Punchy communications, they say, is about three Rs: reduce your message to its essentials, repeat it shamelessly, then reinforce it every possible way. All this, you might think, is especially important in our age of distraction, where the only way to grab and hold the attention of voters is to paint your politics in primary colours.
During and immediately after Keir Starmer’s big speech on Tuesday, the Labour faithful dared to hope that their embattled leader had, in his own measured way, finally found a way to start clarifying what he stood for. Over the course of an hour, he rehearsed the claim that he had the grit to square up to the inescapable dilemmas of governing—whereas Reform would duck out of them and resort to playing divisive blame games.
Whoever had been running the prime ministerial X account during the August holiday season—when it posted a whole run of images of black men being fingerprinted and detained—was now elbowed firmly out of the way. Yes, the prime minister intended to get a grip at the border, but the reason that was important was precisely to maintain “our beautiful, tolerant, diverse country” that others were trying to rip apart. Yes, control of spending was necessary, but that prudence was for the progressive purpose of securing effective governance in the face of grave problems such as climate change. Yes, higher productivity must be pursued, but in a manner that did not weaken but rather bolstered worker rights.
There were also warm words about “the basic, ordinary hope of a better future for our children—restored for millions…” which were, almost immediately after Starmer sat down, seemingly reinforced with a commitment to find real resources, with the press told that the Chancellor would lift the impoverishing two-child limit in her November Budget.
And yet the small print buried underneath this headline, which Labour supporters had for so long yearned to see, provided the first sign that the new Starmer doctrine of “principle tempered by pragmatism” may not be repeated or reinforced—but instead risks being diluted and disregarded. For the official briefing made plain that the Treasury is not, after all, going to make a principled stand to support all children by dint of their mere existence, perhaps while phasing-in such support in line with what is affordable. Instead, options on the table involve continuing to withhold support from children whose parents don’t work, or children from very large (rather than quite large) families.
The new Starmer doctrine of ‘principle tempered by pragmatism’ already risks being diluted and disregarded
The next morning’s headline was that the former human rights lawyer in No.10 is looking to reduce the scope for refugees to reunite with their families, and even narrow the supposedly unconditional protection against torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment”. The same day, the “biggest upgrade in workers’ rights in a generation,” as it was endlessly touted at Labour conference, was tainted by a report that the government is considering imposing charges at the employment tribunals where employees go to enforce their rights. By the time of the late afternoon news on the Wednesday, the BBC was leading with rumours that ministers are set to redefine the meaning of “new fields” in the North Sea, so that they can licence more exploration and drilling for oil than their manifesto had appeared to suggest.
Forget, for now, the rights and wrongs of the centrist positions that the Starmer administration is landing on in each of these areas. The prime minister is not wrong to insist that government is a business of fraught and difficult trade-offs, especially when the public finances are tight. He may well be right, too, that the mood of many voters on immigration is, roughly, suspicion of newcomers, combined with concerns about what will happen if that collective suspicion gets out of hand.
My point is simply that if the PM wants to achieve the definition he has until now been lacking, he needs to reduce, reinforce and repeat. The 99.9 per cent of the country that did not tune in for his whole conference speech will have heard precious little about it, competing for airtime as it was with the Trump “peace plan” for the Middle East and much else in our noisy world. Those who missed the speech on Tuesday but caught the Wednesday story about diluting migrant rights at the border, which was designed to hedge the sharpening of the Starmer attack on Nigel Farage, may well not know that this attack happened at all. Instead, they may simply assume that Labour is again playing catch-up with Reform. And they might well think the same thing is going on with climate policy.
In sum, while Starmer made a decent speech on Tuesday afternoon, it will do little to alter perceptions of him and his government beyond the hall. That will take more than an hour of oration. It will take a sustained strategy in which messages are not read out and ticked off a list, but endlessly repeated and reinforced.
