Will flags and smart suits win votes for Labour?

Sean O'Grady considers how the party’s reported strategy to regain seats has worked for former leaders

A leaked internal memo suggested greater use of the Union Flag (PA)

In the words of a leaked Labour internal memo, “the use of the flag, veterans, dressing smartly at the war memorial etc gives voters a sense of authentic values alignment”. Aside from the market research jargon – the document having been derived from focus group research – you have to wonder about a party being “authentic” if it is being encouraged to do things that it is not doing already, that is to say naturally, voluntarily and, erm, authentically. Would not the voters be able to sniff out the subterfuge? Or is it more a case, as the late Bob Monkhouse once said, that the public love sincerity? “If you can fake that, you can fake anything,” he said. 

Which brings us rather neatly to Tony Blair and New Labour. While no doubt Keir Starmer is sincere (and authentic) in his professed desire not simply to be a reimagined Blair, there is no mistaking his quest to push Labour towards the centre ground of politics and to win back lost voters in what are now termed “foundation seats”, formerly “red wall” or, latterly, “blue wall”. Not only is this a matter of policy, but of image and appearance, adopting the demeanour of what prospective or defected Labour voters wish their leaders to sound and look like. After all, the electorate in places such as Sedgefield (once represented by Tony Blair) and Bolsover (ex Denis Skinner) were won over by the plummy Old Etonian Boris Johnson, a man who constantly drapes himself in the national flag, and may, for all we know, wear Union Jack undercrackers. Presumably under some edict, no government minister is permitted to be on television without at least one union flag behind them, a novel and vaguely fascistic fashion.