Borkowski Media Trends: Election Update - Debates, £2,000-gate, D-Day & Farage AND MORE

PLUS: Man City fight the Law | Coldplay's Sustainability Play

This Week in Election Comms: Debates, £2000-gate, D-Day & Farage enters the Fray

Tuesday's TV debate pitted Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak against one another in a rushed format that offered little opportunity for substance and underlined the two prospective Prime Ministers’ lack of public speaking polish; the spectacle felt a tad devoid of charm. However, the critical talking point came when Sunak claimed that Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 per working household. Sunak repeated the line and Starmer dithered in his rebuttal of the allegation, and Sunak ultimately taking a slight advantage post-debate.

However, the morning after, thanks to some excellent journalism from BBC's Henry Zeffman, it appeared the claim was misleading (later confirmed by the UK's statistics watchdog). The most senior civil servant at the Treasury even distanced his department from Sunak's dubious calculations.

The Labour camp is claiming a well-calculated 'gotcha' moment, pushing the tactic as a gambit to expose Sunak's dishonesty. Whether this was all part of the plan or not, it's undoubtedly a practical pivot that has effectively dented the Tory's credibility, particularly their financial prowess, which Rishi prides himself on.

And now Sunak, whose camp initially declared he'd 'won' the debate, not only faces criticism for his dubious tax claim but made matters worse with a cardinal sin in the eyes of his older, patriotic voter base: a D-Day commemoration blunder. His decision to cut short his participation for a TV interview proved, even putting the self-evident disrespect to one side, to be a damaging failure. especially with the returning Nigel Farage and Reform (as well as Labour) battling for for every inch of the older nostalgia vote; the polls are still suggesting a thumping defeat.

Sunak set out to centre his campaign around security and national service, and offending veterans is a mistake that might leave his team pivoting its strategy lest Farage outflank them from the right. The mistake has exacerbated the tax claim error, worsening the problem. Whatever strategies the Tories deployed at the start of the week and around Tuesday's TV debate, they will be in crisis mode, looking for a way out of a rotten mess.

Man City fight the Law…

When the news broke this week of an imminent legal case involving Manchester City and the Premier League, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the 115 charges of financial irregularity of which the club are accused were finally coming to court. Instead, in as great a sign of our increasingly litigious society as there ever was, Manchester City have themselves launched a legal challenge against the League, centred on the rules around club sponsorship.

The details of the legal case are dense, complex, and difficult for even the most ardent football fans to understand, but, in essence, the club are suing for financial damages related to sponsorship deals blocked by Associate Party Transaction (APT) rules, which regulate any revenue received from businesses linked to club owners. Historically, this has affected state-owned or sponsored clubs, including the Abu Dhabi-owned City and the Saudi-owned Newcastle United. City’s filing notably includes allegations of “discrimination” by the League against “Gulf-owned clubs”.

State ownership and the attendant questions around sportswashing have been the spectre that has haunted the League for years now, but the sight of the reigning champions biting the hand that feeds it should be shocking. It’s a testament to how poorly the League have managed the issues around City’s financial fair play charges that it almost wasn’t. Instead, it feels like an inevitable step in City’s PR battle: dressed up in populist language about battling “the elites” and “the tyranny of the majority”, it’s a thrown-down gauntlet supposed to rally their fans behind their ownership, as well as their club.

To neutral observers, we may wonder about the efficacy of aligning oneself with words that feel vaguely Trumpian, and the optics of playing the victim when coming off the back of an unprecedented fourth consecutive title. For what it’s worth, their fans rallied to the call of their lawyers, with Liam Gallagher leading the way. Should the League decide to act, it could simply expel City, but it’s telling that the chances of this happening are next to zero – the financial resources afforded to the club mean that virtually any legal opponent will blink first. With the 115 charges set to be heard later this year, any ruling in this case will be an ostensible dress rehearsal for that, provided, of course, that both City and the League itself are still standing. 

Viva la Vida Verde

On Monday, the British band Coldplay announced that they had reduced their carbon footprint by 59% compared to their previous world tour two years ago. Live touring is a carbon-intensive business, especially for world tours where international travel is usually par for the course. Coldplay were among the first global acts to recognise this issue, and after years of leaning on famously unreliable carbon offsetting for their sustainability credentials, may finally have managed to start shifting the dial.

Back in 2021, the announcement of this tour included the launch of a 12 point plan for cutting their carbon footprint, including a pledge to reduce their direct carbon emissions from show production, freight, band and crew travel by at least 50% compared to the Head Full of Dreams tour. Their announcement of a 59% reduction exceeds expectation.

In an age of corporate greenwashing, proving oneself to be authentic is essential. Coldplay’s openness with fans about their journey has bolstered their credibility. Candidly explaining the steps they have and are taking, launching a free app for fans to see some of the success, and providing interim data even when they were falling short of their goal (as of a year ago emissions had only been reduced by 47%) has built the trust required for their progress to be believed. Media and social media reception of the story has been positive, with no obvious allegations of greenwashing.

According to Coldplay, their success was achieved through some creative methods including kinetic dancefloors that allowed audience movement to generate electricity, recyclable LED wristbands and the band travelling by train. All shows have offered free water refill stations and 72% of tour waste has been diverted from landfill and sent for reuse, recycling or composting, whilst 9625 meals and 90kg of toiletries were donated from tour catering to the homeless. The band is also one of the co-funders long with Live Nation and Warner Music Group, of a study being conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) into the live music industry’s carbon footprint, further demonstrating an authentic commitment to emissions reduction.

Coldplay’s success has shown the power of authenticity backed by substance, and is a positive step in the right direction of sustainable touring. Something Swift and her jets could learn from.