The Labour Party have released a new slogan today: Build a better Britain.
It looks like it’s replaced “A fairer, greener future” which was the slogan developed for the Labour Party annual conference in 2022.
The new slogan is solid.
It’s a classic challenger positioning in the sense that it’s another way of saying “it’s time for a change”.
It’s under five words, which all political slogans should be. No excuses.
And it includes a good verb: build. Verbs are ‘doing’ words and since parties always want to get people to do something – share, donate, vote etc – having a good verb in the party’s rallying cry is to be applauded.
The one downside is that it feels fairly familiar.
In politics there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using phrases which other parties, campaigns or candidates have used before.
Election campaigns are ephemeral. Few slogans live long in the memory.
And there are a limited number of electoral strategies (I will be publishing more on this topic in the future) and so it’s inevitable that the same terminology will turn up time and again.
I’ve done a quick review of recent election slogans and found several since 1997 which use “better” as a key piece of terminology.
The problem with the slogan isn’t that voters will consciously think “haven’t I heard this before?”
It’s more that the set of words don’t capture a zeitgeist or feel particularly attuned to the moment that we’re living in.
That doesn’t mean the slogan is an own goal or even that it’s missed the target. To repeat: this is a solid slogan.
But my sense is that there may be a set of words that are still to be found that better captures the nation’s imagination and evocatively summarises Keir Starmer’s pitch.
Will this latest phrase be the slogan that Labour use to fight the 2024 general election? I think it’s unlikely.
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