Today the Labour Party have launched their biggest ad campaign yet under Starmer and it promotes the party’s “6 steps for change”.
None of these are new policies, but this is a new framing and a significant investment and so it’s leading the day’s news bulletins.
Here’s 5 observations on the advert:
1/ Keir Starmer is front and centre of the ad. Labour believes the public thinks that he would make a better Prime Minister than Rishi Sunak and so they want to press home this advantage on leadership.
2/ They’re spending significant amounts of money on offline media: posters and press ads in local newspapers in key constituencies. They want to reach a broad group of voters as they believe there’s a significant number of voters open to changing how they voted in 2019.
3/ There are 5 previously published Labour “missions” but 6 “first steps”. The house building and infrastructure investment mission is not represented, but border security (absent from the missions) is included. Plus economic stability is called out as a key step but was more implied as part of a variety of the missions.
This indicates that the party believe that they can take “renty somethings” for granted and can focus their attention on people who are worried about illegal immigration instead.
4/ There are only two specific numbers pointed out in the pledges: the number of additional NHS appointments they will enable and the volume of new teachers they plan to recruit. There’s also no specific investment numbers. The party were bitten by promising £28billion on green investment instead of focusing on outcomes. They’re not making that mistake again.
5/ Starmer’s facial expression is sincere and serious. His image is in black and white. His sleeves are rolled up. This is all to signal that the party recognise that these are serious times and that Starmer is ready to get to work fixing the country.
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