When Sir Keir Starmer resigned as UK Prime Minister on 22 June, the commentary and analysis centred on bad policy, worse luck, a hostile media, an ungovernable electorate and an impossible inheritance.
I think these are broadly, all to varying degrees, true and fair assessments. But from the very start I found myself asking a question that is ostensibly much less about politics, and more about something we at Wiedemann Lampe think about everyday. Was his, at its core, a brand problem? I think so. And there are lessons to be learned that are applicable beyond Westminster.
Politicians are brands. We just don’t often call them that.
Political parties and their leaders really are just like any other brand. They desire attention, familiarity and loyalty and compete for it in a crowded market. They have to manage reputation, avert crises, maintain relevance and keep their core audience interested.
The Labour Party's 717 days under Starmer is a cautionary tale of what happens when a brand gets neglected.
The former PM walked into Downing Street in July 2024 with a landslide majority of 174 seats. An amazing opportunity. Yet very quickly, his approval rating had started a slide it never really recovered from - falling from 35–38% when he took office to below 20% just 18 months later. By June 2026, his net favourability stood at -45%. [Sources: World of Statistics; Statista]
Professor John Curtice is about an authoritative a voice as British politics has. He absolutely hit the nail on the head when he explained Starmer’s failings: "He did not define what he believed in and what the Labour Party believed in. He does not have a narrative, a story on what his long-term objectives are, what he wants and had no sense of direction.” If he gets bored of psephology and political analysis, John clearly has a future as a brand strategist.
That is about as incisive a brand critique as you will ever get. Indeed, often, one of the first things we say to clients is really simple: You must define your brand and tell your own story, lest someone else does it for you.
What I would have told him if he’d asked me.
Good brand strategy requires a few things - here are four things I would have told him.
You must define your Vision. Call it Purpose, Value Proposition, Positioning. Whatever. Every strong brand knows exactly what it stands for, what it is here to achieve, and what impact it is going to have on the world. It understands deeply the world in which it exists, and then carves out its role within it. Doing this properly, with clarity and, ideally, inspiration, allows everything else to fall into place. People in your organisational orbit (say, Ministers, SPADS, Civil Servants) know what to aim for, and therefore what they should be doing, and customers and other external audiences know what to expect from you and therefore how to judge your performance.
And make it compelling. Better yet make it stirring. Brands that move people and conjure up emotion build affinity and loyalty. You want people to choose you over the alternative, even if that choice might be, at a functional and surface-level irrational. Vague platitudes about ‘Growth’ and ‘Change’ are not going to cut it.
This, I think, was remarkably prescient for Starmer. His landslide victory was arguably as much about the unpopularity of the previous Government than the attractiveness of his own manifesto. He never defined his Vision because he never really had to. But, that meant when people were asked to assess his effectiveness, unless they were clued-up politicos who followed every policy announcement, they never had anything concrete by which to judge him.
You must communicate that Vision consistently and relentlessly. Even a great Vision is rendered useless if it's not evident and repeated through everything you do. Every decision, every announcement, every product launch, every ad campaign, every internal culture event, every new hire and even every setback should be framed through the lens of that Vision. Consistency builds memory and memorability is key.
A lack of clarity over what Starmer really wanted to achieve created a vacuum. And into that vacuum walked frustration, disillusionment, anger, and opponents who were more than happy to fill in the gaps. The boring, out-of-touch, technocrat caricature took hold because there was not a more compelling story to displace it. Instead of being defined by what progress he built, Starmer got defined by his U-turns: on winter fuel payments, welfare cuts, election-era tax promises. Which brings me to my next point…
You must unwaveringly stick to that Vision. Not always easy but certainly vital. Brand trust is built through consistency. Every U-turn or action not aligned with a previously stated ambition or intention chips away at it. Not because changing course is always wrong, but because it signals that what you stand for, and said you steadfastly believe in, is up for debate. It makes you seem unserious and dents credibility. In Starmer’s case, multiple policy reversals, each one individually defensible, compounded into a story about a government that didn't know its own mind.
Identify your audience. Understand your audience. Serve your audience. You cannot be for everyone. Understand who you really are for and who you really want to connect with. Forget about everyone else. Stick to your core audience, and if what you are saying and doing resonates with other audiences then great. But by trying to appeal to everyone you will end up appealing to no one. For Starmer, this was, ironically, made harder by winning such a a big landslide. Suddenly his ostensible support base became much wider, and there were many more people to appease.
Sir Keir is not alone.
Nearly every brief we receive has a similar need at its core. How can we clearly and compellingly articulate what it is that we do, and why we do it, and present that to the world in a form that others can feel, repeat and act on?
That's the real work of brand strategy: taking broad ideas and notions and making it something that an entire organisation can understand, believe in, and deliver against. Without that translation, even the best intentions produce confusion and drift.
Starmer, by most accounts, was a decent, hardworking leader who believed in what he was doing. The lesson for us is that good intention and belief, on its own, is never enough. You have to make people feel it. You have to tell them that story.
That's exactly what brand strategy is for.
