Why do Conservative politicians love Ronseal so much? Theresa May tells today’s Sunday Times that the Ronseal slogan – ‘it does what it says on the tin’ – is her ‘political philosophy’. David Cameron spent years talking about Britain’s yearning for ‘a kind of Ronseal politics’, before describing the Coalition government as operating according to the Ronseal principles.
May’s Ronseal branding seems to suit her better: A.N. Wilson describes her in this week’s magazine as ‘patently boring’. Ronseal’s slogan was developed as an acknowledgement that it was competing against fancier brands in a crowded market, which isn’t May’s problem. But she has always styled herself as a woman who gets things done.
Does the Ronseal brand really fit with May’s policies? Today the Tories are trailing manifesto pledges on council house building, while last week they promised more mental healthcare workers. Housing and mental health enjoy the same rather miserable status as being issues that everyone has got rather good at describing as ‘in crisis’, before proposing modest solutions that won’t come anywhere near solving that crisis – and which they don’t implement anyway.
One of the things that has most frustrated May’s Cabinet ministers has been the way she curbs their enthusiasm for radical policies. Her allies say this is because she wants to promise things that will actually happen and that she has had such difficult parliamentary arithmetic that proposals must necessarily be modest. But after a Tory landslide, she’ll have a tremendous opportunity to be radical. She could even choose to be unpopular, pushing ahead with controversial plans to actually build enough homes rather than suggesting more homes need to be built, only to retreat at the first sign of opposition from shire Tories.
It’s a clever slogan, but Ronseal risks being as politically meaningless as all the other, rather clumsier political catchphrases, such as Nick Clegg’s terrible ‘Alarm Clock Britain’. That is, unless May is prepared to make the most of the luxuries that her election result is likely to afford her.
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