It needs a new culture secretary for a start, shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire lost her seat in Bristol to the Green Party even in the midst of a so-called Labour landslide (although they won less than 40% of the votes.)
Labour, for those of us who can recall previous Labour governments, equates in most people’s eyes to more regulation affecting everything from food standards, what you’re allowed to advertise and when, media plurality and the numerous sins laid at the door of the social media giants.
Its manifesto is rather light on specifics (in all areas) but we can surely expect to see tighter regulation of so-called fatty food and further restrictions (maybe even an outright ban) on gambling ads and promotion. This is a sticky one for any government as the National Lottery is the biggest gambling punt of them all.
New PM Sir Keir Starmer may well be, as a right wing columnist put it in The Times yesterday, inclined to yet more regulation and bureaucracy, being a procedural kind of guy and a lawyer to boot. The country has been bogged down by lawyers for years as our learned friends are expert at slowing things down but not so good at achieving much (apart from billable hours.)
Fossil fuel promotion (oil and gas) is an interesting one. The country is thoroughly fed up with Just Stop Oil’s antics but its active members (who mostly seem to be comfortably off retirees) will be expecting a more sympathetic ear in Downing Street and become even more cross when they don’t get one.
So we’ll have to see (and see who takes over from Debbonaire, ironically an actually cultured would-be culture secretary as she was a musician.) Time was when adland’s finest were all over No 10 like a rash, with Tim Bell going in one entrance and Maurice Saatchi another plus pretenders like Y&R’s John Banks (‘Tell Sid’ etc) also seeking the ear of the Iron Lady.
It doesn’t have anything like that influence today although the indefatigable Advertising Association can be relied upon to man the trenches.
Update
At least one agency has rowed in on the election result. New Commercial Arts for MoneySupermarket.
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