Is ‘working people’ the beginning of the end for the soundbite?

“Working people know exactly who they are”, so said Keir Starmer in October 2024, while trying to reassure the public that tax rises wouldn’t hit that demographic ahead of the Budget. 

Unfortunately for the government, it appears that ‘working people’ didn’t have a clue who they are and we’ve now had nearly a year of frenzied debate as the public and politicians have tried to clarify exactly what it means to work in the UK.

Various definitions have been offered by government ministers. “Strivers who graft” was Rachel Reeves definition, more recently “people on modest incomes” according to Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander. Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, defined them as “anyone that gets a payslip”.  A very broad church then, given that most FTSE 100 CEOs will get a pay slip and certainly consider themselves to be “strivers who graft”. Yet clearly, they are not “people on modest incomes”. And so, the debate continues.

While it’s easy to scoff, the challenge facing the government in very difficult fiscal times is how do you reassure while also avoiding giving yourself zero room for manoeuvre? The answer that emerges from the debate around working people is probably not through using political soundbites.

So, does this signal the beginning of the end of the soundbite? In an era of intense scrutiny is it better to avoid soundbites altogether and to focus on transparency and clarity of communications? 

Expecting total transparency and clarity from politicians is naïve. In some cases, they don’t want to give that clarity for reasons of self-interested political survival, in others they aren’t able to, or it may not be in the public interest that they provide total disclosure. 

Yet across the Atlantic a soundbite continues to do great service to its authors. ’Make America Great Again’ works because it is deliberately vague yet also very precise in its aspiration for country and people.

Donald Trump has stuck rigidly to that vision, even when the policy details underlying it have changed dramatically. He’s also stuck to the adage that if you want your message to stick you stick to it; ‘say it once and say it again’.

Arguably one of the challenges that our government is facing is that its vision for the UK - ‘Change’ - wasn’t aspirational enough, so it ended up being directional and it didn’t sell a vision for a better future.

Numerous polls over the past six months have shown that the UK public don’t know what the government stands for. Policy U-turns, new slogans and soundbites for each fresh initiative create a wall of words that has no meaning.

The woes of the government in defining what a working person is chimes with similar challenges faced by business. It may sound like a great idea so play around with the vowels in your brand name, create your own ‘new word’ for the business, launch a quicky strap line that promises an endless stream of solutions and embrace a world of cultural and social issues but does any of that mean anything to your business? Is what you are saying visionary, authentic and does it talk to the audiences who buy into your organisation? 

As businesses go through their own version of the debate around working people, one that is rooted in whether they keep focused on DEI, sustainability, environmental and social impact, they face their own existential questions around what it means to be a business. Do you exist just to make money, or do your stakeholders expect more? 

Should business be totally transparent and visionary on what they are and what they believe, or should they shift narrative, be more pragmatic, use different messages for different audiences? Try to be all things to all people? 

Politicians and businesses face similar risks in trying to answer these questions: how do you avoid being defined by a wall of words that mean nothing and merely drive debate, ridicule and mistrust?

The best soundbites and slogans are simple, rooted in a sense of mission and, most importantly, they’re stuck to. If you want to be believed in business or politics, you need to have the courage of your convictions. You need to be clear in what you are trying to achieve and why it matters. And you need to walk the talk even in the face of criticism from some corners.

Arguably that is the issue that continues to ham-string the government. The sound bite doesn’t work because it tries to be all things to all people and there isn’t a top-level mission statement that ties everything together, even in a world where the detail is constantly having to change.