Starmer and Sunak: Two Generals fighting different battles
Thoughts from 50 years of election campaigning
Half a century of an obsession
It is now more than 50 years since I worked in a general election for Harold Wilson in February 1974. I remember every general election with clarity; weird I know. This general election is one of the strangest.
It’s not the gaffes, though I’ve never seen so many of them, it’s the fact that the two main parties seem to be skirmishing on different fronts. Yet we’re in a two party system. It’s a binary choice election. What on earth is going on?
Labour
Labour is reaching out the former supporters it lost in 2019, 2017, 2015 and 2010. It’s focusing on reassurance within its change message.
For what it’s worth, the first three doors I knocked in this general election were in Spen Valley for Kim Leadbeater. Door one was a first time Tory voter in 2019, now back to labour. Door two was a lifelong Tory, now come to labour. Door Three was a Lifelong Tory voter, now a don’t know and weighing up Labour and the Reform Party. These three door knocks are in no way scientific but if you extrapolate them over the entire United Kingdom it shows the Tories are in deep trouble.
Conservative
If Keir wants this to be a change election, Rishi needs it to be a choice election.
Sunak used his remaining agency to call a surprise election. It was the right thing to do because for the last 18 months, every decision has felt more like referendum on 14 years of, well, let’s face it, chaos. At least with an election, Sunak has a chance to put his case and ask voters to contrast it to Keir’s.
Yet here is Rishi Sunak’s problem: The Conservatives are only speaking to their elemental core of support which is fractured and considering shifting to the Reform Party, staying at home, or moving to the Lib Dems and Labour.
National Service
Tory spin doctors maintained three days of discussion on Sunak’s national service announcement, despite it being ridiculed by nearly every retired general in the UK. It’s led to 16 year olds joining Labour and knocking on doors to stop it (yup, I saw the evidence of this with my own eyes, yesterday).
Why is he doing it? National Service appeals to an older generation with memories of loved ones sharing nostalgic stories of a bygone age, when the country displayed imperial prowess and people knew their place. In other words: the Conservative Core Vote.
Sunak is rallying the heartlands, trying to hold the Tory family together. It’s perfectly logical given the poor standing in the polls but it’s not without cost.
Focussing on wavering older-voting shire residents in the heartlands has left Labour free to appeal to the Red Wall, the Blue Wall and Scotland with little challenge.
So, two leaders, two parties, two campaigns and thus far, very little direct engagement.
What do voters think?
They say you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Not this year, I’m afraid. Labour is campaigning in prose and rightly so. They’re negotiating a difficult contract with millions of potential new supporters who want to read the small print of the offer.
For voters, this is a cost of living election. They’re not interested in how soggy Sunak gets or the fact that he can’t play football.
The swing voters in the general election are economically squeezed and worried about the future. The party that will win is the one that doesn’t bullshit them about how hard it will be to get the country back on its feet but reassures them they have a workable plan.
Reading
Speeches that changed the world.
These times are so grim, I keep thinking of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the fractured world of 1933, where nations were embracing communism and fascism, FDR sought to unite his country with his inaguaral speech. In biblical language he described the ‘essential democracy’ that would put America back on its feet. I’d vote for a party leader that can speak like this:
“I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.”
Great speech!
Hi Tom, I'm a big fan and have a genuine question. Wikipedia says you were born in 1967, which would have made you 7 years old in 1974. Seems pretty young to be election campaigning. Have they made a mistake, or were you an early starter? All the best.