Realism got Starmer here. But so far he’s
fighting this election with fantasy economics
Gaby
Hinsliff
Labour is throwing everything at growth and running
away from thorny issues such as Brexit, tax rises and our ageing population
Tue 28 May
2024 06.00 BST
It wasn’t
quite John Major’s vision of old maids cycling through the mist to church. But
the sepia-tinted memories Keir Starmer recounted in his first big campaign
speech of growing up in Oxted, the Surrey town he called “about as English as
you can get”, weren’t a million miles away. He talked about growing up in a
house where the phone was sometimes cut off because his parents couldn’t afford
to pay the bill; about how he identifies now with young couples realising they
can’t afford a longed-for second child because of rocketing mortgages.
But he also
talked nostalgically about the ramshackle football pitch he played on, and
shared with grazing cows, and what he called the British air of “quiet
uncomplaining resilience” in an era when there was sadly a lot to be resilient
about. Shades of those “do you remember … ?” pages on Facebook, where the
middle aged reminisce about pork scratchings and playing on a ZX Spectrum.
And if
you’re rolling your eyes at all this stuff – well, it’s not meant for you, but
for the Daily Mail readers who are so very clearly Labour’s target in this
campaign and for whom the past is much less threatening than the present. Less
financially secure than most people imagine, always afraid of slipping
backwards, exasperated with Rishi Sunak but innately conservative (with a small
or big C), they’re still uncertain about how they will vote in eminently
flippable Tory seats such as East Worthing and Shoreham, where Starmer was
making this pitch.
Talking to
the people who can actually deliver him a majority, instead of lifelong Labour
supporters, embodies the brutal realism that has got him to the brink of
government. Yet realism goes only so far, judging by Labour’s reluctance to
explain exactly how it intends to fix utterly broken public services without
raising income tax and national insurance – as Rachel Reeves swears they
wouldn’t – or busting self-imposed rules on borrowing. (If you are thinking
that a big fat wealth tax would cover it, Reeves has previously rejected that
too.) For a contest between two sober and pragmatic leaders, so far this
election feels weirdly detached from economic reality.
Paul
Johnson, the veteran head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has repeatedly
urged all the parties to level with people about the tough choices facing
whoever forms the next government, pointing out that existing spending plans
rely on real-terms spending cuts after the election that few believe could ever
be realistically delivered. But who wants to be a harbinger of doom this close
to an election, when people are already complaining that Starmer doesn’t sound
hopeful enough?
The Tories
are already hinting at a big manifesto offer of tax cuts, despite calling this
snap election largely because they have realised they can’t afford more tax
cuts: getting re-elected wouldn’t change that maths, but then they don’t really
expect to be re-elected, which is tremendously freeing. Labour by contrast is
acutely aware of, and constrained by, having to deliver what it promises. Yet
it is still playing fantasy politics in some respects, vowing to throw
everything at boosting economic growth while running away from the subject of
how Brexit has strangled growth.
Meanwhile,
nobody wants to acknowledge that this is at root an ageing country attempting
to fund soaring healthcare and pension bills from a relatively shrunken pool of
younger workers’ taxes, meaning this was likely to be an era of high taxes or
low expectations even before Britain voted in 2016 to punch itself in the face.
Reeves said at the weekend that she would like taxes to be lower. I’d like the
sun to shine every day, but the forecast still says rain.
To be fair,
these are early days. This speech wasn’t a full-blown economic manifesto launch
but a chance for Starmer gently to introduce himself to voters who don’t really
notice politics between elections and remain suspicious of Labour’s intentions.
Expectations are, in some cases, also unfairly high. Though we associate Tony
Blair’s governments now with record spending on hospitals and in schools, back
in 1997 he was vowing to stick to Tory spending plans and his five-point pledge
card offered mainly the same kind of small, detailed fixes that Starmer’s
six-point version does. These are downpayments, no more, on things Starmer is
quite open about needing two terms to save up for.
It’s
possible, too, to see how small things could quite quickly start to make
ordinary life feel different. Settle the doctors’ strike and a new government
could make much faster progress on waiting lists; reform Ofsted and ease
teachers’ workloads, and you could at least reduce pressure inside schools.
Gordon Brown has, meanwhile, offered ideas for tackling child poverty even in
an era of tight spending constraints.
Yet it’s
hard to shake the feeling that some difficult conversations are being shunted
to the other side of polling day, when Labour finally discovers all the horrors
stuffed down the back of an outgoing government’s filing cabinets. If England
was ever “quietly uncomplaining”, in Starmer’s words, those days are long gone.
But we may be needing that resilience.
Gaby
Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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