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With the announcement of the UK general election, the real campaign begins. In the sartorial competition contest, which candidate will win the vote?
Rishi Sunak got off to an inauspicious start on Wednesday – announcing the July 4 election while standing in the pouring rain. He kept going regardless of the weather. As the music drowned out his words, he spoke of safety. “I will always do everything in my power to give you the strongest possible protection,” said a man so incapable of provisions that he did not even have an umbrella to keep him dry.
As a metaphor for leadership, the circumstances could not have been bleaker. Sunak’s speech was severely compromised, he had curly hair and his suit was so wet he looked worn out. At the moment when he most needed to appear authoritative, he seemed profoundly weak. Standing on the podium, he was the embodiment of a drip.
Sunak looks like a school prefect desperately trying to please. One would-be rival, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, is unlike any middle manager we have ever seen: a man so unmemorable that even as I wrote this sentence I had to double-check his name. Green Party leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay are quite original: especially Denyer, who has a pixie cut and wears a lot of black. Ramsay also prefers sober suits and rarely wears a tie. Keir Starmer has the benign energy of a prep school teacher at the weekend: he still evokes a staring authority. He has also captured shirt-sleeve messages that convey accessibility while impressing the ambition to get things done.
As he is the probable victor in this contest, we must examine Starmer’s countenance further. The Labor leader last week launched a campaign poster and six-point “my first steps” pledge that helped establish his sartorial persona for the election race. He prefers the shirt-and-tie look, the look of the white-collar everyman. And now, fueled by hopes of a Labor victory, the style is clearly a nod to Tony Blair. In its style and execution, the “first steps” campaign paid homage to the “Because Britain Deserves Better” poster that helped Blair win a landslide victory in 1997. On that poster, as on the new one, the Labor challengers are dressed with ties. and white shirts, with the sleeves rolled up and slightly folded. But while Blair looked smug and slightly wrinkled, Starmer still looks tense. His shirt is so wrinkle-free that it could have been steam-ironed directly onto his torso.
Starmer’s campaign image is the same version of a look that has been almost universally adopted by more left-wing politicians since President Obama’s arrival in the Oval Office in 2009. Obama was a sartorial pin-up — baggy, smart and casual. — as captured magnificently. by White House photographer Pete Souza. The look reached its apotheosis through Soazig de La Moissonnière’s portraits of French President Emmanuel Macron, always ready for the close-up of him. And the nadir of it is through Sunak in his starched white shirt and Adidas Sambas talking about tax policy in Downing Street.
Sunak’s wardrobe errors may not be a decisive factor in the electoral deal, but they contribute to the confusion of what he represents. His strangely fitted City-boy suit, ankle-length pants and “trendy” hoodies look too much like the work of a stylist. His biggest mistake hasn’t been trying to co-opt Gen Z’s favorite sneaker in a bid for cultural relevance, but rather that he too often eschews the tie. It’s bad enough losing your jacket, but ditching your tie makes you look like a soccer pundit or a daytime TV host rather than the leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy.
Nor is Starmer’s Blair’s cheerful demeanor particularly convincing. If you just want to wear a shirt, you have to consider everything corporeal, and there’s a fine line between looking lithe and healthy and looking like a peacock so concerned about body image that you have to spend hours in the gym. I don’t want my political representative to look like he’s about to run an ultramarathon: they should be presented as vital, but that should be in mental acuity and not in the circumference of his weapons. Starmer remembers a stuffed shirt trying to be nonchalant and it doesn’t really work.
Starmer is hopefully too clever to try to bring the preening vanity that modern politicians encourage to his own election campaign, but his studied insouciance is no more convincing than Sunak’s fashionable OOTD. He also seems to have fallen victim to the trend of trying to project a personality (see also everyone who goes to Ukraine and dresses like a mini-soldier) instead of trying to represent his true self. And why not wear a blazer? It is the greatest gift that the locker room has ever offered to the professional: not only does it slim the body, but it also allows you to store your glasses and change.
So, when you’re knocking on those doors, here’s my “first steps” plan. Wear a jacket. And have an umbrella at all times.
Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com
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