When Dalton McGuinty was leading the Ontario Liberals into what he hoped would be a third consecutive election victory in 2011, he wanted a new slogan that reflected his party’s values and his personal priorities. He’d won his first mandate in 2003 on a slogan of “Choose Change” (away from the previous Progressive Conservative governments). In 2007, it was “Change That’s Working.”
McGuinty hoped to continue to make progress on issues related to health care and education. And he wanted to run against what he saw as the PCs’ desire to cut more taxes at the expense of public services.
So for his 2011 re-election campaign, McGuinty ran on the slogan “Forward Together” — just two words that perfectly captured the essence of his brand.
He wanted the province embracing the future, with a view to everyone having a piece of the journey. “Forward Together” seemed to encapsulate that. Say what you like about McGuinty (and lots of people had their problems with him), you can’t deny that plenty of people seemed to buy into that notion as well, given that the province’s 24th premier won three straight elections. In fact, he was the first Ontario Liberal leader in more than 120 years to achieve that.
I raise all this because the Ontario Liberals under Bonnie Crombie now seem to have a very different idea about what their party represents. At the Liberals’ annual get-together this past weekend in London, Crombie unveiled a new logo and slogan that we’ll no doubt see splashed all over the place in the months leading up to the next election, whenever that is. (Ontario’s fixed-election-date law mandates that the election be held in June 2026, but Premier Doug Ford has been dropping numerous hints that he’ll use some of the fine print of the law to go early.)
Where McGuinty’s slogan seemed to appeal to the communitarian values Liberals espouse, Crombie’s Liberals now promise “More for You.” Contrary to the party’s previous taglines, the new slogan doesn’t make an appeal to what we can achieve together or what we owe one another. It’s about the individual. It’s about what the government can do to enhance the lives of each individual.
Frankly, it sounds very me, me, me, calling to mind Tom Wolfe’s reference to the “Me” generation — in other words, the baby boomers. It feels very different from the appeals made by previous Liberal leaders: Those were based on what we owe one another. This is a narrower appeal to our individual selves.
At the London meeting, Crombie led the crowd in a frenzied chant of “Less for Them, More for You,” the “them” being Ford’s Conservatives. In that respect, it’s consistent with everything Crombie has been saying so far about Ford being in politics just to advance the interests of his friends and cronies at the expense of the general public. Ford’s opponents have been blasting that trumpet for six years now, yet he’s still comfortably in first place in the polls with back-to-back majority governments under his belt.
Now, it’s entirely possible I’m overthinking this. Maybe slogans are just slogans, and the public doesn’t pay them any heed. But I suspect political parties wouldn’t spend so much time and money trying to come up with the perfect slogan if those slogans weren’t an important means of distinguishing themselves from their opponents. Exhibit 1: “Make America Great Again.” Exhibit 2: “We’re not going back.”
Bottom line: I’m going to be paying close attention to Crombie’s version of Liberalism to see whether it truly breaks from the party’s recent past and employs a more populist, self-interested tone.
It sure sounds that way to this observer.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed the “Forward Together” slogan to the Liberals' 2007 election campaign. In fact, it was used in the 2011 campaign. TVO Today regrets the error.
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