From the devastating to the downright desperate, the Conservatives have a rich – if chequered – history of devising political attack advertisements designed to see off Labour. At their best, they have the power to tap into the nation’s doubts about the party, most obviously preying on suspicions that it will tax and spend the moment it seizes the levers of power. They have also attempted to take aim at the perceived flaws of the Labour leader – whether it was concerns over Jeremy Corbyn’s views on national security or Ed Miliband’s willingness to stand up to the SNP should he become prime minister. With Labour still retaining a stubbornly large poll lead in an election year, the Tories are now engaged in an increasingly desperate race to find an attack on Keir Starmer and his party that might stick. While Boris Johnson’s depiction of Starmer as “Captain Hindsight” during the peak of the Covid crisis gained some traction, the Tories have since veered from depicting Starmer as ruthless and unprincipled to being a lefty lawyer committed to human rights. Here, we document the party’s most and least successful attempts to land one on their opponents.
Life’s better with the Conservatives. Don’t let Labour ruin it, 1959 Building on prime minister Harold Macmillan’s 1957 declaration that the UK had “never had it so good”, the Tories carried the message into their election campaign. The country agreed and gave the party a historic third general election victory in a row, increasing its majority from 60 to 100 seats.
Labour isn’t working, 1979 Widely regarded as the epitome of the successful attack ad, Saatchi & Saatchi’s “Labour isn’t working” poster used in Margaret Thatcher’s victorious 1979 campaign managed to highlight the nation’s concerns in one image of a winding dole queue. The simple idea also spoke to Thatcher’s iconoclastic approach to taking a different path. Attack ads had well and truly arrived.
Labour’s tax bombshell, 1992 Another Saatchi ad that highlighted concerns felt by voters over the prospect of installing Neil Kinnock into No 10 in 1992. Kinnock had taken Labour back towards the centre after it had drifted to the left under Michael Foot -, yet suspicions remained over its economic plans. The defeat fuelled a future New Labour’s obsession with having credible spending plans.
New Labour, New Danger, 1996 The image of Tony Blair with demon eyes has come to symbolise the attack ad gone wrong. It was published with the Tories desperate to dent a huge Labour lead and tried to paint New Labour as being old Labour in disguise. The problem was that voters disagreed – as shown by Labour’s 179-strong majority in 1997. In the pocket of the SNP (main picture, above), 2015 With polls suggesting Labour could be the biggest party in a hung parliament after the 2015 election, a Tory party running out of ideas published an ad depicting Labour’s Ed Miliband as being in the pocket of the SNP’s Alex Salmond. The idea took off thanks to English voters’ perception of Miliband as weak.
Better Call Keir, 2024 With Labour’s poll lead still in double digits, the Tories are attacking Keir Starmer for cases he took on as a criminal barrister – with a reference to the hit television show Better Call Saul. Social media users soon pointed out that, quite apart from the fact that Starmer had prosecuted terrorists, the poster made the Labour leader look almost cool.