WHAT’S IT FOR?

By Calum Paton

Labour, as of March 4th 2024, had a lead of 20% in the ‘poll of polls’ of voting intentions for the forthcoming general election in Great Britain – on 44% as opposed to the Conservatives’ 24%. Add to this the Liberal Democrats on 9%, the Greens on 6%, the SNP on 3% and Plaid Cymru on 1%, and you have 63% of the electorate – nearly two-thirds – planning to vote for a ‘progressive’ party. On the other side, you have Reform on 12% and UKIP on 1%: added to the Tories’ 24%, that makes up the 37% on the ‘reactionary’ side.

Yet Keir Starmer’s caution has crossed a line into standing for very little. I find myself asking, just what is Labour for?

Compare that with voting intentions in the forthcoming U.S. Presidential election. Democratic President Biden, is, at best, neck-and-neck with Republican challenger (the law permitting!), Trump.

Yet the Biden team’s strategy is to be bold, as showcased in Biden’s State of the Union address on March 7th. Notable extracts were Biden’s claim that, “my predecessor failed the most basic duty any president owes the American people – the duty to care. That is unforgiveable”, in referring to the Covid pandemic; his call to expand a cap on prescription drug spending to every American with health insurance; and his call to raise taxes on corporations.

Will Starmer draw attention with any prominence to Tory failures on the pandemic in his campaign? I doubt it. So he misses an opportunity to remind the electorate that Tories are often insouciant about their duty to care. Will he boost the NHS through increased taxation on big corporations? Seems not…

Now to be fair to Starmer, the electoral calculation in Great Britain (I say Britain, not the UK, as Northern Ireland has a separate party system) is different. In the USA, most voters are polarised by now between Biden and Trump; the floating voter in the middle is a relatively rare commodity. In Britain, Starmer’s Labour has to be careful not to lose those middle-dwelling men and women who are falling into his lucky lap thanks to the inanities of Johnson and the lunacies of Truss, but who are natural tories (with a small ‘t’) or Blairite types at best.

Also, to be fair, the USA, as a huge market in a huge land-mass, can tax business with less fear of relocation, unlike little Britain.

So Starmer is right to be cautious; to make his manifesto ‘bomb proof.’ And yet…and yet…the obsession of Starmer and Streeting, his regularly-unleashed XL Bully, with fighting the last election (or two or three) is getting silly…not least given the polls with which I started this blog. They are ducking battles which they could win easily. And is it better to win a clear majority for a platform which matters, or a massive majority based on lowest-common-denominator appeal? For (unusually; once in a generation) the Tories are deader than Monty Python’s dead parrot, so there is wriggle-room on policy. I am not advocating a Bennite/Corbynite ‘glorious defeat’ which is anything but glorious. Far from it. But I am advocating a meaningful victory.

Labour’s Green U-turn is not only unpopular with many voters (and I mean moderate voters in the political middle, not dyed-green environmentalists), but it is just as frustrating for the more far-sighted large corporations in the sustainable energy business as was Sunak’s U-turn last autumn when he sidelined ‘the green crap’ (allegedly Lord Dave Cameron’s phrase when he tired of photo-op husky rides in the Arctic.) What is more, Labour is robbing its manifesto of its only stand-out policy, and robbing itself of both a vision and an industrial policy worth the name.

Currently Labour is saying (correctly) that the Tories crashed the economy and (correctly) that the Tories are no longer the party of sound economic management, and also saying (incorrectly) that all that’s needed is sound economic management and stability to ensure the growth which will allow Labour to help the poor and, crucially, restore the NHS. But what Labour is offering is necessary but not sufficient. Growth which will eventually benefit public spending is either for the long term or, more pessimistically, for the birds. It will not allow achievements within five years of a first-term Labour government.

Even if you think Britain waving a Green flag is meaningless in a world where climate change is irrevocably happening because of the behaviour of the big players (China, India and the USA if Trump returns), there is still benefit to the British economy and indeed to the health of the population if a green agenda is used to rejuvenate the economy through a publicly-primed and (partially) publicly-funded industrial policy. And it would help rescue us from the reality that Britain has too few producers and is inadequately self-sufficient in energy. We don’t grow enough of our own food either, but that’s another story.

Moreover, Starmer and his Chancellor-in-waiting, Rachel Reeves, should have made the argument that borrowing to invest is very different from borrowing to spend or cut taxes. They can attack the Truss fiscal disaster without chickening out of sensible neo-Keynesianism. After all, Gordon Brown made the distinction between investment and spending. (Admittedly, with a sleight of hand, he often presented the latter as the former, but, hey, that’s politics.) And that didn’t stop him being seen as the Iron Chancellor wedded to that formidable Prudence, did it. Back in those halcyon days, every Gordo speech seemed to contain the phrase, ‘prudence with a purpose’?

As if all that back-tracking by Starmer were not enough, let us turn to health and welfare. Jeremy Hunt, in his budget this week, has now shamelessly stolen Labour’s already-watered-down policy of abolishing tax-breaks for ‘non-doms’ – in Hunt’s case, in order to fund tax cuts. This has robbed Labour of an already-puny source of increased funding (£2 billion, at the most, and even that amount is only available if you believe non-doms will simply be sitting ducks). That was funding intended to slash NHS waiting-lists and buy oodles of diagnostic scanners…oh, and also to finance nationwide ‘breakfast clubs’ for the kids in ‘alarm-clock Britain’ (to quote the man Lord Call Me Dave stitched up like a kipper, his Deputy PM Nick Clegg.)

And indeed Jeremy Hunt has given, in the budget this week, almost double that dosh to bring the NHS into the digital age (again!….let’s hope he gets more value for money than Blair’s ‘National Programme for Information Technology!)

So what does Rachel Reeves say now about finding the money for Labour’s already-piffling promises? Well, they say that they will not reverse the Tories’s National Insurance cut (which is where any new dosh from non-doms will go). That is probably sensible. So instead they will…what? Copy Biden with some bold new alternative? Er, no. They will seek the money by making cuts elsewhere from the public spending budget. More potholes on the roads? More leaking roofs in schools? More delay in the justice system? Fewer police on the streets? Sounds like a vision, Rachel…er…

Honestly, you’d think they were determined to prove my demagogic fellow-Dundonian Gorgeous George Galloway right when he remorselessly repeats his old favourite stand-up line that the Tories and Labour are ‘two cheeks on the same backside’.

Tony Blair, for all his faults, had his eye on re-election even in 1997. He was of course lucky in a way that Starmer can only dream of – he was able to ride the crest of a boom, and spend much more on the NHS (after initially being very cautious in his promises) from 2000 onwards, thereby putting down a big marker for his second term, without making hard choices – the opposite of what he always claimed to be doing. The boom in the global economy was still roaring when New Labour won its second and third terms. But Tony can’t take credit for the boom, and New Labour couldn’t avoid the bust. (Teflon Tony was of course out of office by the time the roof came in; it was poor old Gordo who was up a ladder in the loft patching it up.)

Keir Starmer also, if he has an eye on re-election, should be asking himself, what have we got to do to win a second term.

It won’t be by spending the surplus generated from a booming global economy, like Tony a generation before him. So it will have to be by making more radical choices to help Labour’s winning coalition (composed of both the less well-off and the insecure or worried middle-classes) – doing what ‘Bidenomics’ is actually doing in the USA (what Biden’s speech-writers, for his State of the Union address, called “the story never told.”)

There is no sign that their policies will do this. And the independent fiscal think-tanks slammed both the Tories and Labour, this week, for failing to address a fiscal black hole which will suck us into its vortex after the next election.

Then of course, to add to the problems, there are ‘events, dear boy’ (to quote Harold Macmillan) – in particular, Israel’s war to defeat Hamas. Starmer’s increasingly iron grip on his party has arguably been weakened by recent developments in the Gaza conflict. The Rochdale by-election was a major own goal. But it was a symptom of a wider problem.

Both Biden and Starmer have a problem with those calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and (presumably therefore) overt negotiations between Israel and Hamas. But Biden’s actual clout, and therefore wriggle-room, on this issue is greater than Starmer’s (i.e. greater than zero!): he can materially support Israel (despite periodic finger-wagging at Bibi Netanyahu) yet also do big humanitarian things like building a port to allow food and supplies into Gaza from the sea. Starmer, on the other hand, has been forced into an intellectually-dubious policy of an ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’. And these verbal machinations, which devalue any reputation for consistency, are forced upon him despite the UK being completely irrelevant to the conflict.

If by that phrase Keir means a permanent ceasefire, then putting in the word ‘humanitarian’ added nothing, except to save his own face as he U-turns (by distinguishing Labour’s motion in parliament from the SNP’s and, also, verbally evoking his original stance of a ‘humanitarian pause’ in order to suggest that, hey, I’m not changing my stance.). If on the other hand he means only ‘ceasefire-with-conditions’, the permanence of which is dependent on Hamas releasing all hostages and permanently eschewing terror and violence, then those in his party who think they have converted him away from supporting Israel may start to kick off.

Starmer should have stood firm, as was his initial instinct.. For the bigger problem he has is that what can plausibly be presented as a flip-flop on Israel/Gaza adds to the narrative that he has flip-flopped on lots of other things such as the green agenda, public ownership of certain utilities or transport, taxation and private schools, as well as weakening his ‘non-dom’ policy even before the Tories stole it.

None of this will stop him winning the election. But, after that…well, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there aren’t people out to get you:  just because the Tories stoke culture wars for shoddy political benefit doesn’t mean that there aren’t any real culture wars out there on which a putative Prime Minister has to take a stand. What is more, if Labour falters on the economy and disappoints on public spending, then tapping into the instinct of the majority by the Tories will give them a route back.

Starmer needs to lead, not follow. He needs to draw distinctions. He needs to reiterate and reinvigorate Labour’s determination to tackle anti-Muslim hatred yet also proclaim its determination to ensure that ‘anti-Israel’ demonstrations in London do not lead to intimidatory behaviour by an extremist minority, however peaceful the majority of marchers. Otherwise the likes of Lee Anderson will hog the headlines. Simply calling Anderson a racist will not do. His claims about the Mayor of London were moronic. But Islam is a religion, not a race. The problem is that the Middle East War is bringing to the fore, on the streets of Britain, the problems caused by identity politics.

As Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the first Muslim Cabinet Minister, reminded us recently on the BBC’s Question Time, there is a difference between targeting Muslimness and criticising Islam; she claims that the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) definition of ‘Islamophobia’ does not shut down the latter debate. I hope she is right. I think that part of the APPG’s definition -‘targeting Muslimness’ – is a good definition of Islamophobia, although linking it to racism, which it does, muddies the waters. It is understandable, for  in the case of street-level abuse of Muslims by thugs, both ‘Islamophobia’ and racism are often present. But they are conceptually distinct. Making racism part of the definition may possibly be a way of shutting down debate – this is not the intention of the APPG, but we have to be careful. Additionally, using the term ‘phobia’ implies irrational fear. We have to be careful, for example, that a fear that freedom of speech is sacrificed to an inadequately-defined ‘community cohesion’ is not dismissed as a phobia. Community cohesion is hugely important; don’t get me wrong. But it’s a two-way process. Keir Starmer should be fleshing out how this can be strengthened, around universal British values to which those of all faiths and none can subscribe.

The Tories may ring some bells in the traditional working class if they tap into real conflicts between ‘cultures’. Farage’s Reform, on paper, is an even bigger threat to Labour, since – like the UKIP of 2015 – it combines economic populism and defence of what it poses as British culture. But don’t be fooled: Farage and his ilk believe in a far-right economic agenda, including slashing taxes on the better-off, as did Truss; as does Trump. Their economic populism is just that – empty populism. Trump, incidentally, with his protectionism, does actually have more substance to his economic populism, notwithstanding how appalling for the environment it is.

The challenge for Labour is to find a robust route through the culture wars. We may have lessons to learn from France in terms of defining citizenship around core liberal values. Importantly, there is therefore an opportunity for Starmer here – to flesh out in practical terms Sayeeda Warsi’s distinction between targeting Muslimness and criticising Islam, thereby protecting Muslims without compromising on free speech. If he leads, the conflict within his party may be solved through consensus. It won’t be solved by ignoring it. And Labour should not simply seek to push such dilemmas under the carpet. As well as Brexit and the cack-handedness of Corbyn, the Tories won in 2019 – as did Trump in 2016 – partly on a reaction against the excesses of ‘woke’.

If culture wars come back to bite Labour in government along with disappointment on the wider policy front, there may be no second term. Which would probably mean no NHS worth the name ten years from now. Now that would really mean that, looking back, we would be asking, just what was Labour for?!

About the author

Calum Paton is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Keele University, UK. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Health Planning and Management between 1998 and 2019. He has advised UK politicians and various international agencies. He has authored ten books and numerous articles on health policy and politics. He chaired a major NHS hospital board in the UK from 2000 to 2006.