They really did take us for fools. Labour have lied to millions of voters (albeit to millions of voters less than in 2017 and 2019), as nigh on every soundbite delivered during the 2024 election campaign can now be classed as a fabrication. The difference in the rhetoric of Labour now, and Labour then, is stark. Perhaps government actually is quite hard. Yet the economic decisions of this Labour government are not necessary, nor inevitable. The choices that have been made are not fiscal necessities, but deeply political. Unions have won and huge swathes of the British population have unequivocally lost out already.
It is not a unique opinion that 2024’s General Election was not inspirational. Both major parties eschewed constructing, let alone broadcasting, optimistic, long-term ambitions. Soundbites were vague, often untrue, and more resembled hot air than ever before.
For all the chaos of those few weeks in June, to understand just how little credibility Labour have, one must isolate their messaging. Remove the minor parties, who whilst eviscerating the state of public services simultaneously lacked a single tenable solution to any of the plethora of problems they identified. The Lib Dems’ campaign resembled more of a trip to Center Parcs than a serious political cause – perhaps Ed Davey will join Richard Hammond in a presenting duo on a rebooted Total Wipeout. The Conservatives, with their popularity so low, provided too little intellectual rebuttal to claims made by Labour, allowing Starmer to run a campaign without producing any concrete policies.
Looking at that (starkly lacking) policy agenda, an important feature stands out: Labour’s ambition to achieve economic growth. Steady and substantial growth was emphasised and, to an extent, promised. It was tedious (albeit clear) messaging. Yet based on Labour’s first three months in office, it is impossible to see how growth is, or ever was, the target.
Gifting public sector workers above-inflation pay rises, cutting investment in key national infrastructure projects and ‘making hard choices’, i.e. raising taxation, are not steps for achieving economic growth. Quite the opposite. Rather, they are the building blocks of a bloated government running an inefficient economy with aged infrastructure. Potential future raids on inheritance tax will cement the cruelness of this Labour government, whilst present house building targets will do little to fix the criminally under-supplied market. Raising capital gains tax, possibly going as far as bringing it in line with income tax, will only drive wealthy Brits abroad. Planting pressures on the state education sector with absurd ideologically driven policies on the VAT status of private schools will dilute the quality of both systems and harm children with special educational needs and disabilities.
If one of Labour’s major complaints with the 14 years of Conservative governments that preceded them was a lack of grand vision, one must question what Labour’s is. At the moment, the objective appears to be stripping the nation of its wealth and its wealthy - alongside the tax revenue these individuals contribute. This is all whilst capitalising on the falling cost of borrowing and an improving economy to fund pay increases for those workers whose unions contributed most to campaigning costs.
And what of the Chancellor’s reasonings for her decisions that will, amongst other consequences, potentially cause excess deaths amongst the elderly? A £22 billion, non-existent black hole in the public finances. Firstly, if that black hole does exist, then one should be most impressed by the fact that it was never leaked to the press in the period prior to the election, a feat of self-control by usually loose-lipped civil servants that can be classed as undeniably impressive on the part of the civil service community. More importantly, such a deficit could be almost entirely eliminated by a U-turn on the public sector pay increases and carbon capture storage pledges (itself worth exactly £22 billion of government funding). Of course, alongside this would hopefully come the welcome obliteration of Ed Miliband’s ironically named GB Energy vanity project before a single watt of energy can be produced (not, of course, that the organisation is planning to produce any anyway).
Labour have been able to exploit the lack of genuine policy opposition encountered during the election campaign to win a touch over 400 parliamentary seats, without having to tell the electorate what they would do with their legislative power. In three months, the Labour Government have done what no one wanted to believe, but what many foresaw. I have no doubt there will be a return of Old Labour economics characterised by inevitable capitulations to unions who will see weighty pay awards as motivation to continue striking rather than encouragement to stop. Over the next five years, one would not be surprised to see Britain lulled into wealth taxes and rent controls, with all remaining liberties removed as smoking is outlawed and cash disappears.
Image: Flickr/Number 10
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