Very little to say here. M&C Saatchi Saatchi & Saatchi*, Labour’s poster people, have run a competition for any cretin with MS Paint to have a go at saving Gordon Brown from the apparently inevitable embarrassing and potentially intensely satisfying fate of being an unelected Prime Minister fucked out on his ear. They chose a picture of Gene Hunt from the BBC’s Ashes to Ashes programme, sitting on the bonnet of his red Audi Quattro, with David Cameron’s face superimposed, and the words: “Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s.”
Sounds good enough except that:
- Gene Hunt is the decisive, experienced, hard bitten, fast talking and witty good guy in the show who may sometimes do the wrong thing but for all the right reasons
- Gene Hunt is admirable and likeable despite his jarring foibles
- Gene Hunt is the anti-posh, thereby going against the message of Dave as a posh public schoolboy
- The Audi Quattro is an excellent example of British design, as the Quattro was styled by an Englishman
- The show Ashes to Ashes is wildly successful primetime viewing
The choice of Ashes to Ashes’ Gene Hunt is a spectacular own goal, instantly oppositional to all the key personality narratives Labour has been pushing about Cameron. It undermines their own argument to use this poster. Tories all over the UK are going to enjoy the poster either being used or pulled. So here are a few spoofs.
UPDATE: This post featured in Iain Dale’s ‘Daley Dozen’ list of the 12 best blogs.
*UPDATE: M&C Saatchi are OUR poster people. Saatchi and Saatchi are THEIR poster people. Thanks to all 54 of you who let me know.
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