Author Archives: James Gilmour

Why a liberal response to taking back control matters

When Vote Leave chose their slogan they broke the mould of British politics. It stood in stark contrast to the established formula of successful general election narratives. New. Better. Ambition. Difference. Forward. Fairness. Future.

Vote Leave initially intended to go down the same route. Vote Leave, Get Change. But a last minute change from campaign director Dominic Cummings left the campaign as Vote Leave, Take Back Control. Cummings, fascinated by psychometric voter profiles, intended the slogan to act as a direct channel to voters with authoritarian tendencies. It worked. Campaigners hammered in the message at every opportunity and Leave won …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 13 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Daniel Walker
    @theakes "first past the post was a winner for us in 2024. Suggest we keep our heads down and live with it." If your opinion on an electoral system—...
  • Paul Holmes
    Rob, you also say that we can't be the party of the NHS or the Environment because Labour and the Greens have those. Surely it is a mistake to abandon whole are...
  • Paul Holmes
    Rob, you offer two possible groups of key target supporters for the Liberal Democrats. However, both are, as you note, just subsets of the affluent middle class...
  • Peter Wrigley
    @Jana: I regrade myself as an extremest for liberalism: the maximum amount of individual freedom that doesn't infringe the freedom others. I’m also pretty ke...
  • Roland
    >”He’d voted in every general election since 1974, he said, and this was the first time he had ever voted for a winning candidate.” Well I could say t...