Clueless Starmer is blind to the scale of disaster to come
Well that didn’t work out as planned, did it. Britain voted for an end to Tory sleaze and chaos, only to be lumbered with a government that’s made so many missteps its shoelaces might as well have been tied together. One packed full of politicians who’ve been trousering freebies and rewarding their own client groups. But the hypocrisy, the double standards, the seeming disdain for the little people isn’t even the worst of it.
Labour has already failed, not because of “donor-gate” or the unedifying squabbles between Starmer’s special advisers, but because it has no clue how to run a country.
It spent two months maniacally talking down Britain – with Reeves reportedly considering it a golden opportunity to “bury the Tories”, as though she were a far-Left social-justice activist rather than our Chancellor of the Exchequer – only to be pushed into a humiliating retreat after business and consumer confidence plummeted. Without the optimism to spend, hire, and invest, it’s near-impossible for our economy to expand.
Their multi-billion pound bung to the public sector has not, as Starmer claimed in August, ended industrial strife – as the decision by the Royal College of Nursing to reject a pay uplift of 5.5 per cent makes awkwardly apparent. The issue, presumably, is not the above-inflation offer, but that Labour has already given 15 per cent over three years to better-paid train drivers and offered 22 per cent over two years to junior doctors. The bright sparks in government, apparently, could not see this coming.
Whether Labour has a plan it daren’t reveal, or was so unprepared for office it never bothered to devise one is almost beside the point. It’s the naivety and hubris, with or without an agenda, that’s so troubling. The belief that, because it would be in charge rather than the grubby, venal, morally inferior Tories, it would succeed. That’s why it makes such absurd proclamations as “scrapping the universal winter fuel allowance would avoid a run on the pound”. It’s perhaps why our Business Secretary seems to believe he knows more about employee productivity at Amazon than its senior executives.
The Government talks of growth as though it can be achieved through osmosis, yet takes decisions that will stymie it. It speaks as though there is no problem that cannot be solved with a bigger state, yet the public sector has scarcely ever been so bloated and ineffective. The Prime Minister told conference delegates that he would put “country first, party second” – but studies have suggested a 10 percentage point increase in the tax or government spending burden is associated with a roughly 1 per cent fall in the growth rate in the long-term.
Were he truly committed to our national interest, he wouldn’t be bringing railways into public ownership, or handing workers a raft of new entitlements, or creating state-owned energy companies. Even parts of the economy seemingly distant from the locus of government are now subject to state meddling – thanks to legislation like the Equality Act, which Labour wants to expand even further. Ministers are musing on potential investigations into the price of holiday flights and Oasis tickets.
Britain might not have voted for a government that presents itself as a paragon of moral probity while its politicians accept freebies from millionaires, but the nation has little appetite for lower taxes, or personal responsibility, or a smaller state. A poll by Global Counsel in December revealed people wanted spare government money to go on spending increases rather than tax cuts. Heaven forbid others be allowed to keep more of their own hard-earned cash.
It’s believed the Government won’t announce a wealth tax this autumn, not because it’s having second thoughts about a levy likely to cost more than it’ll raise, but because they want to get the unpopular decisions out of the way first. One poll has suggested just 18 per cent of Brits are against the VAT raid on private school fees.
Britain may not consciously have voted for a charmless, mithering administration, but we are an increasingly mean-spirited, priggish nation more interested in depriving others of pleasure than finding our own sources of enjoyment.
You might argue that we didn’t vote “for” anything. But that’s a feeble defence. Jefferson wrote that we elect the government we deserve. After five more years, I hope we feel we deserve better.