EXCLUSIVEWho is winning 'Britain's first TikTok election'? Labour's Cilla Black 'Surprise Surprise' meme ridiculing Rishi Sunak tops 5m views and Reform has more followers than Tories - but Gen Z say 'parties are just using it to insult one another'
Cilla Black belting out Surprise Surprise will transport millions back to the 1980s.
But the late Liverpool star's song is at the heart of a modern phenomenon and the biggest hit of Britain's first TikTok election.
MailOnline analysis shows that views of videos on UK political party profiles are already approaching 80million since Rishi Sunak's rainsoaked speech on May 22 - with Labour grabbing 52million of them with the Tories lagging on 15.2million.
But experts have warned that while Labour has a huge lead in terms of followers or views - they should not be overconfident, especially with the Greens and the Lib Dems performing particularly well on TikTok.
Reform has 170,000 followers compared to the Tories' 60,000.
Parties cannot buy advertising on Chinese-owned TikTok - but the new digital warfare means they can spend nearly £35million in this election online. Labour has splurged £2.4million on advertisements on Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram as well as Google. The Tories have spent £840,000.
Labour's Google spend means that if someone searches 'Labour tax rises' - they get the result: 'Labour will not raise taxes on working people', for example.
Sir Keir Starmer's top hit on TikTok is an 11-second clip of Cilla Black singing 'Surprise Surprise' at the end of her ITV show is the most popular clip of the campaign and has been viewed more than 5.2million times, weaponised by left-wing Gen-Zers to lampoon Rishi Sunak's plans to bring back national service.
Labour is winning the TikTok battle - but will it translate into votes?
Their second most watched TikTok, with is Mr Sunak dressed as a wizard and a warning that anyone who votes Tory will have their aura damaged - a reference to an on-trend joke amongst teenagers.
One commenter on the Cilla Black meme said today: 'Whoever is in charge of the labour social media account should be the PM actually.' One replied: 'Probably be better than Starmer.'
The Tories hit back with a meme of Sir Keir Starmer throwing a feeble punch - but it has not been such a hit.
Reform's TikToks perform best when Nigel Farage is in them, especially when he talks about immigration. Minor parties, such as Plaid Cymru, have had TikTok hits with videos where their leader Rhun ap Iorwerth confronted him over the issue.
The SNP's top performing post shows John Swinney welcoming Taylor Swift to Scotland this month.
But young people, who the videos are mainly aimed at, are not impressed.
Joe Knight, 18, from Derby, said: 'If I'm scrolling through TikTok, the two main parties are hardly talking about issues a lot of the time. A lot of it is just insulting one another.
'A lot of people I'm talking to my age are concerned around some policies being talked about, in terms of immigration being spoken about.
'The cost of living is a massive issue – inflation and people can't live cheaply.
'With everything being so expensive and realistically someone my age isn't going to get employment in a job that paid well enough.
'Politicians need to look at the cost of living and look after young people so they can get on and live', he told the BBC.
The 2024 campaign has already been branded 'the first TikTok election', with several of the main parties opening official accounts on the social media platform in the days after the election was called.
Teams of teenagers and Gen-Zers are working to pump out memes in the hope it will damage opponents - and capture the youth vote.
Professor Andrew Chadwick, Professor of Political Communication and Director of the Online Civic Culture Centre at Loughborough University, told MailOnline that this is the first General Election where you will be able to see if there is any kind of relationship between TikTok success and electoral success.
5million views: Labour's Cilla Black meme has been viewed 5m times and liked 721,000 times as TikTok finds itself at the heart of the election campaign
1.5m: Rishi struggling with a football has also been weaponised by Labour
Until now there has been no point considering the correlation between TikTok views, follows and votes in an election, because the age and demographic of those using TikTok is not reflective of the wider British electorate, he said.
Professor Chadwick said: 'TikTok is in a totally different place to where it was in 2019. It still skews young but its appeal has broadened. Today, for the under 40s, TikTok is a big influence in the UK: 61% of internet users aged 16 to 34 use it, according to the latest Ofcom data.
'What is interesting is the difference between what the parties are offering. Labour appears to be mainly about memes, humour and TikTok's unique "platform culture". Its approach is to use the social norms and communication genres that TikTok users will already find familiar and connect with, such as "POV" memes.
'TikTok's algorithms are opaque, but Labour will be pleased that their posts appear to be cutting through - and they will hope that they are getting in front of young people, who will be voting this year or in the near future.
'These political posts may also pop up among videos on travel, beauty and make-up - and perhaps grab the attention of so-called 'news avoiders' who we know are a growing group among younger people.
'And while views on TikTok will not translate into millions more votes, the TikTok data does appear to show where people are looking on that platform.
'The Tories will be worried by the increasing engagement with Reform because it could be a further sign that Nigel Farage's party will be taking votes from them.
'The Lib Dems are also doing well, and both have done it from a very low base.'
Labour is outspending rivals on Google and on Meta - home of Facebook and Instagram
These are the kinds of adverts that the Tories have been pumping out
Despite being banned on Parliamentary grounds, Labour and the Tories have been doing battle on TikTok ahead of next month's election.
Kate Dommett, Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield, said: 'The challenge for parties on TikTok is they don't know exactly who is watching their videos and whether they live in electorally important areas.
'This means that whilst Labour and Reform (and particularly Nigel Farage) are performing well on the platform, that success won't necessarily translate into votes.
'What is interesting is the relative lack of support for the Tories as opposed to Labour, with just 625.9K 'Likes' for the party as opposed to 4.7million for Labour, indicating that the Conservatives are failing to connect with the platform's users and spark an enthusiastic response.
'Given the relatively young profile of users on this platform this is perhaps unsurprising, but it makes the success of Reform (1.6M likes) and Farage (11.7M likes) all the more notable'.
'Labour's TikTok is like a boxer throwing a combination of punches with a mixture of funny memes, well-produced key messaging and clips of successful media appearances,' TikTok expert Phil Carr has said.
His @philc84 account has 900,000 followers.
He told The Guardian: 'People like Sunak and Cameron will attract so many comments on a video that they will always do well in the algorithm. The issue is that the comments might not be positive.
'At this late stage, I would have put lesser-known members who are possibly more relatable to a younger audience forward on to TikTok and let them run wild. It would have been a hell of a gamble but the polls suggest that taking big gambles is where they need to be.'
He added: 'Whether that makes them shocked, learn, laugh or just say 'wow'. You just pick your moments with a key message. I might make a three-minute TikTok and use one sentence in it to get my point across. The rest of that three minutes is, hopefully, entertainment. The parties need to be fun and pick their moments for the sledgehammer messaging.'
PR gurus have said that TikTok is a place for parties to go a bit wild.
Reuben Solomon, the founder of Ridgeway Strategy and former 10 Downing Street head of digital, said: 'TikTok was once the playground for memes and tongue-in-cheek satire, but now it's revolutionising political campaigns, and it has brought young voters closer to politics than ever before.
'This intersection of politics and entertainment is making (some) parties and politicians more relatable to young voters, and the opportunity to secure votes through viral political content is unprecedented and too good to miss.'
Mr Solomon has compared the approach of Labour and the Tories.
He said: '[Labour] have been quick to ramp up their TikTok game, with edgy content and a dedicated team developing original, engaging content that resonates [with] young voters – while the Conservatives have honed in behind Brand Sunak, doubling down on Labour attack.
'The results so far are clear – Labour has blitzed the incumbents, with over three million likes on the platform, compared to the Conservatives' half a million. The Lib Dems are playing catch-up, and we can expect to see more from Reform UK as Nigel Farage's social output powers up'.
Sir Keir Starmer wants to lower the voting age to 16. TikTok is a key place to break through.
One in four children gets their political information from YouTube, while one in five sees it on TikTok, according to a survey which also suggested most cannot name their local MP.
Some 2,000 eight to 17-year-olds were asked about their political awareness as part of a coalition which is holding a children's vote ahead of the General Election.
The polling, carried out earlier this year before the election was called, found that 70 per cent of young people surveyed did not know the name of their local MP and half could not say which political party their MP belonged to.
Some 39 per cent of young people said they do not understand what politicians do, the research findings suggested.
TikTok wars: The top videos of the election so far (and what one of Britain's leading experts thinks of them)
Professor Andrew Chadwick, Professor of Political Communication and Director of the Online Civic Culture Centre at Loughborough University, has analysed the most-watched videos of the campaign so far.
Labour
Cilla Black meme about National Service (5m)
Professor Chadwick says: 'Mum and Dad, who's this?' That was my first reaction when I saw this video, which has in many ways defined Labour's approach to TikTok (though not other social media, where its approach has been more traditional).
Even though TikTok has expanded in recent years and its user base includes a wide range of age groups, it still skews young. So with this video Labour probably knew that younger users might not know who Cilla Black is, or the TV show that featured this tune. But the key thing is that it sparks intergenerational questions and conversations in the home. It did in my home.
A lot of my recent research has examined online social endorsement—how people's sharing patterns online can influence other people's perceptions and behaviour. Horizontal sharing across people's everyday networks—what citizens share with and say to other citizens—can matter as much as vertical top-down messaging from a party.
And it is very funny, especially with its use of the 'POV'—point of view—meme approach, a typical part of TikTok platform culture. POVs obliquely invite the viewer to think about the video content, which on the surface looks unrelated to the information conveyed—in this case the National Service plan—but summarizes a feeling or emotional state that Labour thinks young people will be feeling. It connects.
Conservatives
Rishi on National Service (3.8m)
Professor Chadwick says: 'This is actually quite a traditional approach of the kind we have become used to in digital campaigning since the rise of YouTube: face to camera, with scripted delivery. We can see this style across the rest of the Convervatives' feed as well. A few emojis and sound effects layered over the video reflect TikTok's platform culture but there's not much else that makes this TikTok specific. It could have been on any platform.
'The video has gone viral with 3.8m views but we need to ask why. The standout issue with this video is the negativity of the comments. Often these are funny and satirical but some of them reflect genuine concerns and a sense of surprise at the proposal, which of course Labour capitalized on with their response on TikTok. It doesn't help that Sunak opened the video by saying 'Sorry to interrupt your usual politics-free feed.' Perhaps the Conservatives underestimated the extent to which TikTok users would think about and engage with the video—mostly in a scathing way'.
Reform
Sky News clip of Farage on Immigration (830k)
Professor Chadwick says: 'This is a very short clip of the kind we have seen a lot over the past decade from all parties, and these are now a classic genre in what I've called the hybrid media system, where digital and legacy media logics constantly interact.
'It's a twelve-second sound bite, culled from a longer interview on Sky News. It's very much designed to be shared across social media more broadly, not only TikTok. It 'works' because it summarises very concisely Reform's single-issue campaign.
'But the fact that they've left the Sky News ticker graphic at the bottom is interesting: it conveys Sky's news brand and in so doing shows that Farage is getting mainstream coverage, which some critics of UK media have raised as a problematic issue in the past. For a minor, mostly single-issue party like Reform, a broader lack of policy credibility will always limit their success. Current national polling performance does not mean that they will necessarily pick up any seats at all at the election. But this TikTok video does two jobs: it drives home Reform's narrow message on immigration and it conveys indirectly that the party is breaking into national news coverage.
SNP
John Swinney welcomes Taylor Swift to Scotland (447k)
Professor Chadwick says: 'There's a long tradition of celebrity endorsements in political campaigns and in some of my research I have written about how they have become even more important for digital campaigning now that younger audiences spend less time consuming mainstream news coverage. But what's intriguing about this video is that it reverses the norm: this is a politician endorsing a pop star!
'Some might see it as a little desperate, perhaps—Swinney's return as SNP leader was accompanied by suggestions by some commentators that the party should have turned to a new generation for its leader. But at the moment Taylor Swift is a global mega-brand that garners such unusually positive media coverage across the board, that one can see the logic behind associating Swinney and the SNP with her in this way. Lots of genuinely warm positivity in the comments section as well, which indicates that for many in the TikTok community it didn't come across as fake or insincere'.
Green Party
Green Party campaign launch (331k)
Professor Chadwick says: 'A political TikTok hit for the Greens, with 331,000 views. This video leads on housing policy, which is a key issue for younger voters and an area where the Greens have a distinctive and radical approach.
'But the approach to the video itself is quite traditional. It's scripted and heavy on key facts. Important stuff, but it doesn't align with TikTok platform culture in the way that Labour's approach does.
'The most interesting aspect of this video is the symbolism. It manages to convey the party's unique and pioneering joint leadership model but it also includes strong messaging about the two constituencies the party hopes to do well in at the election'
Lib Dems
Meme about Lib Dems releasing its manifesto (219k)
Professor Chadwick says: 'Second to Labour's top post—and it's a close second—this is the most 'meme-tastic' top party video. It features a still image of the front cover of the LibDems' manifesto slowly floating toward the centre of the frame. The cognoscenti will recognize it as the 'Krusty Krab Training Video' meme—one of the legion SpongeBob Squarepants memes. It probably took no more than a minute to produce and involved only a small edit to a freely-available audio download from the original episode.
'Superficially, it's an attention-grabbing video, mainly because it is almost content-free yet with unusual audio. But as with all memes it connects on a different level. It also fits with the LibDems' general stunt-driven approach to the campaign as they try to break through into news coverage.
'Could it backfire? Look in the comments. Some show appreciation but several complain: 'what has happened to politics?' The meme giveth, the meme taketh away'.
Plaid Cymru
Plaid leader vs Nigel Farage (17k)
Professor Chadwick says: 'Like many of the party political videos on social media this is a moment excerpted from a television appearance, in this case the first seven-party TV debate on the BBC. With only 17,000 views it trails far behind the other parties' big hits but of course this reflects the general support for Plaid as a party.
'That said, this was a moment of genuine drama during the debate and it cuts through due to the passionate oratory of Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth. This stands out in an election campaign where rhetorical prowess has been in short supply, and we know from research that emotionally-charged language generates more shares and engagement and is often given priority by social media platform algorithms'.
