On that Labour ad

Labour has released a series of attack ads on Rishi Sunak that have their own side up in arms. Why?

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Labour has gone on the attack. They have sent out the tweet pictured above which ties current Tory PM Rishi Sunak to a failure to properly convict those who sexually assault children. As you can see, it features a big picture of Sunak and his signature.

This comes at the end of a week that started with accusations the Tories were ‘dog-whistling’ in their rhetoric about grooming gangs and ‘political correctness’ when it came to the race of those who were accused of this crime.

The figure of 4,500 seems to be the number since the Tories were elected in 2010. It is worth remembering that Sunak was only elected as an MP in 2015 and only became PM in 2022. Meanwhile, also notable is that Keir Starmer himself was the Director of Prosecutions until 2013.

There has been significant pushback on Twitter which I’ll get into. My personal view is that I don’t like the ad.

I don’t think it’s racist (there is a longer conversation to be had about how we deal with very real public policy issues that have also long been connected with racist tropes in a country where those with responsibility for those issues are increasingly going to be from ethnic minority backgrounds. I don’t know if I am the right person to front such a conversation though) but I do think it’s a bit tawdry. I believe in politics and I think politics matters. So I don’t like it when my own side engages in cheap shots because I would like politics to be better.

But this post isn’t going to add to the clamour of outrage from left and right about the tweet. It feels unnecessary.

What I am going to examine is why I think Labour have taken this approach. What it means for the next 18 months and how its supporters might have to make certain choices and bargains as a result.

So why has Labour done this? Why have they put out something they must have known would create a noise among their more liberal supporters and why have they done it specifically on Twitter, where such supporters are more likely to be found?