Analysing Labour’s unexpectedly brilliant campaign
When the general election was called, Theresa May’s Conservatives enjoyed a twenty point lead. Yet six weeks later she and her party were utterly humiliated, failing to win a majority.
Even Len McClusky, Corbyn’s staunchest supporter, predicted that 200 seats would be “a good night” for Labour. They won 262 seats, surpassing their 2015 result by 30 seats.
The May local elections suggested that the Conservatives were heading for a substantial victory. Therefore the May local results imply the public changed their mind in the space of a month.
I thought May was going to win a landslide. Labour thought May was going to win a landslide. Everyone thought May was going to win a landslide. This election result was so unexpected, one pundit actually ended up literally eating his own words.
So what changed?
Tom Albrighton has written a brilliant post-mortem of the Conservative campaign, in which he points out that the Conservatives failed because they made the election all about Theresa May, who proved unpopular, fought a negative campaign, and patronised the general public.
I think the reason for the dramatic turn in fortunes can be put down to two things:
1. The Tories failed to detoxify themselves
2. Labour fought, BY FAR, the better campaign
Still Toxic
In my analysis when the election was called, I said the Conservatives needed to be bold and — shock horror — apologise to all the people who hated them.
They didn’t. Instead, they fought an imperious, arrogant campaign, believing that they faced no opposition, that people hated Corbyn more.
In short, they took the electorate for granted, banking on UKIP votes to turn Conservative. In fact, particularly in northern constituencies, where the Tories remain toxic, those votes returned to Labour.
The most memorable policies the Conservatives had were dementia tax and fox hunting. Not only were they vote losers, they showed that the nasty party was still in town.
And by making the campaign all about Theresa May, they made her look personally nasty by association. It wasn’t just the Tories who lost. It was Theresa’s Tories.
Theresa May is toxic now.
Perceptions are incredibly hard to shift.
If this election proved one thing, it is that people have long memories. And they don’t forgive.
I was of the opinion that Theresa May needed to start her campaign with an enormous apology. Now, I’m of the opinion that sorry will never be enough. She should resign.
Negative Campaigning
The Tories offered no positive vision for society. Their manifesto contained pain, austerity, thin gruel, and more pain. Oh, and a bit of fox hunting for good measure.
I know a lot of Tories got excited when the ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s terrorist links’ attack ad came out.
The ad is almost word for word the ad I suggested the Tories SHOULDN’T make. In fact, the last 45 seconds of the ad follows my script exactly, to the letter.
I reiterate what I said two months ago: negative campaigning like that misread the mood of the nation.
It is the kind of ad that enthuses your core vote, the people who already agree with you. When the Tories started running it, I knew they were in trouble.
The aim of ads like that aren’t to win over new supporters. The aim of ads like that is to terrify your own voters into showing up on the day.
The Tories started running this ad two weeks before the election. I think that’s the moment they realised they were losing.
Labour, meanwhile, adopted the ‘us vs them’ strategy I suggested with great success.
“For the many, not the few” is a more subtle way of saying “we’re for the 99%, not the 1%”, “we’re for the people who rent, who are just about managing, for the people who use the NHS, not the bankers, the landlords, the rich bastards with private healthcare”.
But while the Labour campaign was subtle, the Momentum campaign was not.
The ads produced by Momentum, Jeremy Corbyn’s unofficial fan club, were by far and away the best ads of the campaign.
Unlike the Tories, who used the old mallet-to-the-head approach,
they used humour successfully and repeatedly.
I love the old adage from Dave Trott’s New York days where he learned that a good ad should effectively say “hey, schmuck” at you. It should make what it it selling seem not only preferable, but also the obvious choice.
Momentum ran three brilliant ‘hey schmuck’ ads:
One showing how obvious it should be that the railways are renationalised.
Another one showing how obvious it is that care should be provided through national insurance, not taking away people’s homes.
[Note: The ad was a spoof Conservative ad, and at the time I said it would fall foul of ‘passing off’ laws as it appears to come from the Tories. The ad is no longer available via official channels — but it was viewed millions of times over before being taken down]
And finally, an ad using the precise ‘us vs them’ strategy I suggested, showing a banker on one side, getting rich off Tory policy, while a nurse on the other side struggles.
Incredibly, this ad cost just £2000 and was viewed ten million times.
These ads were funny, shareable and made Labour seem like the OBVIOUS choice. They made it seem like you’d have to be dumb to disagree with them.
What did the Tories offer? More ‘Corbyn is a terrorist’ attack ads.
The attacks on Corbyn didn’t ring true.
The more the public saw of Corbyn, the more they warmed to him. The Conservative attack ads were counterproductive because they didn’t align with the cuddly, avuncular figure they could see addressing huge rallies of devoted supporters.
The Corbyn campaign was excellent at using social proof to get out its message.
Huge rallies didn’t work for Kinnock in 1992, but in the social media age, they took on a new importance. Corbyn came on stage during a Libertines gig, for heaven’s sake. Theresa May ran a carefully stage managed campaign that looked utterly fake. In a social media age, it’s impossible to run a controlled campaign.
Corbyn used influencers and social media successfully. The Conservative campaign led to scenes like this:
Stage managed campaigns no longer work.
Corbyn offered social proof. May looked scared, frightened to meet or talk to real people.
Conclusion: The positive campaign won
As you can see from the final result, the campaign produced a stunning turnaround — perhaps one of the most shocking results of recent years. Even though Labour didn’t win, they turned a 20 point deficit into a no overall majority. And Theresa May is damaged goods.
The direction of travel throughout the campaign was clear.
Ultimately, the Tories fell foul of the same trap that caught the EUref ‘remain’ campaign and the Clinton campaign in the US.
They thought that people would vote for stability, continuity, more of the same. They thought they could attack their opponents and frighten people into voting for them, out of fear of worse.
But people who had nothing to lose once again stuck their fingers up to authority and voted for the other guy, for change, for the chance of something better.
Congratulations to Labour and particularly to Momentum. They fought a brilliant campaign.
