The Battle of the Party Political Broadcasts
Photos from Wikimedia Commons
In the second instalment of his column, Ashwin Gohil argues that Rishi Sunak’s detailed promises helped the Conservative’s Party Political Broadcast to thrive, whilst Keir Starmer failed to take a clear stance on anything.
The 11th January 2023 saw the Conservatives launch their party political broadcast (PPB), with the Labour Party’s broadcast hitting our screens a week later. PPBs are very much a ‘performance’; style is favoured over substance. Rishi Sunak (presumably advised by election guru Isaac Levido) hammered home the action his party has been taking on key issues while Keir Starmer was characteristically unable to commit to positions. Of course, against a backdrop of poor poll ratings and ongoing public sector strikes, the Prime Minister has everything to lose while Sir Keir has everything to gain. Despite various criticisms, this article locates the PPB’s success in Sunak’s superior presentation of the Tories as an effective vehicle of change.
By suggesting that he was “brought in to fix” the issues the country is facing, Sunak consciously distances himself from the fiscal disasterclass that was the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget. Such framing is partially what makes the PPB so successful. Sunak mentions the “difficult but fair decisions” he has taken to stabilise borrowing and debt levels. Here, the PM attempts - through premising a degree of detail about government action in relation to the economy - to tie Conservative policy to the progress in tackling inflation and easing the cost of living. His point is evidenced by the fact that energy bills are falling and price rises are stabilising.
The Prime Minister also frames these “difficult decisions” as helping the government imbue the NHS with “record resources”, a perfect opportunity to connect with an electorate concerned by the overburdened service. Sunak could have driven this point home more assuredly if he had delved into specific pledges, such as funnelling a record £150 million into mental health services or promising 5,000 more sustainable hospital beds. What is innovative is that a key part of Sunak’s programme is establishing ‘virtual wards’ to cut COVID-related backlogs and address structural shortcomings. Admittedly, however, these steps were announced a couple of weeks after the PPB was released.
I believe that Sunak’s ‘stop the boats’ rhetoric is unjustly de-humanising. However, I also think that the policy deliberately panders to key figures on the right of the party, such as Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Sir John Hayes, but more importantly to disillusioned Tory voters. Indeed, Sunak contends that the situation is “unfair on British taxpayers” who fund the hotel stays of “illegal migrants.” He explains that the government has deployed “hundreds of new [border force] agents” in response and that new legislation will be passed to remove individuals whose asylum claims fail. However distasteful I find this approach, Sunak’s detail is impressive. The ability to tap into the anxieties of voters swayed by this inflammatory language, while simultaneously proposing solutions, is what makes the PPB so effective.
Sir Keir’s PPB, contrastingly, is almost entirely non-party political. This is even mirrored in the broadcast’s name (Labour Party Political Broadcast) as opposed to the Conservative’s politically loaded Your priorities are Our Priorities. This has much to do with Labour’s more comfortable poll ratings and the fact that the exhausted Conservatives are unlikely to emerge as the largest party in the next general election. By choosing not to publicly bash the Tories, Starmer hopes it won’t seem like he’s ‘playing politics’ at such a critical time for the country, explaining his ‘fireside chat’ approach. Wearing a humbler long-sleeve shirt in comparison to Sunak’s suit, Sir Keir rightly remarks that “we need to stop talking” about problems within the NHS “and fix them”, remarking the same of the economy. Characteristically light on specific policies, however, Starmer provides no detail about how Labour pledges to do this.
Although Keir Starmer may well be Britain’s next elected PM, Labour shouldn’t be complacent about the Conservative Party’s implosion. When it seemed certain that the Tories would be voted out in 1992 (incidentally, after thirteen years), Major unexpectedly won. Miliband’s failed bid for Number 10 in 2015 also came as a surprise to many.
Sir Keir also says he wants a “government that’s... clear about what it’s going to achieve with a serious long-term plan” as opposed to making “short term fix[es]” - but, I wonder, what exactly does that mean? Labour should certainly capitalise on the recent news that the UK economy will slip into a recession this year. But what plan does the party propose? It’s no wonder that those on the left of Labour are disillusioned by the party leadership. So whilst no one can deny the catchiness of the title “A Fairer, Greener Future” which appears at the end of the PPB, aside from Labour’s (rather commendable) pledge to launch a publicly-owned Great British Energy firm, no other policy seems to have caught on in the public arena.
Although Labour’s lack of policy offerings is not a huge deal-breaker given that they are probably a government-in-waiting, Sir Keir and co. should not underestimate the power of the Conservatives to emerge victorious despite the odds. Rishi Sunak can be proud that his PPB includes evidence of action as well as a display of robust, workable reforms even if their longer-term effects are yet to be seen.