Starmer’s headaches

Victor Anderson looks ahead at the difficulties of the new Labour Government

The new government hit the ground running. The sheer number of bills announced by the King’s Speech (35) is evidence of that. So is the close continuity from the Shadow Cabinet to the Cabinet, with very few being moved except where members lost their seats at the election. They haven’t just been spending their time opposing: they’ve been preparing for government, and with only a few exceptions, have avoided the drama of being pitched into jobs as Secretaries of State which they haven’t prepared for. There have also been some good immediate decisions, such as Ed Miliband changing the rules for onshore wind and stopping the process of issuing new North Sea oil and gas licences.

No-one knows how the next five years will unfold, but it is obvious that the initial claims to have brought back “stability” will face severe challenge as the new government tries to cope with a whole series of difficulties.

First Past the Post has put them in the paradoxical situation of having an enormous parliamentary majority without corresponding public support. Labour’s vote share was only 34%. Even that overestimates its positive support, because it is clear that the shift in votes was due more to an anti-Tory vote than a pro-Labour one. The rise in Labour’s share of the vote compared to 2019 (1.7%) was less than one-tenth of the fall in the Conservative share (19.9%). The huge rise in the number of Liberal Democrat MPs also suggests a clear desire to vote against the Tories, using whatever party looked best placed to defeat them.

That may not matter much until we get a lot closer to the next general election. What is going to matter is on one hand the strength of the Labour majority in the Commons and on the other hand the possibly insoluble problems which may catalyse opposition and eat away at that majority.

First (I put this first because it is complacently played down by the mainstream commentators) is the consequences of the climate crisis. Despite 28 CoPs and much target-setting, the world is still heating up and we have seen increasingly severe floods, droughts, hurricanes, melting ice and rising sea levels. It is impossible to believe that this won’t have major consequences for the UK over the next five years. The decarbonization agenda will at last be moving forward with Ed Miliband at the Energy Department. But there needs to be an adaptation agenda to go with it, to tackle two particular problems. One is the flooding of infrastructure, including the railways and in some cases power stations, and of course housing. The other is food security, with problems both for UK agriculture and also for the continued ability to import food in the light of problems for food growing elsewhere. Where are the plans?

Second (another underrated problem) there is the question of “the new PFI”. The Private Finance Initiative was used by the Blair and Brown governments to reduce government spending in the short term by entering into contracts with the private sector,  but at high cost  over the long term. We may now be heading for a similar situation, after the Labour leadership boxed itself in over large areas of taxation. There will be massive reliance on private sector finance, including inward investment from overseas. This is not going to be forthcoming without the prospect of profit, and profits are in turn affected by regulation. Labour’s reluctance to take a tough line on the private water companies can be explained by a desire not to discourage private sector inward investment in other parts of UK infrastructure. The price of this policy approach may turn out to be very high indeed.

Third (and more predictably) planning. The Government wants to make it easier to override local opposition to new housing and other developments. People invest a lot of time, money, and sense of identity in where they live and defence of one’s local area is a powerful motivator. “Nimbyism” will be tempting not only to the LibDems, Greens and Conservatives, but also for Labour MPs, especially as the election brought in many more Labour MPs in green belt areas than before. Keir Starmer is very committed to delivery but he is not an instinctive champion of local democracy, so it is not difficult to predict problems ahead, including for party management, as his planning agenda moves forward.

Fourth, there is the problem of growth. The Government is depending on growth to bring in increased revenue, having ruled out raising the rates of most taxes. Growth is hard to achieve and anyway unlikely to be achieved within at least two years. That is enough time for very mainstream Labour figures across the party to get very worried about local government funding, child poverty, public sector pay, upgrading the national grid, boosting the military, etc. These worries are not going to be confined to the people who used to be known as “Corbynistas”.