Bringing the British voter to heel

As the UK Tories propose ‘dog whistle’ issues, to bring Conservatives to heel, Queenie examines the mysteries of issue classification.

Queenie is highly amused at the latest spat between the Tories and New Labour in the UK, primarily because it has arisen over the nature of the Tories’ spanking new set of issues (although in reality, they are the same old issues dressed up to sound like new, but we’ll park that). These ‘dog whistle’ issues are designed to ‘bring the Tories’ traditional voting base to heel’, and have been imported from Australia by their new policy advisor.

This got Queenie thinking about issues in general. And how policy supremos and spinners develop issues. Queenie used to do this for a living, but she wasn’t very good at it, and her party lost the election and then she had to go out into the real world and forage for a living like everyone else. But this might be an opportunity for Queenie to get back onto the “pithy phrase” gravy train. So here goes a first sitdown into the saddle with a review of some of the more common Issue Types:

Dog whistle issues, sends a sharp message like a dog whistle, i.e. calls clearly to those intended, and goes unheard by others. Covers issues that raise levels of xenophobia, fear of terrorism, homophobia, or polarises debate around the right to life, that kind of thing.

Soccer mom issues, very similar to ‘dog whistle’ issues, but for people who live on Wisteria Lane. Can also be called ‘family values’.

Nanny state issues, driven by Type A personalities (think Bree Van de Camp) and focus on issues that impact on personal liberty such as driving regulations, alcohol awareness programmes, sunblock promotion campaigns, obesity awareness programmes, or Medicare.

Bread and butter issues, all political systems have them – tax, social welfare, economic policy, issues concerned with money and economic stability. Yawn.

Bread and jam issues, special tax cuts for the rich, special deals for Halliburton, tax exemption for horse stud owners in Ireland, that kind of thing.

Head in the sand issues, mostly concerned with geopolitics and its spin off industries – oil production, news production, the arms and transportation industries, the depleted uranium industry, the camouflage clothing industry, the ready meals industry, the ‘security’ industry, the kidnapping industry.

Hot button issues, deals with the economic and social impact of outsourcing low-grade clothes manufacturing jobs to Latin American and Asian sweatshops. No? Well, what then? Oh, extremely controversial issues…. Right! Sorry. Queenie said she wasn't very good at this.

Surrender monkey issues, less mainstream, these issues – anything to do with cultural imperialism as it relates to McDonald’s or the WTO, also economic tariffs and trade wars, the French film, wine, and cheese industries. For example - the absolute cheek of them, making a film like Sideways in Hollywood, would be a typical surrender monkey issue.

Also foreign policy issues concerned with making friends with/ bombing the hell out of any country that France feels it has pole position on e.g. the war on Iraq, the demands for Syria to withdraw, etc.

Of course we’re all friends again. Oh yeah.

1,000 flowers blooming issues, again, relating to foreign policy, particularly selling arms to Taiwan, ensuring democracy in Hong Kong, and promoting human rights in China.

Useless lazy, hippie, tree hugger issues, this can cover a wide range of domestic and international issues, which are not ‘hot button' and therefore result in the same five hundred people having to set up petitions and address rallies outside parliaments and Congress Buildings over and over again. A typical example of a useless lazy, hippie tree hugger issue would be global warming.

Queenie would love to hear of other issue categories.