Hearts & Minds: Working people fiasco shows why we should be wary of casual labels

Labour has got itself into a jam with ‘working people’, as in ‘we won’t raise taxes for working people’. It is not the taxes that causes the problem but ‘working people’. Who are they, exactly? One minister says it’s ‘anyone with a payslip’. Rachel Reeves suggests ‘working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes’.
 
Then, adds: ‘There are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up, and those are working people as well.’ Transport secretary Heidi Alexander defines them as folk on ‘a modest income’. Lisa Nandy says, ‘I mean, if they go to work, obviously they will be working’. But that includes rich people, who some in Labour are desperate to tax. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, says they are the ones ‘whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day’.  She excludes small business owners but don’t plumbers, window cleaners derive their main income from going out to work every day?
 
There is more, but you get the picture. It’s a comms disaster. Companies do this all the time, segmenting their audience. It’s an internal marketing tool, providing an instant snapshot, a visual way of distinguishing them from another grouping. The problem comes if that labelling is allowed to go external, if it leaves the marketing department and spreads company-wide and outside. The more people talk about it, the more questions arise – and the more ridiculous the tag, and those who dreamt it up and the brand, can appear. 
 
For the media and social media, it’s pure gold. Newspapers are not averse to applying tags themselves. There was one where commissioning editors were instructed to think of ‘a car salesman in Derby’ as the target reader. This invited plenty of cynicism as to what sort of car were they selling and how many? And why Derby, as opposed to nearby Nottingham? Fortunately, the jokes remained on the editorial floor.
 
What began with the best of intentions with no thought of it reaching the public can spiral out of control. In Labour’s case, ‘working people’ was included in their manifesto. Reeves tried to make a virtue of that when most recently she was asked again. The chancellor referred to the manifesto and said: ‘I don’t think we need to define more than that, really.’ So, a non-answer. Cue more laughter. 
 
Please, if you segment, keep it tight.