Ayesha Hazarika: If it's too good to be true it probably is, whatever the Boris bus says

Boris Johnson prepares to board the Vote Leave campaign bus, complete with the slogan claiming Brexit would boost NHS coffers by £350m a week. Picture: PA

The quest for a tasty political slogan or soundbite is the holy grail of the game. It shouldn't be, of course. The holy grail ought to be to make the world better or at least to leave it in better condition than you found it.

But I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that many, many man hours (and it mainly is chaps) and many thousands of pounds get wasted by political parties on the search for the perfect political slogan.

We all remember Obama’s “Yes we can” which the London Mayor craftily converted to “Ye we Khan.”

Senior advisers and super expensive consultants who look like modern-day Mad Men (but swap the sharp suits for weird jeans that don’t quite fit right) spend days in a bunker with hot towels round their heads and finally emerge like pit ponies blinking into the sunlight with the goods. And they can be hit or mainly miss.

The reason so much time, effort and cash is thrown at crafting the slogan is because out of all the thousands of hours of sound and fury during a political campaign, it is usually the only thing that actually cuts through all the white noise and which actually reaches the eyes, ears, hearts and minds of the voters. Unless of course there are random curveballs and unplanned catchphrases that go global like “Grab ‘em by the . . .”

That’s why they matter so much. They are very powerful communication tools. And it is always a struggle as a political strategist to come up with something important which isn’t dull as dishwater. You want something that zings. Something that sings. Something catchy, memorable. Something you could put on some merchandise – say a mug or a T-shirt or a whopping great big bus.

This week Boris Johnson, currently our very bored Foreign Secretary, revived the famous slogan “We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead. Vote Leave” in a crazed Brexit intervention which was the equivalent of a big man doing a belly flop at a sedate pool party to grab everyone’s attention. His snappy 4,000-word ramble of an essay in the Telegraph was clearly designed to spike the Prime Minister’s own Brexit speech this Friday in Florence but was also a cri de coeur which screamed “Guys!! Remember me?? The blond bombshell? Look at meeeee!! I’m still here . . .” It’s pretty sad really. He’s our Foreign Secretary – which is a huge privilege – at a time when there are plenty of serious and pressing international matters that could do with his focus and attention from the genocide in Burma to the devastating effects of climate change, but oh no. His existential leadership crisis is the only thing that matters to him, especially now that young upstart Jacob Rees Mogg is on the scene stealing all his PR thunder as the new contender to the crown – if you fancy being ruled by a walking time warp.

This week Boris was also rebuked by the National Statistics Authority for not being truthful. Sir David Norgrove, the Authority Chair, said that £350m slogan was “a clear misuse of official statistics”.

The problem, of course, is that this is all about 18 months too late because that slogan was brilliant and ruthlessly effective during the EU referendum campaign. It was catchy, emotive and simple. And it helped the Leave campaign win. The only problem was it was slightly not true.

Of course, the Brexiteers will say that this is all dancing on the head of a pin. That money will at some point come back to the UK and then technically, some of it may possibly go the NHS. But that is not the message people got. The slogan was so beautifully crisp and clear about the problem (£350m going to the EU every week – boo hiss) and the reward (that dosh going to the NHS – whoop whoop), that it got that holy grail of cut-through. It seemed a no-brainer. When I first saw, I thought “Blimey . . . they’ve got a point . . .” It was a powerful winning device when combined with that other brilliant slogan “Take back control”. Again, one of the most successful political slogans of a generation along with of course “Make America great again.” It all just wasn’t true. When I was on Good Morning Britain in the early hours of the morning after the referendum result, even Nigel Farage backed away from the £350m claim as soon as he could. In his first proper interview after the result, under questioning from Susanna Reid, he buckled and sheepishly admitted it was not all it seemed. So, the accuracy of the central campaign claim didn’t even make it until 7.30am the next morning.

I can totally understand the irresistible lure of the slightly dodgy claim to make something more palatable and accessible to the public. When I was a political strategist working with Labour politicians, I used to tear my hair out when the po-faced policy advisers who were like human encyclopaedias would stop us from going ahead with our pithy one-liners at Prime Minister’s Questions or for the launch of a campaign because it wasn’t accurate. But they were absolutely right – in fact and in principle.

And it’s easy to forget that principle matters in politics. Of course, it is all about the win. But what kind of win do you want, because there is a truth in politics which is if you lie, you normally get found out and it comes back to haunt you. Brexit will be now be dogged by this once sexy shiny promise of £350m a week for the NHS. It will be the phrase that will be rolled out time and time again. As the negotiations drag on for years and our exit bill zooms up. As we see our NHS buckle under financial pressure. As we struggle to fill vacancies for nurses. As waiting lists continue to creep up and people can’t see their GP. That promise on that bus is now the symbol of why people hate politics and why their trust is broken. That’s the problem with simple political truths – they don’t really exist.

In this age of complex, deep, difficult problems and the offer of dangerous, easy, populist solutions from both the right and the left of politics, it’s time to remind ourselves of some good old-fashioned life advice – if sounds too good to be true, it probably is.