Priorite a Droit

This article was first published last Sunday as The State We're In. It has since been (slightly) revised.

Sail on, sail on, O mighty ship of state

To the shores of need, Past the reefs of greed

Through the squalls of hate, Sail on, sail on, sail on

Democracy. Leonard Cohen.

Over the last three days some four hundred million Europeans have been to the polls to elect a new European Parliament. Or rather somewhere around half of them have.

Five years ago 50.66% of them did. The first majority turnout since enlargement.

I worked as a contractor at The European Parliament’s Directorate General of Communications then and I worked on creating the messaging of its Go To Vote Campaign under the banner #thistimeimvoting. 

Five years on, and their eight hundred staff, and no, that’s not a typo, having laboured for a year and more, and having sought, and paid for, the advice of half a dozen or so of Europe’s top communications agencies, are campaigning to get us to Go To Vote again. This time urging Europe’s citizens to #useyourvote. 

I have worked in one form of communication or another for the best part of forty-five years, and I’m afraid that #useyourvote, much like say, #tidyyourroom, or #brushyourteeth, is not anything that I would consider in any way to be any form of effective communication. At best, it is an instruction, at worst, it’s an order. And as such it has at least four serious flaws.