasive but he also has a lot of guts.
As I post he is now being driven around Paris about to catch a plane to Brussels to address 27 EU nations.
Rather begs the question of what a “spare fighter jet” is. It rather suggests that we have a better use (or potential use) for them at present. Responding to Russian incursions on our air space shouldn’t need us to keep very many of them.
Good advocacy for sure but the UK government should act only with NATO partners in this area and Sunak ought to have made that clear to Zelensky. Whether or not he did so I have no idea but, in my view, a big mistake if he did not.
What will actually be done by way of physical military equipment to assist Ukraine remains to be seen. (I understand that there is to be some training of Ukraine military personnel). The UK does not actually have vast numbers of spare fighter jets.
Good politics of course and puts Labour in a tricky position if any of them were minded to oppose it.
Good theatrics.
Everyone is very brave and has a plan – until they get a punch in the mouth. The trick is to attain ones objective and not get a punch in the mouth. Some objectives require taking a punch in the mouth – but don’t tell anyone.
I am sure it was a masterly performance. Samuel Johnson is a good guide when it comes to wartime rhetoric though. “Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages” – The Idler, 1758.
A coffee shop friend of mine is expert on church organs.
Some years ago he found church elders in Croydon unwilling to spend money (a lot) on Croydon’s main church organ.
His approach was: “Will you be watching the old crocks on the London Brighton run this weekend?”
Hands went up.
“Some of those cars won’t finish the race. State of the art engineering back around 1904. Your church organ was state of the art in 1904.”
He got the funding.
Many orators were up to no moral good.