Why was Jeremy Hunt SHOUTING AT ME?

Robert Jenrick, once immigration minister and still, just, MP for Newark, said on Sunday that the Tories lost not because ‘they had this slogan or that slogan… but because they failed to deliver’.

Yes, absolutely, they failed to deliver, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that the slogans were diabolical too. In fact it was because of how awful the Tory slogans were, and the tenor of their whole social media campaign, that I couldn’t in the end bring myself to vote Conservative, though I have no other natural political home.

Messages from Conservative HQ, sent as if from different senior Tories, all had the same crazed voice

When the election was announced, I somehow inadvertently signed up to receive messages from Conservative HQ. For the most part these took the form of emails sent as if from different senior Tories, though all in the same crazed voice.

It’s a visual world. No one reads much any more, but that makes the few words that we do absorb – slogans, captions, subject fields – all the more important. They create a voice, and a voice creates a relationship.

The Conservatives could have adopted any voice. The reassuring tone of a senior consultant, say, or the bright, faux–casual tone of a PR even: ‘Hi Mary, just reaching out to check that you received my last email…’ But the one they went for, in the crucial weeks before the election, was the voice of Thames Water just before they pass your unpaid bill on to the bailiffs.

‘Final warning!’ read my emails from Rishi Sunak: ‘Mary. 48 hours. That’s all you have left. TIME IS RUNNING OUT.’ From Conservative HQ: ‘Did you miss this URGENT WARNING from the Prime Minister? There is still time to ACT.’ The image below the text here was of a digital clock display: 00:00:00.