Some thoughts on New Zealand’s flag referenda

When I was little my godmother gave me a book about flags. The cool kids were into Dungeons and Dragons (look who's laughing now!) but I loved reading about how Old Glory got its 50 stars, and how the Soviets and Left had adopted blood red as their colour. Some of the best flags were the simplest, especially France’s Tricolour, but I felt sorry for kids in Brazil trying to draw their flag’s complicated depiction of the stars, which also includes the Southern Cross. Nepal’s double triangle-shaped pennant just seemed weird – and definitely not a proper flag, to my eight year old eyes.

The shared history of nations also means many countries have similar designs: Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the other Nordic countries all seem to have conquered each other at various times, but today are happy with flags that many foreigners struggle to tell apart – a similarity that also reflects their common values of progressive democratic society, and strong relationships between their people and governments. The flags of the six nations and one autonomous region are on the right – can you identify them all?

I’ve really enjoyed the debate about changing New Zealand’s flag. I think the government got the process terribly wrong – a committee stacked with Olympic medal winners and rugby players manifestly didn’t understand the complexities of visual communication, and it was little surprise that the shortlisted designs looked very similar to some of the kit they’d worn when representing the country on the sports pitch. My favourite moment was when an academic from Massey University explained that the population ‘struggled with abstract designs’ and reassured us that ‘the best national flags featured two colours and one symbol’. Try telling that to an American, Frenchman or Brit.

There were some good flag designs in the long list, and I’d have been torn had Red Peak made the final referendum, but Aaron Dustin's design came a distant third in the shortlist ballot. New Zealanders wanted 'familiar' and voted for designs that incorporated the silver fern, which is a pity because Red Peak’s success was built on the idea that a flag design had to have a story, rather than just replicating a symbol and running it up a pole. So one of the worthwhile parts of the debate has been coming to understand what I like about New Zealand’s flag – I suspect most of us haven’t really thought about out national flag in any great detail until the referenda kicked off.

New Zealand’s current flag is based on a 19th Century British colonial template, but looking at it with fresh eyes I see a powerful symbol of the relationship between the Crown and Maori, with the Union flag in the top left, and the stars on the right representing taonga guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi many generations ago. The colour range is also pleasing – again, something Red Peak got right, yet a real weakness of the proposed Kyle Lockwood alternative with its lurid blue set against black.

But it’s the message of our existing flag that makes me passionate about keeping it as our national emblem. Partnership is an inherent component of modern New Zealand – the era of grievance settlement is drawing to a close, and Maori and Pakeha are building a country where we recognise our rights and responsibilities because we have come to terms with our history. None of the finalists came close to New Zealand’s current flag in communicating that to me, and while my interpretation of the flag is very different to that which my grandfather would have had, it remains a symbol that has bound our nation together for generations.

So I’ll be voting to keep the current flag. It is a pity the referendum has been portrayed as a $26 million pet project of the Prime Minister, and even more so that people might choose to vote along party lines. But that is their decision – it’ll be a generation before they have the same chance again. I agree ours is similar to the Australian flag, but as a country we’re pretty similar too. Same head of state, same legal system, same frigates, and so on. We’re just better at rugby than them. Besides, count your lucky stars you’re not Norwegian, or Icelandic, or whichever one it is that has the yellow cross on the blue background!

Electoral reform means change for our local associations

Boundary reforms don’t normally make for gripping political news: they’re the stuff of the Conservative Association stalwart or eagle-eyed agent, and definitely not for people with healthy social lives. But whether we like it or not, the Boundary Commission’s regular redrawing of the electoral landscape from 2018 onwards will revolutionise the culture of our local associations.

Many constituencies have retained the same basic shape for decades. Tooting – my patch – has been essentially been the same since it replaced Wandsworth Central in 1974. Yet the reforms likely to be in place for 2020 will require the number of electors in constituencies to adhere to a much tighter variation from the national average, and for this to be reviewed every five years. The difference in the two proposals for Tooting during the 2013 Sixth Periodic Review shows the level of change that is likely to be in store for constituencies across the country under the new rules.

First proposal for the Tooting area
in the Sixth Periodic Review (2013)

Second proposal for the Tooting area
in the Sixth Periodic Review (2013)

Throw in the renaissance of our cities, and you can see how the electoral map will need to be drawn from scratch with each review. London’s expected growth of 100,000 people a year up to 2030 is the equivalent of seven new constituencies between each general election. Manchester will expand by an extra 100,000 people by 2025 – considerably faster than projections for the surrounding urban area, which are also expected to grow. On the other hand, Birmingham’s forecast growth of 12.2 per cent by 2032 is forecast to be below the national average of 13.5 per cent.

Our electoral boundaries will behave like an electoral isobar map, with areas of high population growth seeing constituencies created at the expense of places where the population increase is slower, or in decline – and Individual Electoral Registration will finally give the Boundary Commissions accurate data, cleansed of ghost voters who have moved elsewhere years previously.

The post-2018 landscape will see constituency associations with five year lifespans, thrown together across municipal boundaries, with the aim of winning the next general election. And after the returning officer’s declaration the focus will be on preparing the ground for the following election – although no-one will have any idea what cards the Boundary Commission for England will deal!

As a result, our traditional constituency identities will be much more fluid. Indeed, referring to constituency associations as ‘Tooting’ and so on will soon be archaic. Geographic identities are less easily accommodated by the new reforms (remember the outcry over the proposed Devonwall constituency when the Prime Minister pointed out that “It’s the Tamar, not the Amazon, for Heaven’s sake,”?), and our local leadership will be shaken up between every election, with association officers, star volunteers and local party bores suddenly finding themselves in different patches, with new relationships to forge.

Stable geographic identities are important for building teams of activists. The need to organise campaigns for county, borough and PCC elections on well-established boundaries will remain, and bringing associations together is sensible, since constituencies will change radically with every boundary review. Andrew Kennedy is a tireless advocate for groupings such as West Kent, which has demonstrated many of the benefits of campaigning as a larger unit.

We in Wandsworth have operated as a group for many years, and consequently the Wandsworth Conservatives brand is very strong in our community. Our office supports local associations in five constituencies across Wandsworth and Merton, and it is perhaps time for us to bring neighbouring Lambeth into the fold, since ‘Tooting’ is highly likely to include parts of Lambeth in the coming years.

Some association officers will take the view that forming groupings is a long term objective. I believe that this is misguided. The Boundary Commission’s consultation timelines will see the 2020 electoral map finalised in late 2018, leaving a year and a half to select candidates for all 600 seats and build campaign momentum – a sprint compared to the two-and-a-half years that many of our 40/40 candidates enjoyed (or suffered). This shorter campaign period will also help reduce the costs of standing for parliament – an unintentional positive – but the creation of new boundaries from scratch will make reselection of sitting MPs more competitive, as many of Labour’s Blairite wing are all too aware.

The combination of major changes to a constituency and relatively little time to execute a campaign will put a huge emphasis on best practice in both modern campaign techniques and old-fashioned organisation. Working together as a larger group of Conservatives means having the resources to deploy up-to-date campaign tools: professionally designed literature for council campaigns, digital campaigning (such as the Crossrail 2 campaign we’ve run in Tooting this autumn) and modern membership engagement. And active ward teams will be even more important, as a safe ward in a safe seat might become a safe ward in a battleground seat within the space of five years.

We are about to enter a dynamic electoral landscape where incumbency counts for less, and finally rid of the bias towards Labour and the Liberal Democrats that made majority government seem impossible before May 7th. Our party has pushed for these reforms – now we need to make sure we’re ready for the challenge in 2020, and beyond.

First published by Conservative Home on January 3rd, 2016

Masons Lane

This is some campaign material I've organised for my mum, who is running for the Wellington mayoralty in October 2016. She's championed the regeneration of Wellington's urban lanes, some of which were frankly terrifying examples of brutalism in what is meant to be a beautiful city. I took some before and after photos of Masons Lane, and put them into a short video, which you can see below. It's a fantastic project – Mum leant heavily on the building owner to cover the cost of removing the canopy, which was a real blight on the laneway (and over half of the project's cost).



I also designed an A5 leaflet, which we delivered to local residents, and gave to pedestrians around Masons Lane.





And I created some GIF files for her Twitter timeline – this was something I hadn't done before, but they worked rather well...

#BalhamOrTooting – a consultation exercise

www.BalhamOrTooting.org.uk
(see bottom of this post for the full website)

Crossrail 2 is the next of London's infrastructure megaprojects – it's a new underground railway line that will run north/south across the city, and relieve the Northern line and railways running though Clapham Junction. It'll take nearly 20 years to deliver, with the first trains estimated to be running around 2030. But it will transform large parts of London – including my patch, Wandsworth, which despite being in Zones 2 & 3 has poor connections into Central London (and partly explains why we have such high levels of cyclists).

The new line has included a station at Tooting Broadway since the route was initially put out to consultation in 2013. A station in Tooting makes a lot of sense as it's at the bottom of the Northern Line, and the area is ripe for regeneration: improving transport connections will unlock new housing.

My friend Dan Watkins – the Conservative candidate in the 2015 General Election – has led a strong campaign to put Tooting on the Crossrail 2 map, so when we found out last month that Transport for London was considering moving the station to Balham we decided to launch a campaign to engage the local population and see if there was support for a campaign to keep the dream of Crossrail 2 at Tooting Broadway alive.

Normally the Wandsworth modus operandi would be to do a combination of door-to-door petitions and email out a link to a Survey Monkey site. This time I suggested we did something different, so my friend Ben Guerin (an ace web developer) got to work on building a website aimed at raising awareness that there was a choice between the Balham and Tooting routes. I designed the graphics and finessed the text. We haven't spent any money on social media advertising.

First social media graphic

Second social media graphic

TfL produced a great map for the consultation

I also designed a leaflet that was delivered to all homes within walking distance of the stations – and at early morning raids on our local tube stations. The effort to get tens of thousands of leaflets delivered in the space of a week was immense – so well done Dan and team on the ground.

DL-sized leaflet

Dan's dodgy photography – something I can't do from the other side of the world!

And of course Dan followed up with local residents who signed the petition.



The results have shown strong support for the station at Tooting Broadway – which is unsurprising given that Balham is a lot more gentrified, and two stops closer to Central London on the Northern Line. Tooting will have to endure a more intrusive construction phase, but the benefits are much, much greater.

What I did find interesting is how support for Tooting Broadway extended in the areas close to Balham station – I used to live in the Heaver Estate area and would walk to Balham if I was catching the tube into town. A station at Tooting Broadway will see some people from Balham and Tooting Bec travel southwards, so perhaps these results are not that surprising after all.

Here's the infographic I produced which summarised the results. I also produced a version for social media (this required slightly different formatting). I love data – so laying this out was a real treat.



The campaign also helped raise the profile of Dan's work in the community, particularly around Tooting Broadway, where Labour has been historically strongest. I was surprised that local MP Sadiq Khan was so slow off the mark – after all, it's a crucial issue for the future of Tooting. Others noticed this too...

We're thrilled with the results, with a substantial majority of the 2500 people signing the survey living in Tooting. It's helped engage people with Crossrail 2's more detailed consultation – having filled out a number of these I know they're usually the domain of the more determined. And that's the point about politics, right? Yes we need politicians to champion causes, but change happens when whole communities are engaged and mobilised.

Tooting responses

Here's the full website:

The full website (background image stretched to render entire length of page)

Nicola Young 2015 Spring newsletter

I'm back in New Zealand giving my mum a hand with her campaign to win the Wellington mayoral election next year. It's a fascinating change in political culture – I think the country's proportional representation for national parliament has made politics far more charged. Municipal politics is less party political, with the Greens and Labour the only parties to stand candidates in recent elections. Mum is an independent, so doesn't have a party machine behind her.

I much prefer the community focus of electorate voting, but also the way Britain's two dominant parties are coalitions themselves and debate is far more civil. I do realise Corbyn's Labour movement might not feel like that much of a coalition at the moment!

So here's the newsletter we've just sent out to 16,000 households in mum's ward. She's worked bloody hard since she was first elected in 2013, and I think that's reflected in her report to voters. A4 folded to DL, and printed on decent paper!

#ToriesForLiz – a letter to Labour's party members and registered supporters

Life since our epic victory on May 8th has been a bit like recovering from Christmas lunch – having gorged myself on christmas pudding, goose (of course) and canvassing I've been struggling to find the enthusiasm for things like charades, EVEL and reform of the Human Rights Act. But I was jolted out of the obligatory post-election / Queen’s Speech snooze when my local MP Sadiq Khan livened things up by nominating Jeremy Corbyn for your leadership contest.

Not voting 4 @jeremycorbyn - but parts of Labour family share his views. I'm nominating him so we can debate them https://t.co/ERiBNPfZvs

— Sadiq Khan MP (@SadiqKhan) June 14, 2015

Corbyn's opposition to PFI and the Iraq War always struck me as principled and decent, but politically he makes Ed Miliband look like pure box-office. So when the midday deadline for nominations passed tribalism duly kicked in: I downloaded my 'Corbyn for Leader' twibbon (apparently that's how you lefties do things) and began to tweet excitedly about Brother Jeremy. Although being really honest I can't say I had any intention of parting with the £3 needed to become a registered supporter of the Labour Party – #JezWeCan and your open primary didn't seem like my business.

And your leadership options aren't exactly inspiring. Andy Burnham was in charge of the nation's purse strings when the public finances started to run out of control and – uncomfortably for him – he failed to act over the Mid-Staffs abuse scandal when he was Secretary of State for Health. His schtick is scaremongering about Tory privatisation of the NHS. Good luck with that: we are pro-market because we believe that is the way to drive up care standards, which is perhaps why Burnham himself oversaw the privatisation of Hinchinbrooke Hospital.

Yvette, on the other hand, is too.... bleugh. She's been at the frontline of British politics for so long I suspect she's running because there's a weight of incumbency as a competent shadow frontbencher, with the Balls / Cooper leadership dilemma conveniently resolved courtesy of Lynton Crosby. There's an unthinking machine politics about Yvette's leadership bid that just seems so dull. Having spent months pounding the streets and towerblocks of Battersea and Tooting I'm pretty confident neither she nor Andy will be PM come 2020.

So Liz Kendall strikes me as the only candidate who can steer Labour back in the direction of sanity. Yet the rank and file of the Labour movement seems hell-bent on monstering a woman who believes we need to invest in our defences at a time when ISIL and Putin are turning up the heat, and who acknowledges that the last Labour government left a welfare system that was unsustainable – views (may I diplomatically add) that were endorsed by the electorate a couple of months ago. Tony Blair is your only leader to have won two full terms in office, yet Liz is made to wear the term 'Blairite' like a badge of shame.

To us Tories this flirtation with the political wilderness is utter madness. If you want to feel radical and unelectable book Owen Jones for a fundraiser – or join the Greens. Liz (currently tanking at 11/1 with the bookies) is the one we think will give us the biggest run for our money. She is a decent woman and has been honest about the importance of the markets in improving our public services. Kendall will bring a voice to opposition that Britain needs, and my decision to cough up three quid and vote was driven by a desire for healthy debate across the political divide at a time when a worrying number of your movement seem more comfortable ranting about the bedroom tax and wishing Charlotte Church was running for leader.

Liz probably won't win, but your AV ballot means I get to express a second preference, which will go to Jeremy Corbyn. Choosing anyone other than Kendall means the Labour party really does need euthanising – and we Tories are a compassionate lot these days. Far better to rip off the plaster with one quick movement than spend years peeling it inch by inch. And don't blame me – just have a good look at Sadiq, who wanted your lunatic element to have a voice (no voice for Tristram Hunt's aspirational John Lewis set, mind). With judgement like that it's safe to say I won't be giving him my vote for the London Mayoralty.

Of course there is another option: the Tories are a broad church. We 'invented' modern state education in the way you 'invented' the NHS, not all of us eat babies for breakfast, and we don't talk about Europe – much. And as a bonus, there's almost certainly a literature delivery round waiting for you at your local Conservative Association!

First published by Labour Uncut on July 20th, 2015

'Thank you' literature

I haven't posted anything about general election literature in the last year because I've had relatively little to do with the design, and if you want to see some of the photos I've done you can just look here. But this is something I've knocked up for Dan Watkins which will be appearing through letterboxes in Tooting in the next week or so (with an address on the postage side).

I'm happy to share the InDesign template (and it can easily be adapted for ward use). Just email me and let me know which Association you're from, etc.