Blog: Worst and best UK political slogans
"Change that works for you. Building a fairer Britain" - the Liberal Democrats' election slogan
Friday, 12, Mar 2010 03:38
A look back at the best and worst of UK general election slogans of recent times as the Liberal Democrats become the last of the three main parties to unveil their campaign mantra.
By Matthew Champion.
The Conservatives were the first party to unveil their 2010 election slogan, with David Cameron taking a leaf out of Barack Obama's "Change we can believe in" line from the 2008 US presidential election with the simple message of "Vote for change".
Labour's "A fairer future for all" was slightly longer but rolled off the tongue nicely, and compared to the Tory slogan appeared to have a message rather than the 'change for change's sake' accusation that could easily be thrown at their opposition.
The Liberal Democrats, apparently in an attempt to appeal to both camps, neatly positioned their slogan between the two with "Change that works for you. Building a fairer Britain".
The slogan is unusually long, features an uncomfortable pause and is unlikely to win the party any new friends.
Five years ago the Lib Dems were all about simplicity, running with "The Real Alternative" as Charles Kennedy's party won their highest number of seats on the back of its opposition to the Iraq war.
Labour and the Tories were in much less firm ground, however, changing their slogans during the election. Tony Blair's government had started the campaign under the banner of "Britain forward, not back", which sounds like the beginning of a haiku, but saw the error of their ways and replaced it with the mantra "If you value it, vote for it".
The Tories, then under the stewardship of Michael Howard, had originally gone with the dangerously open-ended "Are you thinking what we are thinking?".
But that was dropped in favour of "Taking a stand on the issues that matter" without further elaboration.
The awkward clauses seemed at odds with the simple messages that had helped Labour to two of its greatest-ever electoral victories in 2001 and 1997.
In 2001 Labour had marched to the drums of "Schools and hospitals first" in a telling reminder of how politicians were once able to talk about public spending without adding a deficit-cutting postscript, while in 1997 the slogan was of course the D-Ream inspired "Britain deserves better".
In the same year the Tories scored the greatest political slogan own goal of recent times when, acting like a wounded animal, they decided to hit back with some negative poster campaigning featuring a demon-eyed Tony Blair under the words "New Labour, New Danger". Against all odds it wasn't enough to avoid a crushing defeat for the party.
In previous generations the Tories had been the masters of negative campaigning, albeit with a little help from Saatchi and Saatchi. Their "Labour is not working" poster from 1978 remains one of the most iconic slogans in UK political history.
But it still pales to the wordplay employed by Labour in 1957, who, reacting to Harold Macmillan's government's "Never had it so good", hit back with "Never been had so good".