Labour has been forced to take down a video launching its general election campaign after it was spoiled by a typo.
The short clip, posted shortly after Rishi Sunak called a national vote on July 4, contained the line “swich on GB Energy”, referring to Labour’s plan to create a new publicly owned energy company.
The party has removed the original video and replaced it with a corrected version.
Captioned simply “change” and set to an upbeat track, the film was supposed to fire the starting gun on Labour’s campaign.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, opens the video by declaring: “It’s time for change. Britain is a great and proud country, but after 14 years under the Tories, nothing seems to work anymore.”
He goes on to warn that things will “only get worse” if the Conservatives are granted five more years in Downing Street, insisting that only Labour will “get Britain’s future back”.
Distance from Corbyn
He makes a point of stressing that the Labour Party has changed, distancing himself from his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, promising “economic stability at the forefront of everything we do”.
He ends by stating: “After 14 years, it’s time for change. Stop the chaos. Turn the page. Start to rebuild. Vote Labour.”
It is a particularly awkward area for Labour to slip up on, given the issue of green energy has proved a problem point for Sir Keir in recent months.
Last week, on the same day that the Labour leader declared that the launch of GB Energy would be one of the six key pledges at the heart of his election campaign, one of his shadow cabinet ministers suggested it could cost almost 10 times more than the party has promised to spend.
The party also came in for criticism after it U-turned on its flagship £28 billion green investment pledge. Labour initially vowed to borrow the vast sum every year from day one to invest in the plan.
But the pledge has been significantly watered down. Firstly, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, admitted that the annual target would not be hit until at least the second half of Labour’s first term.
Then Sir Keir cast further doubt on the scale of the investment, saying it would be subject to the party’s fiscal rules.
Finally, in a major U-turn, he downgraded the spending commitment to just £4.7 billion a year after admitting it was unaffordable.