Battle for London mayor in the gutter
Inaccurate and questionable ads offer taste of things to come
It was a scene that would not be out of place in a dystopian movie: “London, a city steeped in history but tonight its ancient streets bear witness to a different tale. A tale not of kings and queens, but of crime and desperation…”
This opener – read out by an American actor to sinister music as black and white images of the capital’s streets play – is not the latest Hollywood offering, but instead the latest Tory attack ad as the London mayoral election campaign heats up.
One in a series of new adverts partly inspired by The Twilight Zone, the old American fantasy horror series, it’s meant to highlight the problems of Labour rule.
The brainchild of staffers at Conservative campaign headquarters, the video takes the questionable approach of suggesting that Sadiq Khan has “seized” power despite being elected, unlike the past two Tory prime ministers. It goes on to claim London has become a “crime capital” of the world – seeking to blame this on Khan’s time as mayor rather than the Tories’ 13 years in power.
The advert – one in a planned trilogy of attack ads – has quickly led to outrage on all sides. The Tories had to withdraw and replace part of the video after it was uncovered that it included footage of a stampede in a subway station in New York.
Ministers have found themselves under pressure on the morning round – with science minister Andrew Griffith having to admit on Times Radio that despite the video’s claims to the contrary, he had “not seen any Ulez enforcers”.
Khan himself has blasted it as evidence the Tories are “unpatriotic” and anti-London for putting the capital down. In a rare moment of cross-party unity, his Tory opponent Susan Hall appears to agree.
She has told broadcasters she did not sign off the video and that it is a central office creation. The London Assembly member Andrew Boff has suggested it is better to go for a positive message, and that the video is the work of an “inexperienced intern”.
So, all things considered, one could conclude that the whole episode has been an unmitigated disaster for the Tories. However, that slightly misses the point. First, while the jury is still out on whether the video successfully lands the message the Conservatives want on Khan’s crime record, the nature of online attack ads is to create controversy, so they are shared widely – even if those doing so do so disparagingly.
Secondly, those being sent into a spin by the video had better brace themselves for worse. Between now and the general election there will be a lot more of this to come, and it will be from both main parties.
When it comes to this particular attack ad, the argument goes that the Conservatives are a political party and it is their job to campaign – not act as a tourist board for the capital. “The complaint that we are doing London down and now foreign investors won’t fund a skyscraper is misplaced,” insists a Tory figure. The view in CCHQ is that Khan is unpopular personally. Savanta polling this month found that while the London Mayor is on course to win (with an apparent 24-point lead over Hall), at least half of Londoners think Khan has done badly or very badly on dealing with knife crime and gangs as well as tackling homelessness in London. Therefore any attack ad that links weakness on crime with Khan could be effective in the run-up to the mayoral elections on 2 May.
But more generally the video fits into a theme when it comes to attack ads. The digital battleground in this coming election is more important than ever with voters turning away from traditional ways of consuming the news.
It means finding ways to reach voters online is critical to both parties, and both the Tories and Labour are expanding their digital teams for the election.
X, formerly known as Twitter, is just one way of doing this. Look at party spending and both Labour and the Tories are putting more money on targeted Facebook adverts, while also looking at Instragram and YouTube as ways to get their message out.
Meanwhile, the Tories are considering what lessons they can learn from the conservative New Zealand government’s use of TikTok to soften their leader’s image in their successful election campaign.
On the question of which platform for what message, X is seen as a place for so-called gutter politics and attack. The more outrageous the message, the wider it is likely to be spread. For example, the latest Tory Khan attack video has, according to a CCHQ figure, had 50 million impressions and counting.
This is less about careful voter targeting and more about setting the agenda and leading the conversation in Westminster, given X is often dominated by media and political figures.
A party figure says X is “basically for shit-posting,” internet-speak for posting deliberately low-quality or provocative content to get attention.
Those seeing the Tories’s latest videos as beyond the pale would do well to go back to this time last year. Labour set the agenda and dominated the Easter recess with its own attack ads. The ads – shared on X – accused Rishi Sunak of not wanting to see child abusers jailed. Labour politicians were accused of playing into racist tropes on grooming gangs.
Starmer stood by the adverts, despite some briefing in the Shadow Cabinet of concerns. Some Labour backbenchers disowned them. Labour’s campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden along with Starmer himself has suggested they are willing to keep fighting fire with fire. In other words, the Labour campaign has no qualms about fighting dirty in an election campaign.
What both Labour and the Tories have in common is that when they have found themselves accused of getting in the gutter, MPs in their party have been quick to voice concern.
It means there is a tension in how far the party machine is willing to go compared with what the parliamentary party will put up with. With an election due before the year is out, expect this to be tested to the extreme.
X is for gutter politics: the more outrageous the message, the wider it is likely to be spread