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Former Downing Street strategist, adviser to Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings and Vote Leave insider Cleo Watson examines the building blocks and dark art of political campaigning.

We've had many electoral tests in the UK in the last decade or so – general elections in 2015, 2017 and 2019, and the 2016 EU referendum – and the results of nearly all of them have raised eyebrows. Why? Is it just the policies or the parties, or have some of these campaigns had some secret alchemy or luck that made them succeed or fail against expert opinion and the betting markets?

In this series, Cleo Watson sits down with some of the brains behind the biggest campaigns in recent history and tries to piece together where it went right – and wrong – for the teams and parties involved.

Along the way she asks key questions about the role of traditional and social media, the importance of authenticity and charisma in our politicians, and what lessons we can learn ahead of 2024.

What do polling and focus groups really tell us, and what do we mean by strategy, messaging and fieldwork? How are the ‘ground campaign’ and the ‘air campaign’ orchestrated? How are really effective slogans crafted and tested, how do you ace a TV debate, and what is campaigning’s digital future?

How are cutting-edge developments in data science changing the game, and how concerned should we be about these new methods of persuasion? Or do old-fashioned posters, leaflets, rosettes, door-knocking, manifestoes, party political broadcasts and speeches also still shift the dial?

And if you are thoroughly cynical about mainstream elections, what can you do as a citizen to persuade our elected representatives to prioritise the issues you care about the most? Cleo discovers what makes a successful campaign with those who have achieved recent notable successes in public health, gender equality and climate change.

Contributors across the series:

Pippa Crerar, political editor of the Guardian
Dominic Cummings, director of the Vote Leave campaign and former Chief Adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Julie Etchingham, ITV election debates host
Ayesha Hazarika, former adviser to the Labour party during the 2010 and 2015 elections, and political commentator
Fiona Hill, former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Theresa May
James Johnson, pollster and Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to Prime Minister Theresa May, and now director of research company J.L. Partners
Gina Martin who led the campaign to make upskirting illegal in 2019
Charles Ogilvie, former Director of Strategy for Cop26
Craig Oliver, news editor, producer and media executive, and former Director of Politics and Communications for Prime Minister David Cameron
Stephen Parkinson, National Organiser of the ground operation for the Vote Leave campaign
Sarah Sands, former editor of The Sunday Telegraph and The Evening Standard and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4’s Today
James Schneider, co-founder of Momentum and senior adviser to Jeremy Corbyn
Joe Slater, polling strategist at Stack data agency
Paul Stephenson, former Director of Communications of the Vote Leave campaign
Dolly Theis, epidemiology researcher at Cambridge University and public health campaigner
Lucy Thomas, former deputy director of the Britain Stronger in Europe (Remain) campaign
Chris Ward, former political adviser to Sir Keir Starmer

Producer: Eliane Glaser
Executive Producers: Jon Holmes and Richard Danbury
Sound Design: Tony Churnside
An unusual production for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4

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