This week, Keir Starmer will warn his weary country that “things will get worse before they get better”. Rather than belie a conversion to Tory Leninism, this is a statement of the obvious. Labour weren’t in power, now they are, and one day they won’t be, at which point Britain may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. This is not the point that the Prime Minister is expected to make.
Instead, Starmer will claim there is a “root deep in the heart of Britain” and that Rishi Sunak has handed him “not just an economic black hole but a societal black hole”. He will warn “working people” – that semi-mythical section of voters that he struggles to quite define – that he must take “unpopular decisions”. The pitch is being rolled for a Budget of tax hikes and spending cuts.
Starmer’s performative candour is unlikely to do him much good. Both his ratings and his government’s are on a rapid downwards trajectory. Any post-election glow is spent. Opinium has Starmer plummeting from +18 approval to -6 in a month. Labour entered office historically unpopular and are only becoming more so. This landslide is as hollow as a child’s Easter egg.
However uninspirisng Labour’s first fifty days may have been, the work of government must continue. Starmer has babbled about mission-led government as his aides bicker and our cities burn. To put lipstick on a pig, Labour must suggest their inheritance was uniquely vile – despite the G7-topping growth and sunken inflation – to justify junking various pre-election promises.
Here I remove the Winter Fuel Payment; I can do no other. Guido Fawkes has a handy rolling list of all the u-turns Labour have so far made. From cancelling hospital investments to breaking their promise to pensioners over the social care lifetime cap, their performance has been in keeping with Starmer’s previous enthusiasm for ditching the pledges that got him elected his party’s chief.
I’ve little sympathy for any dazed Corbynista on whom Starmer did the dirty. I do have an issue with a Janus-faced government that pledged not to do one thing on tax whilst planning on doing another embarking on a series of damaging raids on a chosen coterie of ideology enemies, all to pay off their very good chums in the trade unions who have taken them for a ride.
Rachel Reeves promised “no tax rises for working people”, a group variously defined as “people who go out and work”, “who do have savings”, but can also be “pensioners that have worked all their lives”. Heaven forbids any of those “working people” be mendacious enough to educate their children at their own expense or be a retiring entrepreneur looking to sell their business on.
Few would doubt that much is rotten in the state of Britain: our human quantitative easing addiction, our sclerotic planning system, the tacit decriminalisation of crime, and more. We bear responsibility for Britain’s palpable decline under our watch. Yet my assumption that Labour would be the same, but worse, looks wholly justified. This is not a new dawn, but an ever-gloomier dusk.
Broken promises, a miasma of sleaze, Number 10 infighting. Is this change? Reform, the elusive start-up party, or some hitherto unknown challenger will pounce as Starmer proves beyond doubt that politicians are all quite awful. With no new Tory leader until November, don’t rule out Nigel Farage’s motley but untainted crew of golf club bores being ahead by Christmas.
As our Deputy Editor argued yesterday, failing to hold the Government to account would be a dereliction of duty. Sunak cannot leave the task of pointing out Labour’s hypocrisy, dishonesty, and sheer incompetence to the willing but insufficient tag team of Jeremy Hunt and Henry Newman. The goal is so very open; the charms of the Wensleydale agricultural show must be ignored.
The prisons are emptied of career criminals to make room for mums who posted something idiotic on Facebook. The Chancellor plans to hike capital gains tax whilst begging for investors for Ed Miliband’s green boondoggles. The litany of cronies and donors given plumb jobs grows ever-longer. Winter Fuel Payments are removed just as the energy price cap shoots up. All in 50 days.
By choosing not to hold a Budget swiftly after the election, Labour may well have lost the goodwill of voters long before Reeves stands up at the dispatch box. When she then begins announcing spending cuts and hikes to inheritance, capital gains tax, or business rates, as is rumoured, all whilst bunging pay rises to the unions, their wicket will get even stickier. A reshuffle, perchance?
In the meantime, as Labour sputters and stumbles, ConservativeHome will chart every vow they break and smile they fake, like the right-wing blogosphere’s answer to Sting. As with the reign of the 49-Day Queen, whilst I suspected it would all implode, I didn’t realise it would do so this quickly. If the leadership election can be sped up, it might not be a bad thing.
Things can only get worse. It is going to be a very long five years.
