Politics

Downing Street's recycling of a familiar 2015 slogan is giving people flashbacks

Downing Street's recycling of a familiar 2015 slogan is giving people flashbacks
UK local elections: PM Sunak's party suffers heavy losses
Aljazeera / VideoElephant

No, you haven’t time travelled back in time nine years, the Conservative Partyreallyare repeating a line previously pushed by David Cameron (who at that point wasn’t a lord) and warning of another “coalition of chaos” led by Labour after the next general election.

Reeling from a catastrophic number of losses in this week’s local elections – more than 470 councillors, in fact, plus a shock victory in the West Midlands and a historic third term for Sadiq Khan in London – the Tory government is now pushing out lines trying to paint a much bleaker future for the country if Sir Keir Starmer becomes the next prime minister.

The Telegraphquoted a Downing Street source on Sunday who said: “What these local election results show is that Labour are on track for a rainbow coalition of chaos propped up by the SNP, Lib Dems and Greens.

“The results raise serious questions about Sir Keir Starmer’s ability to win a majority at the next general election.

“The Labour Party are heading into a general election with no plan and a hung parliament at the end because of it.”

The unnamed source’s comments echo remarks issued by Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, to The Times, when he warned such a scenario whereby Starmer leads a coalition would be “a disaster for Britain”.

But the No 10 official’s comments are also reminiscent of a slogan dating as far back as 2015, when Cameron warned of “an Ed Miliband-SNP coalition of chaos” before that year’s general election, despite just leading his own controversial coalition with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats.

Cameron would also claim Britain faced “chaos with Ed Miliband”, in a viral tweet which continues to resurface all these years later – Miliband himself would go on to quote tweet the post in October 2022 when Liz Truss’ premiership was in turmoil.

All these memories and more have come flooding back to social media users this week, as they slammed the Tories regurgitating a slogan which really hasn’t stood the test of time:

Anyone else getting a sense of déjà vu?

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