No wonder politics is out of fashion. It's the consumer that has the power
Fewer than one in four Britons voted in the European elections; turnout, though higher in most EU countries than here, slumped across the continent. In last month's Scottish and Welsh elections, turnout was remarkably low for what were supposed to be historic events. Eleven per cent fewer people voted in the English council elections than in those four years ago. In the Leeds Central by-election this month, the 19.6 per cent turnout was the lowest since the Second World War. In the May 1997 general election only 71 per cent voted: again, the lowest number since the war. Political apathy reigns. Yet last month, one million people voted via the Internet and a freephone number to change Kellogg's Choco Krispies brand name back to Coco Pops. Are we more passionate today about shopping than about politics?
We have an uneasy relationship with corporations: in the UK, public approval rating for big business is at a 30-year low - only a quarter of the UK public thinks it a "good thing" for large companies to make profits. Yet we demand that business delivers what we want and need, champions our causes, puts computers in our schools and rejuvenates our inner cities. Seventy per cent of us now care whether businesses behave ethically, and we put our money into companies that do. In the UK, the ethical investment industry has doubled in size over the past year.
All company bosses want a policy on corporate social responsibility. The positive effect is hard to quantify but the negative consequences of a disaster are enormous. Nobody wants the next Brent Spar on his hands. So John Browne, the chairman of BP, talks about "companies needing to win and retain public trust" and "having to be open to dialogue and scrutiny"; and Sir Peter Davis, group chief executive of the Prudential Corporation, talks about a "vital" need for companies to invest in the communities in which they operate.
Transparency, accountability and sustainability have become the slogans of the market leaders. Companies carry out environmental and social audits to court the consumer, and even the bluest chips woo organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty.
So while political activism is on the wane, consumer activism flourishes, aided by the information revolution, the Internet explosion and multiplying sources of news. Consumers, not voters, make a difference. The turnaround on GM food happened not because of politicians, but because of consumer pressure. Why wait for a cumbersome government change of policy when Marks & Spencer will take products off its shelves overnight? Arco is desperately seeking a buyer for its acreage in Burma; it is the latest in a growing line of companies forced out of that country by the consumer lobby - a striking testament to the impact that consumers, rather than governments, can have on human rights and the environment.
For corporations, this consumer watch is proving costly and burdensome. Social responsibility was once seen as a good PR tool by big business; now corporations are being held hostage by their own marketing strategies. The causes they champion must be ever greater, ever more substantial and ever more original. The innovative campaigns of the Body Shop of the eighties have become the humdrum campaigns of today's high-street banks. Not only do goods have to be whiter than white; company ethics, ideologies and initiatives have to be so, too.
With consumers having ever more choice, corporations must invest more and more in courting public opinion. In Britain 93 per cent of companies now allocate some of their marketing budget to good causes. Shell launched a £15 million ad campaign, in March of this year, attesting to its social and environmental awareness. And such efforts must be kept up. Consumers, unlike voters, expect an immediate response to their concerns; and companies, unlike governments, do not have the luxury of a mid-term lull.
Politicians, too, must stay close to their customers. In an over-saturated market - nine parties were running for the 87 British seats in the European elections - politics becomes just another product battling for the consumer's attention. So politicians borrow from business: parties identify their unique selling points; rhetoric is reduced to slogans; the McKinsey in-house manual becomes William Hague's bible; Labour's advertising budget soars - the 1998-99 budget for advertising was the government's biggest for seven years - and focus groups and market research become essential tools of office.
Ideology competes with ice-cream. Politicians become salespeople, offering more and more: lower tax, better schools, more funding for the NHS. It is a double switch: politics has entered commerce; consumerism has entered politics. Unless politicians provide the same levels of service in hospitals and schools, the same quick response to our concerns and make the same effort to meet our needs as do Tesco and Sainsbury's, they will forfeit our custom. Corporations, realising how fickle our vote is, have to become even more conscientious, responsible and accountable, or face our defection.
Politics has gone on sale; consumer politics is the real new politics we are buying, not the false new politics of devolution, coalition or proportional representation. A fundamental change is happening. As the century turns, politics as we have long known it has grown too old to rejuvenate. Politics is dead - long live the consumer.
The writer is associate director of the Centre for International Business and Management at the Judge Institute of Management Studies, Cambridge University. Her "The Silent Takeover" will be published by Heinemann
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