'We should scrap HS2 to Manchester because it won’t even reach the city for another two decades,” says Sunak. While stood in front of a sign which says “Long-term decisions for a brighter future."'

With the general election getting closer, now is a critical time for party leaderships to start honing their messages to resonate with constituents with a short, memorable, and striking slogan.

Easier said than done, at least if this year’s Conservative Party Conference slogan is anything to go by.

We take a look at the five worst Tory slogans.

Long-term decisions for a brighter future

Rishi Sunak’s unconvincing leader’s speech in Manchester this year was made considerably less convincing by the slogan imprinted on the podium that he stood behind, which read: ‘Long-term decisions for a brighter future.’

With the rising cost-of-living crippling budgets, schools literally crumbling, and NHS waiting times getting longer, most people don’t want long-term decisions anyway, they want immediate and decisive government action on the many crises impacting the country.

Couple that with what Sunak announced in his speech, namely the scrapping of the HS2 rail line to Manchester, and the slogan was deemed absurd.

Many took to X to share their disbelief at the slogan.

“We should scrap HS2 to Manchester because it won’t even reach the city for another two decades,” says Sunak. While stood in front of a sign which says “Long-term decisions for a brighter future,” someone wrote.

Green MP Caroline Lucas joined the mockery, posting:

“It’s a bold choice to stand in front of a sign saying “long-term decisions for a brighter future, to claim “irony isn’t lost on me” and then go on to announce a massive road building programme in the midst of a climate emergency.”

Big Society, not Big Government

David Cameron was obsessed with the notion of the ‘Big Society,’ which became his flagship programme for the 2010 general election. The main aim of the ‘Big Society,’ was to bring change for society by giving people more personal responsibility in order “to generate, develop and showcase new ideas to help people to come together in their neighbourhoods to do good things.” The ‘Big Society, not Big Government’ slogan was dreamt up by Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s advisor at the time.  However, it backfired and was said to have left voters feeling confused about the message, and Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010. Cameron did not use the term in public after 2013 and the phrase ceased to be used in government statements.

A Britain living within its means

The party’s slogan in the run-up to the 2015 general election was widely criticised. When David Cameron made a speech under a huge sign promoting ‘A Britain living within its means,’ the six-word slogan was immediately mocked online for being too long and uninspiring.

“Who can fail to be inspired by such an ambitious statement?” communications adviser Jamie Robertson wrote on Twitter.

“I’ve got goosebumps,” was another mocking post.

Building a country that works for everyone

Another long-winded slogan that failed to resonate with audiences was on display at the Tory conference in 2017. Famously, the letters fell off the seven-word slogan during Theresa May’s leadership speech. Billed as the speech where May would fight for her political career, first F in the ‘for’ fell off, quickly followed by the E from ‘everyone.’ Additional disasters in the memorable speech included a prankster handing the PM her P45 and May fighting off an obstinate cough that wouldn’t shift.

Get Brexit Done

While ‘Get Brexit Done,’ the slogan that was repeated on every doorstep, pamphlet, and billboard during the Tories’ 2019 election campaign, is widely attributed to having helped Boris Johnson secure a landslide win, almost four years later and we now know that the slogan was misleading, as Brexit is far from ‘done.’ On the contrary, the UK remains in constant negotiation with Europe, and the rejoin the EU movement is gaining momentum. 

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

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