The King and I: Why the Tories’ latest campaign poster had to be pulled

It was Josef Goebbels, the evil genius of propaganda, who famously remarked that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” True enough, but what is less often quoted is the essential rider he then added: “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.”

Which brings us to Conservative Central HQ and their online “poster” boasting that “Britain is the second most powerful country in the world”(with, presumably, the unspoken message “Don’t let Sir Keir Starmer and his socialist hordes ruin this Tory paradise”).

In case you missed it: it was a jagged montage of images (now deleted) designed to make you feel proud about the nation – and, as usual, appropriate legitimate patriotic pride to the exclusive benefit of the Conservative Party.

Quite apart from the jarring dissonance between the post-imperial pomp on display and what is nowadays called “the lived experience” of most of the British populace, someone in CCHQ decided it was a good idea to drag King Charles III, who has troubles enough, into this puerile bit of politicking.

Not only was this disrespectful to the very British constitutional tradition that the sovereign is above politics (and should be helped by the parties to keep things that way) – but the image of this mature gentleman in coronation robes and Imperial Crown doesn’t exactly give the impression of a brashly modern Britain ready to take on global leadership in the age of artificial intelligence, space tourism and solid-state batteries.

It was a terrible blunder – and more than a bit desperate to include the King. You’d hope that No 10 noticed the gaffe before the palace had to drop any informal hints about observing the usual proprieties. As he said when he became King and greeted Liz Truss for the remainder of her world-record breakingly brief premiership: “Oh dear, oh dear”.

Now, without wishing to use the word “lie”, there were a number of other things wrong with the extravagant claim made in the poster – and these weaknesses meant that it was not possible for CCHQ to shield the British public from the reality of their broken, shabby, pot-holed surroundings.

So the poster has been taken down after only a few days, unable to sustain itself against the truths about record NHS waiting lists, rivers full of sewage, explicit nude photos sent by strangers to MPs – and crumbling schools.

We know that America is, presumably the most powerful country on earth, but it doesn’t really feel that Britain is a more powerful country than the other notable contenders for second place, such as China, Germany, Japan or even Russia. Post-Brexit – that great Tory achievement – Britain is about as powerful as, say, Canada or France. But you wouldn’t want to argue the point.

Another truth is that bragging that you’re “second best” at anything is a bit weak. It only begs the question: who is actually the champion – and isn’t it you? When the Tories come second in the general election later this year that will prove scant consolation, except maybe that at least they didn’t get beaten by Reform and come third.

The poster is also short of women, as if they’ve achieved nothing to make the UK “numero due” in the world; and the same might be said of the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish, whose football teams haven’t won anything lately, just like the England men. The Lionesses, who did at least inspire us, were notable in their absence.

Our minority ethnic communities were represented by a frowning Rishi Sunak, who looks just like a man facing political oblivion, because he is. As it happens, Sunak came second in the only leadership contest he completed, and is the second most unpopular prime minister in recent decades. So, you know, there’s that.

The internet has taken care of the rest of the supposedly proudly British icons featured in the iconography: the Aston Martin car is made by a Canadian company and soon with American electric vehicle technology; the container ship is Swiss; the Typhoon jet was built by a European consortium and the F-35 by the US (and we can’t afford to run them anyway); both the King and the prime minister are the descendants of migrants.

Indeed, what the poster really shows is how much the UK has prospered from globalisation, from trade, family and commercial links across the world – and (dare one add) membership of the second most powerful trading bloc in the world: the European Union.

But we know what happened there, don’t we? We got knocked off the top trading spot thanks to those second-rate Tories – presently world leaders in irony and cringingly bad political communications.