“Lobbying is the art of the possible” – not attributed to Otto von Bismarck
I started campaigning for the UK Labour Party and a pro-European agenda. I got used to being on the losing side. Coming from the North of Ireland, my DNA must be instructing me that compromise is the only realistic way to secure most of what you want.
It took until 1997 for the UK Labour Party to embrace a wild idea – provide an agenda that the majority of UK voters wanted, and speak to them in language and values they understood.
It informed most of my professional campaigning and lobbying. Deal with political reality. Ditch speaking about the policy fetish items, and adapt your points and language to the decision-makers, and mould it into values that resonate with them.
I’ve been doing it for so long, and enjoying not losing, that I forgot that a lot of people reject my heresy.
Yet, I realise I’m in a minority. Many interests in Brussels, both industry and NGOs, are zealous purists.
If you are bored with your agenda being ignored, your policy being rejected, and being on the losing team, the checklist below may help.
Political Reality Checklist
A simple advocacy diagnostic for testing whether our framing matches the real incentives and worldview of the decision-maker.
| What we say/believe | Political reality of the decision-maker & Your Outcome |
| 1. “This is our worldview, and there is no other.” | We lose. A closed worldview ignores the fact that decision-makers operate under different pressures, incentives, and political constraints. |
| 2. “We refuse to deal with non-believers.” | We lose. If we only engage those who already agree with us, we abandon the persuadable people who actually shape outcomes. |
| 3. “We won’t adapt our language to deal with the new political reality.” | We lose. Even a strong case fails when expressed in terms that no longer resonate with the current political context, or they simply don’t understand you. |
| 4. “We adapt our language to speak to the new political reality.” | We win. Translating our argument into terms the decision-maker can recognise and repeat increases traction without abandoning substance. |
| 5. “We adapt our case to speak to the decision-maker’s values.” | We win. The strongest advocacy connects our objective to what the decision-maker cares about. |
Political failure may be liberating. There is a purity in it. It is just that the interests you are promoting will lose out. You can blame forces, real and imagined, for your defeat.
Winning without wearing the veil of faux-purity is good enough for me.