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What keeps political leaders and media managers up at night are the unexpected campaign disasters — gaffes, embarrassing photos, politicians going off-message, pushy citizens.
Every step of the way to polling day is already meticulously planned, with candidates visiting close constituencies, publishing manifestos, laying out policies and launching advertising blitzes to win the support of undecided voters.
But the parties involved know that a verbal gaffe, an embarrassing photo or simply an unexpected event that derails their carefully laid out strategy could be just around the corner.
As Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and other party leaders crisscross the country, here are six campaign pitfalls that could still stall them.
Embarrassing photos
A picture is worth a thousand words and can create a lasting image of an election campaign, which is why party “spokesmen” and advance guards must be on the alert for any sticky situations where their men might be photographed.
It’s too late for Mr Sunak, who has been photographed as a drowned rat beneath an “EXIT” sign outside Downing Street and more recently surrounded by Mickey Mouse ears.
It’s not that Conservative strategists haven’t had ample warning in recent years: in 1997 John Major was dogged by accusations of “Conservative meanness”, was photographed leaving a shop called Three’s and was even taken to inspect a British racing car. The only problem was that it had no wheels, creating a compelling metaphor for the state of his election campaign.
In 2015, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was unknowingly handed a giant wet fish while visiting a port in Cornwall, with the inconvenient photo appearing in the newspapers the next day.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron visited a school in Bolton and was photographed teaching children to read, while the six-year-old girl sitting next to him didn’t understand the notes and rested her head on the desk in boredom.
That same year, Labour was trying to project a more down-to-earth image for Ed Miliband, and he and his wife were pictured having tea at their north London home.
The plan backfired when it emerged the couple had been photographed in a tiny kitchen, inevitably leading to them being labelled “Miliband with two kitchens”.
To make matters worse, shortly thereafter some of the best minds on his team came up with the idea to inscribe Labour’s six main election promises on a giant stone slab – which was quickly dubbed “Ed Stone” and universally mocked, and whose ultimate fate remains unknown.
Media blunders
The coming weeks will likely see many missteps, many of them minor, but some more serious – politicians are human after all, and the pace of an election campaign is brutal.
It’s important for party leaders to ensure that senior campaign staff are thoroughly briefed on the “path ahead” and given enough time to recover from the endless string of speeches and interviews.
Also, most incidents are forgotten within a few days, so it is important to remain calm and quickly resolve any confusion caused by blunders.
One of the worst political incidents in living memory was in 1992, when the Labour Party produced a slick election broadcast detailing the plight of a five-year-old girl who faced long waits for treatment for “stenotic ear tubes” because her parents could not afford to go to a private hospital.
What became known as the “War for Jennifer’s Ear” put the party on the defensive for three days doing what it does best, as questions grew about the veracity of the story and the ethics of involving a young child in national politics.
Media firestorms often come and go. It will be of no consolation to the Labour Party that Prime Minister Diane Abbott’s terrible turmoil over police numbers likely had no impact on the party’s better-than-expected result in 2017. Nor did Jeremy Corbyn frantically searching his laptop for answers to tough questions from interviewers two years later.
Similarly, did Green Party leader Natalie Bennett lose many votes when she failed to explain the costs of a housing project in an LBC interview in 2015, blaming the awful incident on a “black head” and “mental breakdown”?
Boris Johnson won his 2019 victory despite hiding in a fridge from one interviewer and pocketing the phone of another reporter who challenged him over the NHS.
Meanwhile, Tim Farron’s complicated views on homosexuality probably hurt the Lib Dems’ support among progressive voters in 2017.
And in 1983, Neil Kinnock certainly damaged Labour’s prospects when he said it was a shame that soldiers had to die on the ground in the Falklands to prove that Prime Minister Thatcher had shown courage in that war.
Policy and Manifesto Issues
There’s a fine line between garnering attention with a novel policy proposal and putting forward a poorly thought-out one.
The manifesto needs to be stress tested and it needs advice from people outside the leader’s inner circle. A manifesto falling apart is far worse than a selective leak because multiple people were involved.
It may seem obvious, but senior staff need to be thoroughly trained on the services they provide to the public.
In 2001, Oliver Letwin was forced into hiding by senior Conservative leaders after he was reported to have said the party wanted to make £20 billion in spending cuts, although the figure was nowhere to be found in the party’s manifesto.
The problems with hastily drawn-up manifestos were dramatically illustrated in 2017, when Prime Minister Theresa May’s policy platform, which included a social care scheme that quickly became known as a “dementia tax”, collapsed within hours, leading May to passionately claim that “nothing has changed” as the policy was watered down.
Perhaps her mistake was being too forthright about future untenable decisions.
A similar accusation could be levelled at Shadow Chancellor John Smith’s Shadow Budget, which included tax increases on the wealthy and which, in retrospect, contributed to John Major’s surprise victory in 1992.
Polls swing
Politicians all say they don’t care about the polls, but deep down they scrutinise them, and it’s inevitable that the polls will fluctuate this year – we might see a narrowing of the lead in Labour HQ or a flat line in Conservative HQ.
The Prime Minister should stick to his public statements: in 1987 a rigged opinion poll gave Labour a lead over Margaret Thatcher, but infighting within Thatcher’s camp led to “Unsettled Thursday” and a massive publicity blitz. A week later Thatcher won again in a landslide victory.
Opinion polls can cause panic as well as complacency. In the run-up to the 1992 election, a series of polls showed Labour in a small but consistent lead. These polls led to a surge of confidence within the party, epitomised by Neil Kinnock’s victory rally in Sheffield before the polls.
In 2015, Labour leaders believed they were on equal footing with the Conservatives and spent valuable time campaigning in target constituencies when it would have been wise to protect their own constituencies from a surge in support for David Cameron’s Conservatives.
Awkward encounters with locals
Party leaders are keen to make their meetings with the public public – as long as they don’t ask the tough questions. It’s vital that the leader keeps a smile on his face, doesn’t condescend to passers-by and, above all, keeps his cool.
Tim Farron achieved this in 2017 when Brexiteer Malcolm Baker accused the Liberal Democrats of branding Leavers as racist and ignorant, shouting: “I hope they lose, I hope they only get six seats.” After all, the party won 12 seats in an election campaign dominated by the aftermath of the Brexit referendum.
But that year, when confronted on television by nurses who complained about falling incomes, Prime Minister Theresa May made a gaffe that embarrassed the Prime Minister: “There is no magic money tree”.
Public dialogue can play to politicians’ strengths: John Major accidentally stumbled upon a winning formula while speaking to city centre crowds from the podium in 1992, but the tactic seems to have made no difference five years later.
Tony Blair was also adept at building rapport but his minders were so risk-averse that they were accused of being control freaks when they restricted his prime ministerial contact with the public in 2001. An awkward encounter with Sharon Stoler in Birmingham that year was inevitable, as they exchanged harsh remarks about hospital resources.
Gordon Brown was never much used to public interaction and nine years later his election campaign was derailed by an infamous clash in Rochdale with his immigration rival Gillian Duffy. In a public relations disaster, Brown was caught on microphone calling her a “bigoted woman” and was forced to pay her a visit to humiliate him.
By contrast, John Prescott got away with it when he got into a street brawl with a man who “threw pebbles” in 2001 because the public apparently sympathized with his rage, but today’s party leaders will hope that their suspects do not follow Prescott’s example.
Surprise Event
Some events are unforeseeable and it is best for the parties to remain calm. Some events are beyond the control of the parties.
Prime Minister Tony Blair was forced to postpone elections in 2001 due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and in 2005 he postponed announcing elections following the death of Pope John Paul II.
Nine years later, a volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded politicians’ flights and left Blair stranded in Israel instead of campaigning for Gordon Brown.
In 1997, John Major’s team might have avoided the cannibalism that ensued after journalist Will Self confessed to taking heroin on the Prime Minister’s plane while following him around the country.
Recent elections have been marred by three terror attacks. In 2017, campaigning was suspended for four days after the Manchester bombing, which killed 22 people, and for a further day after the London Bridge attack, which killed 11.
A stabbing incident involving five people, two of them fatally, 13 days before the 2019 election also prompted calls for a pause on campaigning.