There is a tough lesson that senior Labour advisers want some of their internal party critics to learn from the Democrats’ disastrous defeat. Optimism is not the answer they think it is.
When Kamala Harris’s campaign had the most momentum, the core of it was joy. And although the final weeks were dominated by darker warnings of fascism under Donald Trump, Harris returned to that theme of optimism in one of her final messages to supporters, saying they had “brought back the joy”.
Senior Labour insiders are privately scathing about those tactics. “The final days were a parade of celebrities in the middle of a cost of living crisis,” said one.
Another said it was a warning to those inside their own tent who had called for more optimism, more joy. “How’s that working out?” one said. Another described the Democrats as “running on vibes rather than an argument”.
For several of those plotting the government’s strategy and messaging, this is a hard but necessary truth – when life is very tough, joy is not the right tone. They believe that it vindicates Keir Starmer’s decision to keep underlining how he understands that life for many in Britain is difficult.
Many in the party will still disagree: they hate the funereal tone and believe it is giving voters licence to give up all hope in this government already. At worst, it gives quarter to the dark forces in UK politics who will sell the idea that politicians will change nothing.
In No 10 there is a grim-faced resolve to keep party communications focused on realism – an acknowledgment of the hard times and a roadmap of how that will change.
The result in the US is evidence, writ-large, of the scale of the challenge Labour faces at the next election. Biden’s was an incumbent government felled by the economy – despite the creation of 15m jobs, the highest growth in the G7 and wage increases of almost 20%. But it was inflation, the rising cost of simple necessities such as bread and eggs, that voters cited.
On this side of the Atlantic, that lesson is already being learned. It has meant the unceremonial ditching of the language of Starmer’s first “mission” on the economy. It wasn’t working. No voter wants to hear about the highest growth in the G7, they want to hear about the price of a Tesco shop.
Another example UK strategists cite is the number of jobs that Biden’s administration created. But for those already in a low-paid job, that statistic was completely irrelevant. It sounded like bragging. It did nothing to help their day-to-day costs.
And the campaign had another lesson the party wants to hammer home to its activists and MPs – that voters will set the agenda, not politicians.
In the US, polls repeatedly suggested the top two issues for voters were the economy and immigration. “Then you need to talk about the economy and immigration,” one strategist said. “The Labour party had a habit in the past of saying, ‘Oh no, we don’t want to talk about those issues. We want to try and make the election about a different question’.
“No matter how hard the Democrats tried to make it about something else, whether it was about reproductive freedom or anything else, that wasn’t what voters had front and centre of their minds going into the election.”
For those in the Labour government who watched the US election the closest, they clocked early the discipline of the Trump campaign, even when their own X algorithms were serving them constant clips of the former president’s gaffes.
Trump can hardly be described as a poster boy for message discipline. But amid his ramblings, there were targeted messages on the economy to be clipped and pumped into ads. “There was an incredibly set, clear set of messages if you went to look for them,” said one Labour source. But many on the centre-left may never even have encountered them.
No 10 and the Treasury believe the budget will come to be a significant part of pushing their message. It drew very deliberate dividing lines, picked an argument, and showed who it prioritises – those who drive to work, pick up a payslip, and wait on hold for a GP appointment.
And despite a slew of negative front pages on the reaction from farmers and business tax hikes, in the nine focus groups run so far there was cautious optimism from strategists that it has worked – people felt relieved their own pay packets had not been hit.
To feel better off will take a lot longer. There is no sign of much wage growth. And that government killer – inflation – looks set to return next year, in part caused by this Labour government’s own choices to borrow more.
Living standards is a far tougher test than getting numbers on a spreadsheet to look a bit healthier. The budget’s own forecasts show improvements over this parliament will be very limited. But lessons from across the globe show it is the only way that any government can survive the trend of volatile electorates who seem in the mood to punish incumbents.
