When Labour MPs and activists campaigned during the general election, voters repeatedly told them, “We don’t know what you stand for.” The party had assembled more policies than any opposition in recent history but lacked a unifying theme. As the former shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna later told me, “People didn’t know what we stood for because we kept changing our bloody message every bloody month.” The party veered from “responsible capitalism” to “one nation”, to “the cost-of-living crisis”, to “a better plan, a better future”.
In contrast, the Conservatives, as they never ceased to remind voters, had a “long-term economic plan”. Lynton Crosby, the Tories’ campaign manager, credited this discipline with delivering them a parliamentary majority. “Message is everything in politics,” he concluded.
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