Labour pays comms agency to find influencers who can sell the Starmer message

LONDON — Britain’s Labour Party is paying a communications agency to find influencers who can promote struggling Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cost-of-living message.

The governing party has tapped up digital communications agency 411 to reach out to influencers, with the comms shop asking them to be part of a campaign “sharing the steps that this Labour Government is taking to ease the cost of living,” according to a message to influencers seen by POLITICO.

The creators are hand-picked “micro-influencers” with less than 20,000 followers, which 411 believes have a more engaged and targeted audience, according to a person working on the strategy but not authorized to speak publicly about it.

The influencers do not get paid by Labour or 411, with the same person describing the outreach as akin to a targeted press release.

The quest for new messengers comes as Starmer’s government tries to convince Brits it can reduce costs and fights to turn around dire poll ratings. At the beginning of the year, Starmer announced that cutting the cost of living was his “number one priority.” 

His government has, however, repeatedly struggled with its communications, with tanking poll ratings partially blamed by his own MPs on a failure to tell the story of his administration. Starmer’s Downing Street has cycled through multiple communications chiefs since taking office in July 2024.

Mark McVitie, who works on social media strategy as director of the Labour Growth Group — though is not involved with the influencer outreach — described the latest move as “tactically fine and what a government should be doing in 2026.” But he warned it is “insufficient to the level of the challenge facing this particular government.”

The Labour Party did not respond to a request for comment.

The move is the latest by the British government to tap into the world of influencers as it tries to push its message.

At the end of February, Starmer hosted a press conference solely for content creators, while Chancellor Rachel Reeves booked out seats at a pre-budget press conference for hand-picked online finance influencers. Starmer has started posting podcast-style videos in recent weeks in a bid to more directly connect with voters.

A Labour MP, discussing the bid to reach influencers and granted anonymity to speak freely, said they were “delighted to discover we have a comms strategy of any kind.”