Heaven knows we're miserable now
A modest case for optimism and for giving Keir Starmer's government a chance
First, an apology. You may have noticed that posts have been rare - non-existent, in fact - this summer. I took a few weeks off after the election, spending time in the west and then the far north and then this slid into a further period of masterly inactivity in August. But summer’s been and gone and politics is returning at last and so it’s good to be back. I think.
The news business cannot stand still. New stories, new theories, new narratives are required. Staleness is the one enemy the trade cannot abide. And so a new consensus has been built, just two months after Labour were elected with a thumping majority. It goes something like this: Sir Keir Starmer was put into Downing Street promising hope and change but now he is betraying the promise of his election by offering managerial miserabilism. What is the point of a Labour government that may be in office but seems disinclined to offer real, profound, change? The people have been mis-sold their own government.
The ongoing rumpus over means-testing winter fuel payments for the elderly is part of this, now serving as a microcosm of both the government’s broader difficulties and its problem. Don’t just tell us that everything is rotten and broken and unaffordable; we know that already. Stop being so bloody miserable and at least make some effort to cheer people up.
Now, yes, I can see why people might want to think this. But it is amazing how quickly new realities - or perceived realities - can take hold. I do not recall enthusiasm for Starmer and Rachel Reeves and all the rest of them sweeping the land in the months before the election. On the contrary, Labour campaigned on a manifesto of near-comic restraint. Starmer’s seriousness of purpose - his downbeat seriousness - was always on display. At no point did Labour promise to change everything overnight. Time and patience were always required and always, importantly, advertised too.
Much of this has been very quickly forgotten. Suspiciously quickly, in fact. The significance of the winter fuel payment row is this: if you cannot cut a benefit given to the wealthiest cohort of pensioners in British history on a universal basis then you cannot cut anything. So, yes, it is a test. (Labour might have done well to make a clearer link between next year’s pension £500 uplift and the £300 cut to the winter fuel payment but that’s a story-telling problem, not a policy one. We might also note, unfashionably, that this is not actually an especially cold country.)
Starmer is an Eeyore not a Tigger and that helps explain why he has the Commons majority he does. His “Things Will Get Worse” speech last month was both wholly in character and consistent with what he was saying before the election.
The papers, which crave novelty and are written by people who pay much more attention to politics and politicians than other people, know this but cannot quite bear to acknowledge it. The long weeks of the summer recess have eased the government into power without being accompanied by the normal clash and din of political battle. Columnists have found this boring, which helps explain why the clamour for optimism and hope and real change is growing in volume. This must be more than an Eat Your Porridge ministry.
Well, perhaps. Equally, it is plainly in Labour’s interest to stress the inadequacy of their inheritance. Pitch-rolling takes time. Some of that inheritance is a bipartisan matter, of course. All parties agreed it was necessary to spend billions on covid support and on minimising the rising costs of energy following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those bills are coming due.
It is true that the “fiscal rules” Reeves has accepted are arbitrary and these currently hamper room for manoeuvre. This is why they can - and will, I suspect - be tweaked, if only by removing the Bank of England’s quantitative tightening from the calculations. But they were also necessary to establish Labour’s credibility, that mysterious substance whose absence is always more clearly felt than explained.
Already, though, you can hear people speculating about the next general election, as though 2029 was just around the corner. Labour, it is suggested, should keep this in mind. Again, this reflects the media’s penchant for recency bias. Changes in government have been rare in recent decades so it is always 2010 or 1997 all over again. Except it isn’t, any more than it is 1979 all over again either save to the extent that, most of the time, a new government is elected precisely because its predecessor has run out of energy and ideas and because the electorate is in a foul temper.
(1997 is exceptional in as much as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown enjoyed a sunny economic inheritance but even then I recall much wailing and gnashing of teeth over their willingness to accept, and be limited by, Ken Clarke’s spending rules.)
So the promise of hope and change is one to be treated with a certain scepticism. Change takes time and change is difficult and, again, the winter fuel payment row is proof of that. If anything, it might perhaps be understood as a kind of test. If the public square cannot cope with a minor adjustment such as this - minor in fiscal terms, fairly minor in cash terms for most of those impacted too - then what hope is there for the much larger, much more difficult, changes that will be needed in the future?
Having elected a prosaic prime minister, it seems a bit right to complain now that he is no kind of poet. Better, then, to suppose that Starmer actually means what he says: “Short-term pain for long-term good” and “the difficult trade-off for the genuine solution”. I don’t think people can honestly claim they were not warned.
And it is very early days. The notion this government’s fate will be determined this month is, I think, a vast stretch too far. Hard times in the past and massive unpopularity have not proved bars to re-election. Back in the early 1980s ITN’s News At Ten totted up announcements of job losses across the country on a daily basis as unemployment soared past three million; back in the early 1990s Norman Lamont was put in the pillory for saying that he could spy the “green shoots of recovery” after a recession in which, as he also put it, higher unemployment was a “price worth paying” for putting the broader, underlying, financial situation on a firmer foundation. But, in certain respects, he was probably more right than wrong.
That does not mean history must repeat itself this time. Merely that I suspect the government’s prospects for success - or even for partial success - are currently under-priced.
Moreover, we should also consider alternatives to the current approach and ponder the possibility that the government and its political advisors may have alighted upon their current strategy for some good reasons. Suppose Starmer really had gone large on the hope and change stuff now demanded from him? I suggest this would have been received poorly. Indeed, it would have prompted a certain amount of ridicule. People would not have believed it. For it would have been the wrong message, delivered by the wrong man.
That is a reflection of the fatalism in which British politics has been soaked for too long. The sense that nothing bloody works any longer is now deeply-ingrained in the national psyche. In such circumstances promises of immediate improvement are hard to take seriously. Governments dance with the voters what brung them and these voters are now disinclined to listen to cakeism from their political leaders (even if they also insist upon cakeism in relation to their personal circumstances).
Most of all, though, we might recall that the new government has only been in office for eight weeks and that these have, again, coincided with the summer holidays. These are still the very early days and any judgement of failure - or even of disappointment - is surely premature. I accept that this is not a thrilling or novel point to make but it has the solid usefulness of being true.
The government will surely have its failures and it will often be a niggling, interfering, irritating ministry too. For now, however, it is doing very little that it has not previously said it would do and, far from springing unwelcome surprises upon an unsuspecting electorate, is, if anything, being wholly consistent with and true to its past pronouncements. This consistency is novel, given our recent political history, so perhaps it is not surprising so many people find it hard to stomach.
In the meantime, though, we should acknowledge this apparently unyielding reality: all spending cuts are impossible and all tax increases unreasonable. If that is how you wish the game to be played then you must also acknowledge that you are putting the government in a cage. At that point, it seems pointless to complain that they are not doing anything, least of all the things you might wish them to do.
All well said. Worth noting that energy prices in the UK are the highest in Europe and amongst the highest in the world. Also worth noting that UK Government debt is about equal to 100% of GDP. Therefore the government doesn’t have much flexibility with money matters. To give money to one project they need to take from somewhere else, or raise taxes or both. If it’s any consolation, government debt is higher in France, USA and Italy. Maybe other countries have a more vibrant economy, but then the UK did go for Brexit which appears to have slammed the brakes on the economy especially regarding trade with the UKs biggest trade partner.
Welcome back from the allure of midges and glad to hear your sense of sage pragmatism is still alive and kicking!