Conservative party’s ‘surrender’ attack ad condemned as ‘desperate’ and a new low

The latest advert to come out of the Conservative Campaign Headquarters has already received a wave of criticism and been widely condemned as “desperate” and “bottom of the barrel”. 

Written in bold capital letters, the Tory attack poster states ‘Don’t surrender your family’s future to Labour’ with a picture of a man, woman and child holding their hands in the air in surrender. 

It has been slammed for being in extremely poor taste and lacking sensitivity, while people have branded it a new low for the campaign. 

During the BBC leaders debate on Wednesday evening Rishi Sunak used the phrase “do not surrender” multiple times around tax rises, the welfare state and immigration, hoping to push through this inflammatory attack message to voters. 

Journalist Alistair Campbell criticised this on X: “Another day another propaganda triumph for Sunak as the right wing papers unite to proclaim the latest attack line on Labour, NO SURRENDER (Ian Paisley Sr RIP!) As predicted on @RestIsPolitics – this was the line Sunak wanted to land. Anyone would think that Central Office dictated headlines ahead of the debate to save editors having to have judgement of their own.”

Andrew Fisher, who was former head of policy for Jeremy Corbyn, wrote on X: “Sunak using deeply inflammatory language on migration: “surrender”, “soft touch of Europe. France takes more refugees than us, as does Germany, Spain & Italy. Maybe we should do more to stop creating refugees by bombing their countries & selling arms to dictators.”

Responding to the attack ad posted on Rishi Sunak’s X account, Labour candidate Chris Bryant joined the criticism.

Bryant said: “You didn’t stay for the D-Day commemoration. You didn’t turn up for the votes on Owen Paterson or Boris Johnson. You were beaten by Liz Truss. Half of your candidates have given up. And now you talk of surrender?”

Another X user wrote: “On reflection given that there are current wars that affect Gaza and Ukraine and there are millions of people in the UK directly affected and impacted THIS has to be one of the sickest adverts ever.”

Journalist Kevin Schofield said: “They’ve done it. They’ve finally gone lower than the bottom of the barrel.”

Frances Ryan, Guardian columnist, was scathing: “I’m not saying that the Tories have lost the last shred of faux decency they had but the Prime Minister tweeting an image of a child being held up at gun point feels…just not ideal election campaigning IDK.”

Brendan Cox, whose wife, Jo was murdered by a rightwing terrorist, also weighed in: “Labour are going to gun down your family. Don’t pretend you weren’t warned… Er…”

It’s a shocking misjudgement even by CCHQ standards.

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward

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