At the moment, that means economic growth and jobs. Even if the corporate goal is pure, self-interested profit-making, it will be dressed up to appear synonymous with the wider, national interest. As a way of talking to government, though, the media is crucial. The more noise there is, the less control lobbyists have. The trick is in knowing when to use the press and when to avoid it. The Yes camp lost the vote two to one.ĭavid Cameron and John Reid campaign against a proposed change to the UK voting system, April 2011. They led with the claim that switching to AV would deny troops badly needed equipment and sick babies incubators. No2AV was 'very quick off the mark' to make it about cost to the public purse, explains Dylan Sharpe, of the No camp's TaxPayers' Alliance. The referendum on an alternative voting system was not, as anticipated, so much a conversation about the merits of first past the post. It doesn't matter if the new frame relies on fabrication.

Once this narrowly framed conversation becomes dominant, dissenting voices will appear marginal and irrelevant.Įverybody's doing it, including lobbyists for fracking and nuclear power, public sector reform and bank regulation. If a public discussion on a company's environmental impact is unwelcome, lobbyists will push instead to have a debate with politicians and the media on the hypothetical economic benefits of their ambitions. Lobbyists succeed by owning the terms of debate, steering conversations away from those they can't win and on to those they can. Here are the 10 key steps that lobbying businesses will follow to bend government to their will.

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