What’s new? The most powerful word in the world

The UK Labour Party has unveiled the slogan for its (virtual) annual conference: A New Leadership. It suggests someone at the heart of Keir Starmer’s outfit knows their onions, because as any communicator will tell you the word ‘new’ is one of the most powerful in the language.

It certainly works in commercial advertising, where products described as ‘new’ or ‘new and improved’ fly off the shelves. Gillette cut to the chase with a ‘new, improved’ razor in 1921 and everyone from Shreddies to Apple has been doing it ever since. We crave novelty, stimulation, being the first, something to break the boredom. It jangles our wiring, and we reach out for the new.

Advertisers run the risk that ‘new’ might suggest the ‘old’ version was a dud, but in other situations that can be deliberate. Labour’s slogan works on two levels — one that the country needs New Leadership instead of Boris Johnson’s increasingly tarnished brand.

The other is that Starmer’s Labour represents a clean, decisive break with the previous Labour leadership, which all evidence shows was electoral kryptonite and contributed to calamity at the ballot box.

Gordon Brown did something similar with his ‘no time for a novice’ line. Overtly, he meant the new Conservative leader David Cameron, but covertly he was taking a swipe at another David — Miliband — then contemplating coming for the King.

A New Leadership, of course, echoes the successful ‘New Labour’ tag adopted by the Labour Party of Tony Blair back in the 1990s, on the wise counsel of cunning communicators Campbell, Mandelson and the much-missed Philip Gould. New Labour was the counterpoint to ‘Old Labour’, with its attachment to nationalisation, trade union power and nuclear disarmament.

Calling something ‘new’ to express a break with the past is an old idea. That’s why we have New York, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New England, New Orleans, New Jersey, not to mention New Zealand, New South Wales, New Delhi, New Guinea, and Nova Scotia. Miranda in The Tempest marvels at the ‘brave new world’. Shakespeare is riffing on the whole idea of the ‘new world’ then being discovered across the oceans.

You can add to the list Art Nouveau, new wave music, new age philosophy, the new criticism, the new model army, the New Testament, Dior’s new look, the New Jerusalem, new towns, and of course the new normal. There’s not much new under the sun.

Nor is ‘new’ a new idea in politics. A bunch of Fabian socialists launched a magazine in 1913 — they called it the New Statesman. Oswald Mosley formed the New Party on resigning from Labour in 1931, before his descent into fascism. Communists such as Antony Gramsci, and also the Nazis in Germany, called for a ‘new order’. Roosevelt wrapped his public works programme up in the banner of the ‘New Deal’. Bill Clinton used ‘New Democrats’ to describe his version of the third way.

Finally, Keir Starmer should remember that slapping the word ‘new’ on your product isn’t magic. It doesn’t always work. ‘New Coke’ was launched in 1985 and served up a reminder not to mess with a successful and popular brand. It was an unmitigated disaster.

Paul Richards is a writer-for-hire.