Change. The word was emblazoned on the lectern as Keir Starmer responded to Rishi Sunak’s rain-soaked speech on Wednesday and, lest there were any doubts about Labour’s key campaign message, he said it eight times in his brief address.
A one-word slogan has the merit of being simple and clear – and Labour believes that “Change” will chime with the public’s widespread sense of exasperation at the state of the country.
In a recent YouGov poll, when asked about the prospect of a general election, 58% of respondents – including more than a third of those who voted Tory in 2019 – said it was “time for a change”. Starmer clearly hopes to mirror that thought back at the electorate.
Pared-down political slogans also have the benefit of allowing voters to project on to them their own meaning.
Barack Obama’s run for the White House in 2008 became closely associated with the much-imitated red and blue poster bearing his image and one word: hope. His campaign slogan was the equally upbeat (though equally vague) “Yes we can”, and at times he also promised “Change we can believe in”, or simply “Change”.
Four years later, as he fought for re-election, Obama’s slogan was “Forward”, echoing a message from a past candidate for re-election on this side of the Atlantic, Tony Blair, who promised to take the UK “Forward, not back” as he sought a third term in 2005.
One-word slogans fit more neatly into the binary framework of a referendum than the morass of issues at stake in a general election.
The pro-independence side in the Scottish poll in 2014 went simply for “Yes”, though the majority of voters ultimately decided they were “Better Together”, as the no campaign called itself.
Two years later, Vote Leave’s promise that voters could “take back control” by backing Brexit appeared to resonate with people’s frustrations about the economic and political status quo.
The phrase still carries such political weight that Labour has repurposed it, promising a “take back control” bill to devolve power to local areas.
Starmer pressed home the promise of change in his launch speech on Thursday, urging disillusioned voters to “turn the page” and “end the chaos”.
Standing as the “change candidate” is the default for opposition leaders hoping to unseat their opponents. The Conservative leader David Cameron urged the public in 2010 to “vote for change”, which they duly did.
Five years earlier, Michael Howard had posed voters the cryptic question “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” – to which the answer, apparently, was no.
In 2015 Cameron also hammered home relentlessly the idea that he and his chancellor, George Osborne, had a “long-term economic plan”.
Sunak’s approach seems to be that he has one of these too (he has repeatedly promised to take “bold action”) and that Labour would trash it.
By contrast, Theresa May appeared to offer continuity in 2017 with her campaign slogan promising “Strong and stable leadership”, despite the country having backed the change option in the EU referendum 12 months earlier.
Just as Sunak’s repeated insistence that he has a plan jarred somewhat with his increasingly sodden shoulders on Wednesday, May’s promise of strength and stability sat uncomfortably alongside a panicked mid-campaign U-turn on social care.
In 2019, after some debate, Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit-battered team ended up with the slogan “Time for real change”. Even some insiders were sceptical, fearing it lacked the ideological bite of 2017’s “For the many, not the few”.
Starmer’s critics may feel the same about “Change” – that while it has the merit of simplicity, it is also content-free (though Labour can point to the six “first steps” as examples of the specific kind of change it has in mind).
The pledge to make a difference to voters’ lives may store up challenges for a future Labour government, in what are likely to be tough years ahead. But if the party’s poll lead is anything to go by, as the campaign gears up in the coming days, Starmer’s cry of “Change” should fit neatly with the mood of an exasperated nation.
