WHY DIDN'T SIR KEIR STARMER'S STORIES WORK?
Whatever you think of Sir Keir Starmer now that he has resigned from Britain's top job, he once articulated a vision that is difficult to argue with.
He wanted every ten-year-old in Britain to have had the chance to:
🎸 “Play an instrument…
 ⚽️ Join a sports team…
 🏖️ Visit the seaside, countryside, or city…
 🖼️ Experience a cultural institution…
 🚲 Ride a bike…
 🎤 Learn how to debate their ideas.”
He wrote those thoughts in this Fabian pamphlet in 2021.
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The article was actually a great piece of writing which he didn’t get enough credit for - laid out as a strong 3-act story structure: Past > Present > Future.
I read it again this morning as I was waiting to hear Starmer's announcement, and when I reread it, I didn’t see a policy as much as I saw a mission worth believing in.
This is what great communication does.
It doesn’t just tell us what needs to happen, it helps us picture a better future.
Too many leaders communicate through arguments, statistics, and bullet points. But people rarely move because they’ve won an argument.
Perhaps that’s where Sir Keir went wrong?
He’s a very impressive human rights lawyer, highly skilled at arguing points of law, but he struggled to translate some of those skills into being an impressive politician.
He gave an emotional resignation speech 5-minutes ago, but many of his messages were written as arguments, and not shared as stories.
Audiences are moved when they can see where they’re going and why.
The best communicators paint pictures. They create possibility. And they give us something worth building together.
And in this one particular mission about "ten-year olds" outlined 5 years ago, Sir Keir managed to do that really well.
He’s just struggled to “move” his audience enough since then.
We all need a mission. And if we believe in it, it’s worth sticking to - no matter how many folks might disagree with us along the way.
So if you have a mission you’re pursuing right now, one you really believe in, maybe ask yourself:
Can people see it?
Like, REALLY see it?
And have you done a good enough job of helping them picture that future, and how they will get there?
If not, they probably won’t help you build it…
