The dust has started to settle on this year’s general election.
Labour has gained a historic win, achieved a sizeable majority, and Keir Starmer has begun to get to work in Downing Street.
Weeks of campaigning are now consigned to the history books.
But what media training lessons can you learn from them?
Here’s our guide to the good, bad, weird and wonderful from the 2024 general election campaign.
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D-Day gaffe and Sky deprivation
We really should avoid kicking a man while he is down.
But where else do you start?
Rishi Sunak endured a torrid campaign that began with him calling the election looking like a drowned rat in the pouring rain. The man who claimed to have a plan to turn the country around, neglected to plan for the British summer and failed to bring an umbrella or make the announcement inside.
Sunak is getting soaked by the rain as D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better can be heard blasting in the background pic.twitter.com/RpVnLGBHFv
— Rachel Wearmouth (@REWearmouth) May 22, 2024
Days later, he visited the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, where predictably a reporter asked him if he was “captaining a sinking ship”. Remember, optics and locations matter in media interviews and opportunities.
He was also pictured by an exit sign and Mickey Mouse ears, making it all a bit too easy for rivals and the media.
But the low point was leaving the D-Day commemorations early. A blunder that triggered a political and media storm.
The reason he left part of the way through? To carry out a pre-recorded interview with ITV that was due to be aired the following week and could have been done at any time.
When that interview was eventually aired, Mr Sunak revealed he could relate to the struggles of ordinary people battling the cost-of-living crisis because he went without Sky growing up.
He said: “There'll be all sorts of things that I would've wanted as a kid that I couldn't have. Famously, Sky TV, so that was something that we never had growing up actually."
An unconvincing tale of deprivation, to say the least.
In his interview with @PaulBrandITV Rishi Sunak says that he had to go without “lots of things” as a child growing up, including “Sky TV”. Will do little to convince voters he can relate. pic.twitter.com/pEdkXW27Vs
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) June 12, 2024
As we stress during our media training courses, examples and anecdotes must be tested before a media interview.
The toolmaker’s son
The new Prime Minister’s campaign was safe, sensible and cautious.
It seemed to lean on Napoleon Bonaparte’s wisdom of “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
But Keir Starmer appeared reluctant to show his personality in interviews – not an approach we would recommend during our media training.
In a profile interview with the Guardian, he ‘revealed’ he does not dream, has no phobias and doesn’t have a favourite novel. Not the most thrilling answers to a round of quickfire questions.
He has been keen to share that his dad “was a toolmaker” in a bid to show he can relate to the struggles of working people. But he tried to hammer that message home too often and with little subtlety. It should have been returned to the toolbox much earlier.
His best media moment came during an interview he carried out with former footballer turned pundit Gary Neville.
Neville hosts big-name interviews on his The Overlap YouTube channel, and getting him to present the Labour broadcast was a smart PR move.
The questions - asked during a stroll in the Lake District - were not taxing, but a relaxed Starmer shared a more human side,
Sir Keir spoke about how his family visited the area for holidays when he was young.
Stood close to miners’ cottages next to the Langdale Valley, Neville asked Sir Keir: “If your mum and dad were here now in these cottages, what would they be saying to you?”
And he replied: “They’d be having a real moment, and so am I actually.
“If she was back here now, and I was in a race to be a candidate for the prime minister of this country, they’d be really proud. It’d be a really incredible moment, it really would.”
Condom mix-up
It was Karl Turner who added the most colour to an often beige Labour campaign, with an anecdote about a confused voter and tax on condoms.
"We met a guy who said he was going to vote Labour but wouldn't now because he had just heard that we were taxing condoms," he told The Guardian.
"I said, 'condoms?' 'Yeah,' he said: 'I just heard that (pointing to the TV) that you are taxing condoms, and I'm not having it. You're not getting my vote. It was Terence (Turner's parliamentary assistant) who worked it out.
"'We're taxing non-doms, not condoms,' I said. 'Oh,' he said. 'Like the prime minister's wife? Ah. He calls out: 'Margaret: they're taxing non-doms, not condoms.'"
The anecdote went viral on social media and grabbed headlines. Brilliant stuff.
Buffoonery and emotion
Whether or not you voted for the Lib Dems, you have to admire how Ed Davey seemingly turned the campaign into a chance to complete his bucket list.
He’s been paddleboarding, done a bungee jump, enjoyed a water slide, played ‘We Will Rock You’ on an exercise ball, completed a wheelbarrow race and gone surfing.
Ed Davey bungee jumping while shouting for people to 'do something you've never done before, vote Liberal Democrat' pic.twitter.com/KWM8QzENmU
— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) July 1, 2024
“Ed come in the house… you can’t go to GoApe, the election’s over” pic.twitter.com/yu4hvhVM2R
— Unnamed Insider (@Unnamedinsider) July 6, 2024
It might be easier to list the activities he has not tried over the past few weeks.
It has all been a bit madcap. And as we stress during our media training courses, anything unusual tends to grab the media’s attention.
The highlight of a fun-packed campaign has to be him carrying out an interview with LBC while on the teacup ride at Thorpe Park.
It is hard enough not to vomit on that hideous spinning ride without having to answer questions about rejoining the single market.
Ed Davey has just done an interview about the UK rejoining the single market whilst on the teacups pic.twitter.com/VEiK86pkkf
— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) June 10, 2024
Impressive stuff. And he seems likeable, which is all too often rare for politicians.
While his stunts have been ridiculed in some sections of the media, showing a fun and human side has kept him in the headlines and trending on social media and helped the party achieve its most successful results.
Among the silliness, he shared his moving personal story, talking about caring for his disabled son and looking after his dying mother in a poignant party broadcast.
That gained plenty of attention, and he elaborated on it in subsequent interviews.
"No one is going to hold him like we hold him"
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 25, 2024
Alongside his wife Emily, Lib Dem leader @EdwardJDavey spoke to Sky's @BethRigby about caring for their 16-year-old son John who is disabled.
Read more: https://t.co/sqVVOdjzxd
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/vXrcKCa27P
He told Sky News: "We started talking about it quite gently in my first year or so of leadership [and] we got this reaction from people saying, 'thank you for talking about it', and we sort of felt we had a duty to.
"I've talked more about my whole life as a carer, because I lost my father when I was four. So, my mum was widowed, aged 36, with three boys under 10. Then she got ill.
"When I was nine, she told us she had breast cancer, and my little brother and I nursed her until she died when I was 15, so I was a young carer.
"And then we had our first child John, and we realised after about a year that he was going to be severely disabled. So, I have had a caring role in different ways in my life. And it's quite clear millions of others do too."
From a madcap summer tour to the ridiculous
There have been endless interviews with politicians on our TVs, radios, podcasts and in our newspapers over the past few weeks.
But one stands out. For all the wrong reasons.
It was provided by Richard Holden after it was confirmed he was being parachuted into a safe seat for the Conservative party. 300 miles away from the constituency he had been serving.
During a pool interview, he was not just unhappy to answer questions about the move, he ignored them altogether.
Asked by reporter Jon Craig how he justified being parachuted into a safe seat, he replied: “This interview is about Emily Thornberry’s comments today where she admitted… “
That answer refers to comments made by the then shadow minister about Labour’s plans to tax private school fees.
When the journalists said he and other broadcasters wanted to ask about Mr Holden’s selection and suggested it “looked like a stitch-up”, the politician replied: “Emily Thornberry today has completely admitted Labour’s approach…” and continued with the same answer.
A third attempt asked whether he was “not denying it was anti-democratic and a stitch-up.” There are no prizes for guessing how that answer began.
Yes, “Emily Thornberry has today admitted,” he said.
At this point, the journalist had heard enough and intervened, saying, “This is ridiculous” (twice), while Mr Holden claimed to have answered the questions about his seat move in an interview with Channel 4 “last week”.
And an adviser could be heard off-screen saying: “If that's the way this is going to go, then we'll just leave.'
The same adviser also said questions about Mr Holden's seat selection row were not the agreed subject of the interview – a claim the journalist rejected.
“I’m going to stop you now… this is ridiculous” - @joncraig
— Sophy Ridge (@SophyRidgeSky) June 9, 2024
pic.twitter.com/8DxtJKNbKV
As our current working journalists tutors always stress during our media training courses spokespeople must always be prepared to face the awkward question they would prefer not to answer.
With a new government now in place, let’s see if it is true that things (media interviews) can only get better.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 35 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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