Where is Labour going?

Looking at Labour’s programme for Government Don Flynn finds all the real questions about genuine change remain unanswered

The long-established wisdom of Labour’s election strategists is that it is better to under-promise and over-achieve than the reverse.  This was taken a step further by shadow health minister Wes Streeting a year ago in an op-ed piece in the Guardian when he proclaimed that “false hope is worse than no hope.” This miserable philosophy matches much of the mood of the British electorate and its deepening cynicism, but it is hardly a pitch for support for a Labour politics which is supposed to be about the promise of change.

Nevertheless, for some strange reason the party led by Sir Keir Starmer is on course for a substantial majority, even if it is rare to find anyone getting excited about what it will entail.  The manifesto launched in mid-June walks a tightrope in which some sense of how different things might be on one side is balanced by the absolute promise that even this modicum is conditional on maintaining Rachel Reeves’ fiscal responsibility chokehold. 

Change if we can afford it will be the mantra of the new Labour government:  and if we can’t there’s no alternative to another belt-tightening exercise in austerity.  We are told that change will only be possible if economic growth is conjured up by the alliance that Starmer and co is planning to forge between institutional investors and venture capitalists. They will be encouraged to look anew on the ailing United Kingdom by the simple fact a new government is in place that is “sensible” in contrast to its immediate Tory predecessor.

Economic commentators across the board have expressed scepticism about the likelihood of achieving the required levels of economic growth by these means alone. The international economic climate is hardly promising. The World Bank reports grim prospects for the immediate future, with growth rates in 60 percent of countries – making up 80 percent of the world’s population – being expected to underperform in the year ahead. From the standpoint of private capital, geopolitical tensions, risks of trade fragmentation, continuing high interest rates, and climate-related disasters make up the downside risks that dominate the world scene.  What has Labour really got that will allow it to buck these negative pressures?

There is scope for determined centre-left governments to stand up against the prevailing winds.  Public investment is needed to boost productivity, not least by mending broken infrastructure, which would go some way to catalysing the private investment which Starmer and Reeves are banking on so heavily. Similarly, growing inequality is both a moral and an economic issue. The growing gulf between the poor and hard-pressed sections of society and the wealthy is becoming unbridgeable for hundreds of thousands of people, reducing any incentive to upgrade skills and strive for better paid employment.  To rectify this situation bold action is needed to tackle the advantage that rent-seeking activity has over wage earning. Taxing gains in accrued wealth on the same basis as income would be a start for any government which is sincere about seeking real change.

Starmer’s timidity on all these issues is revealed at it starkest in his refusal to revive the role of welfare benefits as a means of redistributing wealth and reducing child poverty. The test here would be to end the two child cap on family benefits, which Labour has insisted it will not contemplate.

In order to make the case that simply being “sensible” would be a quantum step towards meaningful change, Starmer has relied on an argument which effectively says that the fundamentals of the UK economy are sound and the turnaround would come from little more than having people other than the incompetent shower of Conservatives we’ve had running the show for the last 14 years.

But the predicament that needs reversing is not merely the product of a dreadful set of mistakes that began with George Osborne’s years of austerity or Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous minibudget during his brief period as Chancellor. It is the legacy of more than 40 years of delusionary free market,  neo-liberal Thatcherite policies that needs to be confronted – tackling the iniquities that became entrenched in those years through the erosion of trade union power and  local government, stifling the role of social housing and social welfare as the buttress of social justice,  with an NHS and education system properly funded and geared towards lifetime learning.  

It is not just the absence of an adequate perspective for meeting these challenges that is so depressing about Labour’s programme for government, but its active hostility to even the idea of moving in the direction required. The consolation is that polling day on 4th July is not the date when these important matters are resolved, but the starting point for a real debate about proactive, democratic socialist policies which will have to be taken up once again and pursued with even more vigour.