3 days ago
The understudied importance of political slogans
'Make America Great Again'. 'Take Back Control'. 'Yes We Can'. There are many political slogans – but only a handful are truly memorable. Done properly, they can win votes, define narratives and shape the great issues of our times. Yet, oddly, there are few, if any, publications which centre on election slogans – despite a plethora of political books being published since 2016.
Now, a new work seeks to rectify this deficiency. 'Eight Words That Changed The World' centres on the specific words which help political parties win elections. Chris Bruni-Lowe, a veteran election strategist, has created an impressive database of 20,000 slogans from two centuries of elections across the globe. He suggests that there are eight 'hit' words which have been central to most major election campaigns: 'Time', 'People', 'Strong', 'Better', 'Democracy', 'Change', 'New,' and 'Together.'
Using a series of case studies, he shows the importance of picking the right slogan at the right time. One chapter focuses on Nelson Mandela and South Africa's 1994 general election. Mandela's party, the ANC, was determined to pick 'Now is the time' as their choice of slogan. But American political strategists Frank Greer and Stanley Greenberg warned Mandela that it risked alienating five million white South Africans, who were certainly not 'hardcore ANC'.
After the stark divides of apartheid, reconciling the country was key. So Mandela ditched that slogan, opting instead for 'A Better Life for All'. Those five words suggested optimism and inclusivity. As Bruni-Lowe argues, 'It did what all good slogans do: it did not exclude anybody, inviting everyone to join in creating a brighter future.' The lesson is instructive – and amusing too. One cannot help but enjoy the thought of Mandela, the great South African statesman, fretting about polling and focus groups, like some grubby Westminster apparatchik.
One cannot help but enjoy the thought of Mandela, the great South African statesman, fretting about polling and focus groups, like some grubby Westminster apparatchik.
Then there is 'MAGA' and the contested lineage of Donald Trump's tagline. Bruni-Lowe details the chequered history of different politicians using 'Great Again' as a slogan – including Churchill at the 1950 election which the Conservatives fought under the slogan 'Make Britain Great Again'. Ironically, Bill Clinton, who claimed that 'Make America Great Again' had racial undertones, himself once told an Arkansas rally in 1991 that 'I believe that, together, we can make America great again.'
Choosing the right messenger is key too. The 2025 Canadian general election is an ideal case study. Mark Carney's slogan of 'Canada Strong' evoked unity and resilience against an external threat: Donald Trump's tariffs. It worked well against Pierre Poilievre's 'Canada First – for a change.' Poilievre's use of the word only served to highlight his risky platform and echoed Trump's disruptive agenda, subsequently bolstering Carney's stability narrative.
The book's strength lies in emphasising the timelessness of certain words. The author makes a virtue of his experience in elections across the globe. In America and the UK, political consultants tend to only work with one side of the political divide: Labour or Tories, Republicans versus Democrats. Yet this tome shows the frequency of certain words and the universality of concepts like 'strength' and 'change' – regardless of differences in national political systems. Hence why 'It's time' was effective for both Australian Liberal Gough Whitlam in 1972 and Montenegro's Europhile premier Milojko Spajić in 2023.
This is perhaps one of the two most important British political books published this summer, alongside 'The Art of Delivery' by the KCL academic Michelle Clement. Bruni-Lowe's work is about elections; Clement's is about office. Every aspiring politician ought to study the secrets of both.
