When political slogans create a stink

Tom Tugendhat had to quickly change his Tory leadership slogan but he joins a long list of other politicians on the campaign blooper reel, writes John Rentoul

Tom Tugendhat moved swiftly to a new slogan (PA)

Tom Tugendhat, one of the six or seven candidates standing for the leadership of the Conservative Party, changed an online advertisement for his campaign after it was pointed out that the initial letters of the four-line slogan spelt out a word that sent the wrong message:

Together we can:

Unite the party.

Rebuild trust.

Defeat Labour.

The last line was changed to: “Win back the country.”

There hasn’t been such a public relations hiccup since... the last Conservative leadership campaign. Penny Mordaunt had to re-edit her campaign launch video in 2022 because Jonnie Peacock, the Paralympic athlete, objected to his image being used. Footage of a smiling police officer, clearly identifiable, was also removed, as was a clip from an interview with Sarah Gilbert, the co-developer of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, as it had been used without her permission.

Longer ago, in 2005, David Davis’s campaign for the Tory leadership got into trouble for one of its slogans, “It’s DD for Me”, after it was printed on T-shirts that were worn by two of his young female supporters – one of whom, Fay Jones, went on to become a Tory MP herself. She was asked at her selection meeting if she had ever done anything to embarrass the party. “I had to say yes,” she said recently. She added: “I was later asked what I had learnt from the incident, and I said ‘That I do not look good in pink.’” She was defeated by a Liberal Democrat on 4 July.

Lib Dem leadership candidates have had terrible slogans, too. Mark Oaten launched a campaign to replace Charles Kennedy in 2006 with the slogan “Oaten So Good” – “an allusion to a popular brand of porridge oats”, as The Guardian helpfully explained. He withdrew when the tabloid newspapers published too much information about his private life. Two years later, Lembit Opik, then dating Gabriela Irimia of The Cheeky Girls, ran unsuccessfully for the party presidency on the slogan “I Pick Opik”.

The initial letters of slogans have also caught out political communicators before. Alan Johnson made an urgent phone call to Tony Blair when he was appointed secretary of state for the Department of Trade and Industry, which had just been renamed the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry, in 2005. He pointed out that the new name might be abbreviated to “Penis”, and the prime minister immediately agreed to change it back again.

Many years later, when Labour was in opposition, Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters staged a parallel event to the party’s annual conference in an effort to support his leadership, calling it the World Transformed Festival. They pretended to be unconcerned that people abbreviated it to WTF, but quietly dropped the “festival” in subsequent years.

Sometimes abbreviations can be used the other way round, to conceal a rude word and insult an opponent. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, supporters of Hillary Clinton wore sweatshirts that said “Puma” on the back, standing for “Party Unity My Ass”. They wanted a full roll-call vote to be taken, but Clinton disappointed them by interrupting the vote to propose that Barack Obama be declared the nominee by acclamation. (It was all a bit of theatre, as Clinton had already conceded defeat in the campaign for the nomination two months before the convention.)

Even general election slogans can backfire, despite being crafted by expensive advertising agencies and tested on groups of floating voters before launch. Edward Heath’s “Who governs Britain?” in 1974 was a foolish question to ask because, as Alan Watkins, the columnist, wrote, the answer turned out to be: “Not you, mate.”

Equally, Michael Howard, who led the Tories to their third successive defeat by Tony Blair in 2005, should not perhaps have asked: “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” That turned out to be a Question To Which The Answer Was No.

Still, at least none of the Conservative leadership candidates, as they begin their three-and-a-half month campaign for the right to take on Keir Starmer’s majority of 174 in the Commons, will have to put out ads declaring: “I’m not a witch.”

That was what Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for senator in Delaware in 2010, was forced to do after an old interview surfaced in which she said “I dabbled into witchcraft ... We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.”

She lost, although that may have been more to do with her support for the pre-Trumpian anti-tax Tea Party movement in a strongly Democratic state.