A political coms strategy for anyone who wants it, or; imagine if Labour had their shit together

CAVEAT: I'm just some idiot.

The UK has yet another new Prime Minister who is once again promising basically they same shit they all have, in a slightly different font. There are jokes akimbo* and speculation galore about why exactly we keep doing this and here's the thing: I may just be some dipshit, but I don't think this is a complicated question.

They all keep trying the same thing. Up and down this country people have been yearning for a government who will materially improve the conditions of their lives, and one PM after another fails to do that, for exactly the same reason their predecessor failed to do that.

What the UK needs, quite obviously, is serious investment. Investment in its infrastructure, and in its people. All of which would have economic benefits in the medium to long term, but which is expensive to get going. And this is where everyone seems to stop talking.

There's no money! There's never any money! We can't afford to do any of the things that are necessary to wrest the country out of its current state of stagnation. There's no money and no government has been willing to get money.

Broadly speaking there are three ways for a country to get money: through borrowing, through raising taxes, and through immigration. For years now, everyone has refused to do any of those things.

And I get it. It's been very easy for each of those to be spun as inherently bad. There's already such a large deficit! No one wants their tax bill to go up! Racism!

I think that is a big part of the problem, to be honest. No one has confidence in their ability to craft messaging to counter all the bad press those three ways of making money have had. So I've decided to have a crack at it, for any cowardly politicians out there.

Or, I've decided to complain about what Labour could have been doing for the past two years but didn't do because they're craven ghouls. Either way.

The first step is remembering that in the UK we have five years between general elections. Five years. You don't need to be campaigning right after you take office. You shouldn't be. You take a couple of years to do what needs to be done, appreciating that your reputation will take a hit. Then, in your third or fourth year, when things have started to bear fruit, you shout really loudly about how much things are improving.

Honestly, the fact that Keir Starmer stepped into Downing Street and immediately started fretting about whether Nigel Farage would do well in an election that won't happen till 2029 will, I swear to god, be the last thing I think about before I finally die.

There are several strands to my plan and ideally they'd weave together in an organic way; but the core thesis is, naturally, trying to undo the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. I saw someone put this really well a while back, the idea that Thatcher's great work, the thread that underpinned every brutal policy she implemented is that she killed, in this country, the concept of collective responsibility.

She destroyed the idea that you should be proud to contribute to your community, and you should not feel shame for needing to lean on it. A friend who does a lot of work in high schools has talked to me about how depressingly he sees this in kids these days. The teens he meets are all very focussed on making a lot of money however they can. They are very resistant to paying taxes. They view the world as deeply individualistic and they are preparing to navigate it as individuals. Out for what they can get, out for themselves. Alone.

It's a very frustrating chicken and egg situation, because they're not wrong about the world as it is right now. But to build a world of collective responsibility we need people to believe in the idea of collective responsibility. I think this is an urgent need, I think we should take this seriously and so, even though I'm just some dipshit, here are my ideas.

Please note I am talking about a marketing campaign. I am talking about a slate of well made advertisements that cost money and tell a story.

The theme of this campaign is tax and patriotism. This is not so much an individual ad, more a motif that is called back to repeatedly. The idea is that, because you love your country, you are proud to contribute to it. With your money.

Let's say the government is actually improving infrastructure. Let's say they've nationalised the water companies who have been ratcheting up costs while poisoning the rivers and oceans – we can dream! Let's say they've nationalised water and invested a bunch in fixing all the problems the private companies have been ignoring and, because they're nog chasing ever high profits and ever lower costs, they've done this while lowering everyone's bills.

You might then make a lush looking ad, real bucolic shit, showing children playing in streams and on beaches, with a voice over talking about how clean all our water ways are, how safe it is for you and your children to play in, just like in the good all days. Oh, and by the way, when we say we did this we mean you. Your government did this with your tax dollars, thank you for helping us make our country so beautiful.

Or say you build out clean energy – something like Biden's green infrastructure plan – solar fields with batteries, wildflowers all around, foxes gambolling around under the panels a green energy power centre that doubles as a wildlife habitat. We used your generous tax contribution to protect our climate and lower your energy bills.

Or you could do a series where ordinary people are given a trip to see something cool that's being done with all our money – beavers being reintroduced somewhere, grand off shore wind and tidal electricity plants, children getting chemo – a whole raft of look at this great stuff! The government made it! You paid for it! Aren't you proud? Aren't we all grateful?

I think there are loads of ways this theme can be used.

Here's something about a university using government grants to do incredible medical research. Isn't funding universities so important? Aren't you glad to contribute to it?

Ideally there would be loads to do this with, because the government would be doing loads of cool things. Nationalising the rails and improving and expanding the network! Building things like community centres and improving the local comprehensive!

At every stage, you contributed, you're building this country, you're giving your fare share.

You've always given your fare share, and we're making sure everyone else does too. The ultra wealthy! Corporations! These vast, powerful institutions who spent years refusing to contribute. If you love this country you contribute to it, you pay your taxes and we've made sure everyone does.

And while we're talking about paying your taxes as your patriotic love language, guess who else pays their taxes? Immigrants!

Here's a spot about an immigrant, here's why they moved here, what they love about the country, look, they're so happy paying taxes to help this country be beautiful!

This is where we combine selling a productive love of your country with an appreciation for others who love it despite being from somewhere else. It sucks that we have to rehabilitate the idea of immigrants, but we do. We have years of propaganda and misinformation to counter and personally I think we should do that in a joyful way.

I have, naturally, a lot of thoughts about what a supposedly left wing government with a stonking great majority should be doing but all of those things cost money and we've let the fact that things cost money be an argument against doing the things for too long!

It's like we've accepted the same lie about tax payer money as we have about calories – we grudgingly acknowledge that you can't get by on zero but you should be trying to hew as close to that as possible.

No more! We need nourishment. We need investment. And part of that is PR.

So these ideas are free. They are not original, this is all basically what Zohran Mamdani's been doing since taking office. I just think they should spread.

We need, in essence, a propaganda campaign around the theme of we live in a society. If anyone is in a position to run one.

*I find it funny to misuse the word akimbo, I promise I know what it actually means