Potholes, Policing And Pubs: No 10’s Reddit Push Ahead Of Local Elections
Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking to police at Lambeth Police Headquarters last year (Alamy)
4 min read
Ahead of local and mayoral elections on 1 May, the Labour government has been experimenting with a new communications style on Reddit.
PoliticsHome recently revealed that the government set up a Reddit account in March as part of No 10’s New Media Unit’s push to get cut through via more modern forms of media.
Reddit is a social media forum where users can read, post and comment on various subjects through user-created boards called "subreddits". Users are generally anonymous, with automatically generated usernames and cartoon-like icons.
The NMU also set up a UK government TikTok account in the autumn, with a No 10 spokesperson telling PoliticsHome that government was "continuing to modernise our communications so that they better reflect how the public consumes information".
Since winning the general election last year, the Labour government has been frequently criticised, including by some Labour MPs, for its failure to communicate its policies and overall narrative effectively.
In November, former Downing Street director of communications Lee Cain wrote in The House magazine that No 10 has a “communications problem” and that no attention was being given to “crafting of a powerful moral story that allows the public to make sense of government decision-making and its direction of travel”.
No 10’s Reddit strategy is seemingly very deliberate and targeted, with one or two posts being sent from the account onto subject-specific boards each day.
PoliticsHome analysis shows that in the first month of its creation, the first 44 posts by the ‘UKGovNews’ Reddit page have particularly focused on promoting content relating to transport connectivity, rail services, driving test availability and repairing potholes.
The page’s top-performing posts have been related to the deportation of illegal migrants, breakfast clubs for children, crime and policing, potholes and rail services, and the National Living Wage. One post with more than 100 ‘upvotes’ (likes) announced the government’s plans to allow pubs to stay open later on VE Day.
Many of the topics prioritised by the Reddit page in the first few weeks of its existence seem linked to issues that polling has found to be particularly important to those considering voting for Nigel Farage's Reform UK.
Numerous polls show Reform voters care more than other groups about crime and policing.
A report by Stonehaven last year, as reported in The Guardian, showed that every constituency that elected a new Reform UK candidate at the July general election had experienced poor transport connectivity and delays to road improvement schemes.
Centre for Cities research published this week said that support for Reform is higher in areas with the weakest links to nearby cities.
Meanwhile, it is notable that the government has not used Reddit to promote its policies on housing and planning reform, clean energy, or the broader concept of economic growth – despite these policies being front and centre of Keir Starmer’s ‘mission-led’ government.
The Good Growth Foundation think tank (GGF) published a report in January setting out why politicians should ensure economic growth is felt in the pockets of ordinary people, making it “clear, relatable, and grounded in their everyday experiences”.
Former Labour candidate and director of the GGF Praful Nargund previously told PoliticsHome that the government would need to “face two ways”, looking to ensure long-term growth and investment while also establishing what the short-term benefits are for the public.
Now responding to the government’s foray into Reddit, Nargund told PoliticsHome: “It makes complete sense that the government would want to be in the channels where people actually are, and to explore new areas.
“There's a recognition that GDP is just a line on the graph… Growth in abstract doesn't connect to people's lives. That's something that's come across in our research time and time again.”
Nargund said that in the GGF’s focus groups, policing, potholes and pubs were some of the most common themes that voters said they care about – and that when they felt these things were in decline, it “makes them feel that things aren't going in the right direction” in general.
“Transport is one of the key personal, visceral policies that really connects growth in the abstract to people's everyday lives,” Nargund said.
“It sounds like there's a recognition of that somewhere in government.”
