Labour’s attack ads mean that the next election will be dirty. The Opposition has the most to lose
Source - Daily Telegraph 15/04/23
This month, Keir Starmer ensured that in the lead-up to the next general election, the Tories will run their most aggressively negative campaign ever. By releasing a comically overdone Twitter ad effectively claiming “Rishi is soft on paedos”, Starmer has given the Tories licence to savage him from now on.
For the Conservatives, this is heaven-sent. They need politics to get dirty. When you are up to 20 points behind in the polls, no number of policy announcements will cut the mustard with voters. They need to tear the other guy down.
Discard those claims that negativity backfires. Only incompetent negativity backfir. Voters love quality negative messaging because it is clear and simple. In more than two decades of focus groups, I have never once heard anyone genuinely claim they dislike negativity.
Why does all this necessarily favour the Conservatives? Labour have given the Tories the excuse to go negative much earlier than they expected.
Had the Conservatives gone negative first, the media would have been awash with stories about “Tory desperation”. Useful idiots on the Party’s backbenches – naturally dubbed “senior Conservatives” in places such as the Financial Times – would have given quotes saying it was not like this in Thatcher or Churchill’s day. A bishop could be found to join in.
But Starmer’s negativity means these “senior Conservatives” will accept Rishi unleashing hell on Starmer in the name of fairness.
Starmer should have claimed the moral high ground for as long as possible. He might even have proposed a pact to agree positive-only campaigning, which politicians who are miles ahead occasionally do. It would have made it uncomfortable for Sunak had Starmer claimed he would only “play the ball, not the man”.
Additionally, Labour are vulnerable in areas that lend themselves to brutal negativity. Many voters already think Starmer is soft on crime. Focus groups occasionally throw up wild and inaccurate claims about his record as Director of Public Prosecutions.
The Labour leader is most exposed on aspects of the “culture war”– primarily about debates around British history and sex education, which are now on the agenda for the first time.
Other aspects of the culture war provide fertile ground for the Tories, too. Labour politicians and activists will have said a mix of eccentric, offensive and laughable things that will look bizarrely out of touch to most voters.
Imagine the effect of 60-odd consecutive Sundays of tabloid stories highlighting the latest crazy thing some Labour person has come out with. It would drive home the message that “Labour’s leaders have weird priorities and weird values”. Crucially, it would show that Labour is a bit of a joke and therefore incompetent.
Finally, Starmer is not yet sufficiently defined in the public mind to go negative. A US Republican consultant responsible for some of the most infamous negative campaigns of recent times once assured me he would only ever encourage his candidate going negative when they had first set out their own positive vision. Without anchoring a positive image first, voters cannot understand the benefits of the contrast you are drawing.
For more than two years now, swing voters in focus groups have been saying, “All Starmer does is carp from the sidelines.” He has not yet explained what he is for. His lead over the Tories is thus built purely off massive recent Conservative incompetence.
It is hard to imagine the Conservatives turning around a 15- or 20-point lead. But it is possible to imagine how a competent negative campaign will close the gap – maybe to about 10 points. If they can do this with nine months to spare, who knows what will happen in a general election.
Starmer has shot himself in the foot.
James Frayne is a founding partner of Public First. He has spent his entire career working in communications and opinion research
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