Boris Johnson got plenty of things wrong as prime minister but he at least knew how to come up with a punchy slogan. ‘Get Brexit done’, was the tagline of his October 2019 Tory conference. It was a work of genius: both sides of the referendum, exhausted by infighting and frankly bored with Brexit, could get behind that sentiment. Its simplicity might have been deceptive but it summed up what people wanted: to move on. In a few more words, ‘invest in our NHS, schools and police’, it offered a winning idea. With hindsight, it’s no surprise that Boris won so decisively a few weeks later at the snap general election.

The slogan of Rishi Sunak’s conference this year in Manchester is more likely to send people to sleep than encourage them to vote for the Tories: ‘Long-term decisions for a brighter future’. In seven words it captures nothing; the tagline appears to have been lifted from a PowerPoint presentation.

Presumably, it’s the work of focus groups – voters enlisted to tell the government what they want. But people in Manchester walking past the conference venue will see it for what it is: corporate bore speak that sounds exactly like what you would expect a politician to say. ‘Brighter future’ is a cliche that won’t encourage anyone sitting on the fence to reconsider the Tories. And there’s a certain irony that a Prime Minister who refuses to set out what he will do about HS2 will appear under a banner promising ‘long-term decisions’. When can we expect to hear these decisions?

‘Long-term decisions for a brighter future’. In seven words it captures nothing

Most people in Britain today aren’t looking for ‘long-term decisions’; inflation has bitten hard and people are struggling with their food and gas bills. Millions are waiting for treatment on the NHS. Schools are crumbling. None of these things are necessarily Rishi Sunak’s fault. But come the next election he and the Tories will be blamed for them – and promising to make ‘long term decisions’ to fix things won’t help. Of course, some of these ‘long term’ plans are perfectly sensible: the PM’s workforce blueprint, which aims to cut the use of agency staff and the need to import medics, could go some way to alleviating the pressures on hospitals. But even if it works – which is doubtful – we won’t see the fruits of it for some time.

The same applies to Sunak’s watering down of his net zero pledges. His announcements last week, for all the doom mongering that greeted them in certain quarters, are perfectly reasonable. But being able to cling on to your gas boiler for a few more years is hardly a priority for many people; they had no plan to get rid of them anyway. Their biggest worry right now is how much it’s going to cost to heat their homes this winter.

The PM’s announcement on net zero appear to be off the back of the Uxbridge by-election, where people rebelled agains the imposition of the Ulez charge by punishing Labour. But Sadiq Khan’s tax is so unpopular for some drivers because it hits them in their wallets now. By contrast, the ‘long-term’ announcements on the environment made by Sunak seem hypothetical to most people because they are. Talk of a gas boiler ban come 2035 – presumably the type of ‘long term decision’ Sunak is hoping voters will thank him for – mean very little.

Voters will hear Sunak’s slogan this week and, if they don’t switch off, probably ask why they should give the Tories – a party that has been in power for 13 years – more time to implement their plan.

In past years, the Tories have opted for three words in their conference slogans. We’ve had ‘Getting Britain Moving’ (2022); ‘Build Back Better’ (2021); and ‘Security. Stability. Opportunity’ (2015). None of these matched the genius of Boris’s slogan, but at least they were short and (fairly) memorable. Sunak is a PM who is trying to show he is different from what came before him. Given the unpopularity of his two predecessors, that’s understandable. But coming up with a winning slogan is one area in which he should borrow from Boris.