Five videos that show how Labour is already winning the TikTok election battle

“Hi, TikTok,” Rishi Sunak said in the first video the Conservative Party posted on the platform, two days ago. “Sorry to be breaking into your usual politics-free feed.”

Two million views later, perhaps he’s not so sorry after all. In fact, it’s clear that the days when TikTok was considered such a grave security threat that it was blocked on Parliament Wi-Fi are long gone.

As the UK ramps up for a July 4 general election, the platform is increasingly becoming a key battleground, with parties moving to woo would-be voters with content ranging from earnest Q&As to memes inspired by Shrek.

Breaking ground on the digital campaign trail is thought to be particularly important for winning over the Gen Z electorate, as up to 71 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds use social media as their main source of news.

Labour led the charge in embracing TikTok, setting up an official account on the video-sharing app four days ago, and the Conservatives swiftly followed suit.

As it stands, the Tories are trailing behind on followers too: with 26.6k to Labour’s 84.5k (however, both are currently being beaten by Reform’s 121.8k).

But with the TikTok battle now seemingly in full swing, these are five videos that show who might yet come out on top.

Labour: Lord Farquaad

The Tories’ first video on the Prime Minister’s new National Service policy gained two million views – a surprisingly strong start. However, they were swiftly overtaken by a series of viral Labour videos which used popular memes to make fun of the move.

One featured a clip of Lord Farquaad, the villainous ruler from Shrek, saying: “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.” This is illustrative of Labour’s savvy TikTok strategy so far: repackaging pop culture moments that are already popular on the platform and reposting them with a message relevant to its general election campaign.

Labour: Cilla Black

In a similar vein, Labour posted this viral clip of the television presenter Cilla Black performing Surprise Surprise in the Eighties – a recurring meme on the app – with the words: “POV: Rishi Sunak turning up on your 18th birthday to send you to war.”

Chris Stokel-Walker, a journalist and the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App, says this demonstrates how Labour has pulled ahead. They have a “really good sense of humour in what they’re doing, which helps hugely”, he says. “There’s a wink and a nod, it’s often quite playful… They’re referring to traditional internet memes and cultural touchstones.”

Labour: Rishi vs Keir’s football skills

The Prime Minister’s lack of football prowess was the subject of Labour’s most recent TikTok jibe; yesterday, the Labour account posted a video of Rishi Sunak dribbling a football between cones, followed by zoomed-in footage of Keir Starmer excelling at five-a-side. “It’s a cultural shorthand that shows how [Sunak and Starmer] are different in a really canny way,” says Stokel-Walker.

Not everyone agrees that slamming the PM’s football skills is the best approach to winning an election. “I’m anything but a fantastic football player myself, but you saw Rishi trying to dribble around the cones, and he did about as well as you’d expect while wearing a suit,” says Craig Elder, who worked on the Conservatives’ digital election campaign in 2015. “I expected incredible skills from Keir Starmer and instead got a middle-aged man playing football.” It’s also, he argues, largely irrelevant. “As a voter, so what?”

Conservatives: The national service announcement

It is still early days. But the Conservatives’ TikTok career started on a serious note, with a 50-second announcement from the Prime Minister on his new national service scheme for 18-year-olds set against a dark background. An important message, but one that’s probably not going to be able to compete against a montage comparing the candidates’ skills on the football pitch.

“One of the key things around TikTok is the speed at which you can bore people – that’s one of the things the Tories haven’t quite [grasped],” says Stokel-Walker. “A traditional broadcast, black backdrop, staring at the camera – if you haven’t got someone’s attention in the first couple of seconds, they’re going to move on to the next thing.”

However, Elder argues this was a strong start for the Conservatives. “The rule of thumb for anything social is trying to do something authentic – if I look at the way the Tories used TikTok over the weekend, that’s authentic to the Prime Minister and who he is.”

Conservatives: The PM’s Q&A

Not one of the videos the Conservatives’ account has posted since its initial foray has surpassed a million views: perhaps because almost every video follows the same format. This shows a lack of effort, says Stokel-Walker. “You look at them and you can scroll through them – four are the PM in the same studio, wearing the same clothes, saying pretty much the same thing,” he says.

So, the overall lesson appears to be that if they want to match Labour’s TikTok success, they’d better take themselves a bit less seriously.