A Ming vase strategy refers to a political strategy emphasising cautious political messaging. This strategy focuses on avoiding controversy with the primary aim of maintaining their current support level rather than trying to win new voters.
With the election approaching and future Prime MinisterTony Blair's Labour party holding a sizeable lead in the polls, they started to compose a manifesto which dropped a number of policy commitments present in the manifesto for the previous election, this received criticism in by Labour supporters and was described as
stripping down policy commitments, jettisoning those which might embarrass the leadership in the coming election battle
Blair's position of finding a balance between maintaining the support of his party while also appealing to the rest of the electorate was likened by Roy Jenkins in a speech as
a man carrying a delicate Ming vase across a polished museum floor: one slip and it smashes
Blair went on to win the election in a landslide majority.[6]
The Ming vase terminology has been used occasionally in the following decades to describe various delicate political situations such as the diplomatic situation of South East Asia[7] or the balancing act a politician must do during an election campaign[8].
2024 United Kingdom General Election
Keir Starmer in Downing Street following his 2024 general election win
The Ming vase strategy is most associated with the Labour party leadership of Keir Starmer in the run-up to the 2024 United Kingdom general election. Starmer was elected leader of the Labour party following Labour's historic defeat during the 2019 United Kingdom general election, Starmer adopted a cautious electoral strategy to contrast himself from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.[9] Starmer employed a safety first approach,[10] to avoid all possible lines of attack[11], avoiding going into too much policy detail and driven by a desire to avoid uncalculated promises for fear of press reaction.[12] This included preventing a number of prominent party members from standing for election due to previous controversy, including Jeremy Corbyn.[13]
This approach was criticised during the election campaign. William Keegan of The Guardian criticised Starmer's use of the strategy during the 2024 UK elections, saying that it was "depressingly cautious" and that "many natural Labour voters are asking themselves: what is the point?"[14]. While the approach appeared to be effective it was criticised as focusing too much on swing voters[15] and likely to alienate traditional Labour supporters and by avoiding attention grabbing headlines it allowed other parties to set the agenda.[16] Proponents of the strategy however compared it to Blair in 1997, pointing out that many of his policy achievements did not feature in the manifesto, such as granting the Bank of England independence over monetary policy.[17][18][19]
The strategy proved to be successful with Starmer went on to win the election, becoming the second leader to win over 400 seats[20], gaining a supermajority with only marginal gains in voter share due to a highly efficient, broad but shallow voter distribution.[21] The strategy was further criticised after the election with due to Starmer entering office with negative approval ratings with The Times stating that it left a government devoid of vision and that "the impression persists that the country doesn’t quite know who, exactly, it has voted for"[22][23] with the government being limited by the policies that were ruled out during the election campaign. Alistair Carmichael criticised the strategy writing that while Blair became bolder after winning the election while in Starmer's case it left the government with "very little idea of what to do".[19] Jonny Ball of the New Statesman wrote that the strategy had been "frustrating" during the election, but that it "has worked for now."[24]
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