Keir Starmer will announce on Thursday that The Labour Party will stand on a platform of five “national missions” at the next general election.
The missions cover the economy, the NHS, crime, climate change and education.
YouGov’s “most important issues facing the country” tracker shows that the top five issues according to voters are: the economy, health, immigration, the environment and Britain leaving the EU.
The trend over the last year shows that eduction and crime, whilst important, are consistently less important policy areas than Brexit and immigration.
One might wonder why Labour would choose to focus on issues that they know to be less salient than others.
But saliency is only half the story when it comes to deciding what issues to campaign on in a general election.
The other half is credibility.
If a party campaigns on issues that voters don’t view them as being able to deliver on, it can sound hollow.
And if voters perceive the opposing party as having a stronger offer on an issue, then spending time campaigning on it – which will raise the saliency of it – is playing into the hands of the enemy.
Labour are seen as being more credible on education and crime than the Conservatives so they are better off campaigning on those strengths.
People will believe Labour more when they talk about what they’ll do on those issues than when they speak about Brexit or immigration.
And any time spent raising their saliency will help them and hurt the Conservatives.
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