Dr Vincent Campbell
Director of PGT Studies in the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. His most recent book is The British Media Industries (London: Routledge).
Email: vpc2@le.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 4: Parties and the campaign
34. A changed but over-staged Labour Party and the political marketing weaknesses behind Starmer’s win (Prof Jennifer Lees-Marshment)
35. To leaflet or not to leaflet? The question of election leafleting in Sunderland Central (Prof Angela Smith, Dr Mike Pearce)
36. Beyond ‘my dad was a toolmaker’: what it’s really like to be working class in parliament (Dr Vladimir Bortun)
37. The unforced errors of foolish men: gender, race and the calculus of harm (Prof Karen Ross)
38. Election 2024 and rise of Reform UK: the beginning of the end of the Conservatives? (Dr Anthony Ridge-Newman)
39. The Weakening of the Blue Wall (Prof Pete Dorey)
40. The Conservative party, 1832-2024: an obituary (Dr Mark Garnett)
41. Bouncing back: the Liberal Democrat campaign (Prof Peter Sloman)
42. The Greens: riding two horses (Prof Neil Carter, Dr Mitya Pearson)
43. Party organisations and the campaign (Dr Danny Rye)
44. Local campaign messaging at the 2024 General Election (Dr Siim Trumm, Prof Caitlin Milazzo)
45. The value of getting personal: reflecting upon the role of personal branding in the General Election (Dr Jenny Lloyd)
46. Which constituencies were visited by each party leader and what this told us about their campaigns (Dr Hannah Bunting, Joely Santa Cruz)
47. The culture wars and the 2024 General Election campaign (Prof John Steel)
48. “Rishi’s D-Day Disaster”: authority, leadership and British military commemoration (Dr Natalie Jester)
49. Party election broadcasts: the quest for authenticity (Dr Vincent Campbell)
Party Election Broadcasts have been sliding into ever greater obscurity in recent elections, and perhaps a stark indication of this in 2024 was the first of the Reform Party PEBs on 13th June that was simply a black screen with the words ‘Britain is Broken. Britain Needs Reform.’ for four minutes of screen time. This election has been continually compared to the last Labour landslide of 1997, and one connection back to that election of nearly three decades ago, that might explain their increasingly marginal role, is how the Party Election Broadcast system has barely changed since that time. This is astonishing to think, given the dramatic changes in the media environment since the days of Tony Blair. PEBs in 2024 were just one format within multiple forms of video content made for ever more platforms (TikTok, X/Twitter, YouTube etc.), and it was clear that party time, effort and money was being directed at these newer platforms- not least because of their lack of regulation compared to conventional broadcast media. No limits on number, time, or spend (other than within overall spending), compared to the measly offer of free airtime, albeit just one 5 minute broadcast for a party with at least 150 candidates (although this time George Galloway’s Worker’s Party got a PEB, though it was really a vehicle for him). The main two parties get an extravagant four 5 minute slots each, spread across the terrestrial broadcasters (and Sky News). The regulatory disparity for online and broadcast party election content must surely be reviewed and addressed at some point in the future.
However, the typically shorter formats of social media video, tend against the potential for policy depth, or depth in terms of boosting party leader’s images in the way that PEBs still may potentially do. Some of the televised debates unquestionably garnered larger audiences: the first ITV debate featuring Starmer and Sunak on 4th June was the most-watched television programme of the first week of the campaign with 5.37 million viewers (all figures from BARB) for instance. Yet the potential for serendipitous reach with television audiences staying tuned after the early evening news programmes on the BBC and ITV remains a valuable potential audience in the 2-4 million range. Indeed, in the third week of the campaign, PEBs sandwiched between later than usual scheduled early evening news and live Euros 2024 games saw first, the Conservatives on 18th June (with 2.5 million viewers), and then Labour on 19th June (with 2.7 million viewers) break into the top 50 most viewed television programmes that week. For the Conservatives, the decision to use what was essentially an edited press conference from junior minister Laura Trott, might be one of the mistakes they look at when reviewing the campaign, though it was suggested it was because they were short of money. For Labour, on the other hand, as befitted the running social media joke that Keir Starmer had some kind of genie granting him every campaign wish, their PEB on the 19th was focused on Starmer, in conversation with former England and Manchester United footballer Gary Neville, as they walked through the idyllic green landscape of the Lake District.
Only one Conservative broadcast, ‘A Secure Future’, used film of incumbent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, but not his voice (reminiscent of the absence of Gordon Brown from Labour PEBs in 2010). For the smaller parties, PEBs remain an opportunity to give their leaders wider exposure, and to try and generate the kinds of political authenticity that some politicians can have, like Boris Johnson in the 2019 campaign, but others struggle to convey. Not surprisingly, they took their opportunities. Alongside Galloway for his party, John Swinney led the SNP’s broadcast, as did the co-leaders of the Green Party in their PEB. Reform’s second PEB was Farage sitting on a bench in a field with a dog, putting the world to rights in his trademark style. Whilst many of these were also platformed on Party social media accounts, only the Liberal Democrats produced a PEB to seemingly get any cut-through and meaningful discussion, in their broadcast on 5th June. Entitled ‘Ed’s Story’, his emotional recounting of losing parents at a young age, and the challenges of being a parent to a disabled child generated some, albeit fleeting, resonance and commentary. Alongside the wider strategy of him engaging in activities like paddle-boarding, arguably Davey’s efforts in that elusive quest for authenticity was the most successful of all the party leaders, at least in terms of the increasingly focused use of PEBs amidst the multimedia hybrid election campaigns of the current era. Whether or not, amidst the burgeoning issue agenda the new government faces, there will come a time when the regulation of election content on screen and the PEB system, necessary as it seems, will be meaningfully changed remains unclear.
