Labour has recruited actors Martin Freeman and David Tennant to appear in its first party election broadcast. Freeman, who starred in Sherlock and The Hobbit, will declare that he is backing Ed Miliband and warn the Conservatives have “sod all to offer the young”. “Really, for me, there’s only one choice, and I choose Labour,” he said.
A voiceover is supplied by Tennant, who played Doctor Who and had a leading role in Broadchurch. “This election is a choice between the Tories’ failing plan and Labour’s better plan for working families. Britain succeeds when working people succeed. Vote Labour on May 7,” Tennant says at the end.
The video, titled “What’s the choice in this election?”, shows Freeman turning up to a studio with a white background before addressing the camera directly. He says: “We are in the runup to a general election and you are going to hear loads of claims from people from the left, on the right, all over the place. It’s going to drive you mad. It will probably drive me mad. It boils down to a choice between a Labour government and a Conservative one.
“But it isn’t just a choice between two different plans, two different ways of getting the deficit down. It’s a choice between two completely different sets of values – a choice about what kind of country we want to live in.”
He then contrasts the “community, compassion and decency” of Labour compared with a “rollercoaster of cuts” under the Conservatives. Freeman and Tennant are the two first big celebrity endorsements of the campaign, which formally kicked off on Monday. The Doctor Who actor is already well known as a Labour supporter, having publicly backed the party in 2005.
