A future fair for all?
As slogans go, "a future fair for all" isn't disastrous. It's certainly not "You can only be sure with the Conservatives", or as dire and positively stupid as "forward not back". It also attempts to distil into 5 words what a vote for Labour is meant to deliver, which is more than can be said for the Tories' equivalents at the moment, which revolve around "change" without articulating what that actual change will be, whether it's "year for change", "now for change" or "vote for change", all of which they've used recently. When Obama invoked change, he at least added it was to be change you could believe in, and he embodied that as a whole; Cameron, on the other hand, only offers change in the sense that the government itself will be different, not that his election will change anything itself.
A future fair for all is still something of a mouthful though. Why not "a fair future for all", which at least to my ear doesn't sound quite as clunking? It also invites criticism over Labour's current record for fairness, which even considering Brown's limited, hidden attempts at redistribution has only ensured that the gap between rich and poor hasn't grown even larger. One other positive is that it doesn't instantly attract mockery, which as the Tories and Cameron have discovered since the release of their first campaign poster, is far worse than just being criticised. It shows that Labour hasn't given up just yet, and even if they don't deserve to be returned to power, the only other likely alternative remains far worse.
A future fair for all is still something of a mouthful though. Why not "a fair future for all", which at least to my ear doesn't sound quite as clunking? It also invites criticism over Labour's current record for fairness, which even considering Brown's limited, hidden attempts at redistribution has only ensured that the gap between rich and poor hasn't grown even larger. One other positive is that it doesn't instantly attract mockery, which as the Tories and Cameron have discovered since the release of their first campaign poster, is far worse than just being criticised. It shows that Labour hasn't given up just yet, and even if they don't deserve to be returned to power, the only other likely alternative remains far worse.
Labels: 2009 election campaign, Gordon Brown, Labour, politics, slogans
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