I think it’s fair to say the latest Labour Party Election Broadcast (PEB) hasn’t received universal acclaim, with folk on all sides asking “what were they thinking of?”
I was fortunate enough to spend some years working side by side with the three partners who formed Lucky Generals, the ad agency that produced the broadcast for Labour. I can tell you that they are creative, accomplished and – most pertinently – highly intelligent individuals. Indeed, one of them has received more awards for advertising effectiveness than anyone else in the business.
So they won’t have produced that PEB on a whim because they thought it would be funny or out of creative indulgence. They’ll have produced it because it will deliver strategically against what they have been told are the Labour Party’s goals. And I think that probably tells us quite a lot about Labour’s 2015 general election strategy. That strategy is, to use a technical term from adland, “shit or bust”; or in political parlance, it’s the 35 per cent strategy.
As the political arithmetic under the constituency boundaries means Labour only needs to poll the 35 per cent it currently polls to win a majority (as opposed to 42 per cent for the Tories), Labour appears to have decided to hold on to what it’s got. That PEB is designed to do two things to the Lib Dems. It tells disaffected voters from 2010 who have defected to Labour why they should stick with them. And it puts two fingers up to the Lib Dems in terms of any future coalition negotiations. Despite some evidence to the contrary, it seems Labour really still do resent the “Gordon has to go” red line put down by the Lib Dems in 2010.
But by basically now making it very difficult to see how the Lib Dems can ever now go into a coalition with the party responsible for that ad, Labour is saying “we must win a majority in 2015” – or decide to try and run a minority government.
The latter would probably last until autumn – when after a no confidence vote, the Tories, well-funded, basking in the difficulties thrown up by Labour running a minority government for six months and with a new leader (step forward, Boris) – will streak home again in a second general election. So, it all comes down to – can Labour win a majority at the first time of asking in May 2015?
Lucky Generals is named after the Napoleonic quote – “I have plenty of clever generals but just give me a lucky one”. Ed Miliband must hope he is just such a lucky general. But to all those in the Lib Dems railing at the PEB and gnashing their teeth, can I suggest an alternative Napoleonic quote? “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
Richard Morris blogs at A View From Ham Common, which was named Best New Blog at the 2011 Lib Dem Conference
Content from our partners
Related
