16.7 %
50 %
16.7 %
16.7 %
NevTheSweeper wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2025 11:03 pm It's going to be a tough FOUR years. Deep public spending cuts will be the only way to go, all through this parliament. Reeves is done. Starmer is done, the government are done. It's a slow motion political car crash.....and it's all been self-inflicted.I agree solely with the last sentence - it was all self inflicted, and done by the Tories/Farage and everyone who they conned into voting for Brexit.
Louise Haigh pleaded guilty to lying that her work mobile phone had been stolen in 2013, according to a court document seen by the Guardian which sheds new light on the controversy that triggered her departure from the cabinet.Haigh, via friends, is now saying "draw a line under the affair". I think Starmer/McSweeney already did that, thankfully. Had they not done so, I reckon Aviva might have had something to say about it too.
Her conviction sheet sets out for the first time however that she admitted to having lied about the theft in the first place in order to get a newer phone, and that the investigation and replacement phone cost Aviva £1,249. She was discharged for 12 months and paid £100 in fines, £85 to the Crown Prosecution Service and £15 as a victim surcharge.I might be wrong here, but wasn't the implication before that she was basically let off? Serious enough for a £100 fine.
The sheet says: “You dishonestly made a false representation, namely that your work-issued mobile phone had been stolen, intending to cause loss to Aviva insurance by falsely reporting the loss of your phone, causing them to issue you with a new iPhone 5 instead of a replacement BlackBerry phone as well as conducting an investigation into that loss.”
The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Fri Jan 10, 2025 9:13 pm Surprised the Tulip Siddiq situation hasn't gained traction.The Tories are asleep at the wheel.
Badenoch / Jenrick have publicly shat their pants while wasting days - maybe exchanging a few voters with Reform.
The feeling I get from the government currently is the one I always had about Brexit. That sense of watching a series of very obvious, incredibly damaging mistakes being made with no ability to do anything about it.
The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2025 7:46 pm On the whole I like Bluesky could be a bit more interesting but there can be some utter twits on there. Here's someone I followed on twitter for example.Well, yes. But that ‘s the case with any and every government whose decisions you disagree with or the political complexion of which you don’t care for. You may as well say that you don’t like the colour of the sky.
https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky ... hiabzfpc2r
The feeling I get from the government currently is the one I always had about Brexit. That sense of watching a series of very obvious, incredibly damaging mistakes being made with no ability to do anything about it.
There is a deep sense of frustration on the centre-left and within the Labour party itself at their progress so far in government. No one ever thought it would be easy, given the fiscal context, global tensions and shambolic state of public services. Trump’s victory has made a poor hand even harder to play.
But they didn’t think it would be this hard. That frustration was explicit in Keir Starmer’s pre-Christmas speech complaining about the British state’s willingness to wallow in the “tepid bath of managed decline”. SPADs and ministers are learning, like many before them, that the levers they’re allowed to pull often aren’t connected to anything.
At the same time there’s frustration from senior officials and advisers that a lack of direction from Starmer makes it even harder to work this creaky machine. As I’ve noted before he doesn’t enjoy discussions about abstract philosophy or strategy; preferring concrete decisions on specific questions. In his first speech outside No. 10 he spoke of leading a government “unburdened by doctrine”. And, especially after the last decade or so, there’s a superficial attractiveness to a managerial leadership that isn’t demanding everything passes a rigid ideological test.
But you can’t run a country without some kind of guiding philosophy. The prime minister doesn’t have the time to be involved in every decision, which makes having clearly defined principles extremely important. They allow those around the PM to make decisions on his behalf confident that he will support them. Without that there simply isn’t the capacity for the centre of government to function.
This doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t doing anything. The issue is that all the considerable activity going on across government lacks coherence because it’s overly dependent on the approach of each secretary of state. This leads to contradictions or unresolved disagreements that create further confusion, and also to the misallocation of resources due to a lack of central strategy.
Starmer’s “milestones”, announced in that pre-Christmas speech, give some sense of priorities, even if they’re more a list than a strategy, but don’t bear that much resemblance to what’s actually happening in many departments. To take one example the “opportunity milestone” is about early years education but just before Christmas the Department of Education published a bill that is almost entirely about schools. It involves some quite substantial changes in policy, including rolling back academy freedoms, that seem disconnected from anything else the government is doing, and are in apparent contradiction to proposals for more choice and contestability in health reforms.1
But you can’t run a country without some kind of guiding philosophy. The prime minister doesn’t have the time to be involved in every decision, which makes having clearly defined principles extremely important. They allow those around the PM to make decisions on his behalf confident that he will support them. Without that there simply isn’t the capacity for the centre of government to function.
This doesn’t mean that Labour isn’t doing anything. The issue is that all the considerable activity going on across government lacks coherence because it’s overly dependent on the approach of each secretary of state. This leads to contradictions or unresolved disagreements that create further confusion, and also to the misallocation of resources due to a lack of central strategy.
Starmer’s “milestones”, announced in that pre-Christmas speech, give some sense of priorities, even if they’re more a list than a strategy, but don’t bear that much resemblance to what’s actually happening in many departments. To take one example the “opportunity milestone” is about early years education but just before Christmas the Department of Education published a bill that is almost entirely about schools. It involves some quite substantial changes in policy, including rolling back academy freedoms, that seem disconnected from anything else the government is doing, and are in apparent contradiction to proposals for more choice and contestability in health reforms.1
The best starting point for exploring the undercurrents in Labour’s approach is an excellent article by David Klemperer and Colm Murphy from October. They identify three strands of party philosophy which they call “neo-Bevinite”, “neo-Croslandite”, and “neo-Blairite”.
The neo-Bevinites – named after the great trade unionist and post-war foreign secretary Ernest Bevin - have an agenda: “centr[ed] on boosting growth and economic security through supply-side intervention and active industrial strategy.” Ministers in this group would include Ed Miliband, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves – all of whom are more comfortable using the power of the state to drive the economy, whether that is via climate policy, increased rights for workers, or picking promising sectors in which to invest. This contrasts not just to Conservative governments but also New Labour, who were more accepting of the Thatcherite economic legacy.
Reeves’ Mais lecture from last March remains the best elucidation of this view. In it she explains that Nigel Lawson’s revolutionary chancellorship, in which he overturned the postwar economic consensus, was fundamentally flawed because he believed:
“the state had little role in shaping a market economy and that the people and places that matter to a country’s success are few in number.”
Her New Labour predecessors are criticised for following this path too closely:
“Economic security was extended through a new minimum wage and tax credits, but our labour market remained characterised by too much insecurity. Despite sustained efforts to address our key weaknesses on productivity and regional inequality, they persisted, and so too did the festering gap between large parts of the country and Westminster politics.”
This leads to the conclusion that:
“Governments and policymakers are recognising that it is no longer enough, if it ever was, for the state to simply get out of the way, to leave markets to their own devices and correct the occasional negative externality. Recognising that the security and prosperity of working people is integral to the strength, dynamism and legitimacy of a market economy. And recognising too the dangers of…‘hyperglobalisation’ – because to pursue ever closer global economic integration as an end in itself, not as a means to domestic prosperity, is economically naive and politically reckless…..Our ability to embrace [this] consensus will depend on an active state.”
Security is the key word here. Both in terms of access to our own supply chains, using the power of the state to ward off the risks of climate change, and being able to direct spending to boost employment in specific sectors and regions. This nationalisation of economic policy is a growing trend globally, as trading relationships between the world’s richest countries deteriorate.2
As this was the most coherent bit of Labour’s thinking pre-election it’s, unsurprisingly, the bit that that’s seen the fastest movement in government. An employment rights bill is working it’s way through the Commons (though there’s a lot of detail to fill in); Miliband published his “Clean Power 2030” plan before Christmas; and (an admittedly somewhat skeletal) industrial strategy was published in November.
Klemperer and Murphy’s second group are the “neo-Croslandites” after the Wilson/Callaghan era cabinet minister Anthony Crosland. His 1956 book “The Future of Socialism” argued against the agenda of public ownership, so sacred to the left of the party, in favour of a focus on reducing poverty and increasing investment in public services. Translated to today’s context that means:
“without additional spending on public services and welfare, the neo-Bevinite aspects of the government’s current agenda leave many neo-Croslandites cold. Given the strained fiscal context, neo-Croslandites are conscious that such spending would require the government taking a more aggressive approach to taxation.”
This approach is not a philosophy espoused explicitly by any cabinet minister and, indeed, pre-election Starmer and Reeves actively argued against the idea they’d be a typical tax and spend Labour government. Yet as Klemperer and Murphy note:
“Shaped by the welfarist legacies of both Wilson and New Labour, and the left’s longstanding interest in social policy, neo-Croslandism has arguably become the default attitude of the average Labour member, activist or MP.”
As a result the government has had to accommodate these views in practice, using the budget to increase taxes, debt and spending. In addition departments with less pre-election policy direction – like education – seem to end up at neo-Croslandism by default. The schools bill reverses some of the reforms of the New Labour and the Coalition, without offering much in their place, leading to the hope that a little extra money announced at the budget will make the difference.
The final group are called the “neo-Blairites” – and are influenced by the former leader’s approach to reform and the tech-utopianism of his TBI think-tank. Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle are the clearest advocates of this philosophy in the cabinet. The former has appointed Blair’s favourite health secretary Alan Milburn, as a non-executive director in his department, and brought back the New Labour-era adviser Paul Corrigan. He is also pushing AI as a solution to NHS productivity.
Kyle, meanwhile, as Secretary of State for Science and Technology is almost as evangelical as Blair on the opportunities big tech could offer. These ministers are generally keener on the private sector, more wary of public sector producer capture, and prefer to talk about reform rather than spending (though of course Blair’s reforms were accompanied by vast sums of additional cash).
There’s one additional strand that Klemperer and Murphy don’t mention, but is worth including in the mix: an “old right” social conservatism that has been sustained in recent years by the Labour First group and briefly flourished under the “Blue Labour” banner of Maurice Glasman. Perhaps in keeping with the naming convention we could call it “neo-Blunkettism” after the former Home Secretary, who enjoyed (and still enjoys) taking on the liberals in his party.
This tradition is much weaker amongst the membership and parliamentary party than it used to be but has an important advocate in Morgan McSweeney who, with the defenestration of Sue Grey, has consolidated his position as Starmer’s most important adviser. Having spent his formative years fighting the Labour left in Lambeth and then the BNP in Barking, McSweeney is particularly animated by the risks of radical populism and the costs of the lack of connection between ordinary voters and liberal elites.
This lies behind Starmer’s increasingly robust language on immigration – e.g. accusing the Conservative party (falsely) of embracing an “open borders” policy. By all accounts McSweeney thinks that current policy on immigration doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to alleviate voter concerns and the risk of backlash. He is also sceptical of the neo-Croslandites demands for greater welfare spending, by, for instance, scrapping the two child limit.3
Contradictions
If you’re wondering which of these strands most appeals to Starmer I can’t tell you because he’s not made a choice. A typical speech from him will include arguments from all four strands listed above.
Of course, any leader has to meld different philosophies because parties are complex coalitions that need to be held together. The decision to effectively exclude the Corbynite left of the party altogether has made it even more important to bind all other factions in. And it’s possible to pick ideas from each approach that don’t directly contradict each other (you can be pro-industrial policy, love AI, want lower immigration and more NHS spending).
But there are two problems with avoiding a choice: first that there are implicit tensions between these philosophical approaches that are being allowed to fester, and secondly because it makes it harder to decide how to allocate a very limited pot of cash. This is why a government doing so much often appears so incoherent.
Successive governments have refused to engage with some of these tensions. Immigration is the obvious example. McSweeney, like many Conservative advisers before him, wants to bring net migration numbers down. Starmer, who shares his Chief of Staff’s concerns about populism, appears to have some sympathy with this. Yet the Treasury position remains that reducing immigration will cut GDP, hurt businesses, increase the cost of public services, and force more spending restraint or tax increases.
Labour are helped by the fact numbers are coming down anyway due to changes made by the outgoing government, reductions in the numbers of humanitarian visas for Ukrainians and those leaving Hong Kong, and a natural rebalancing of student numbers post-pandemic. But we’re still likely to see net migration levels of between 350k and 500k for the foreseeable future, much higher than historic averages.
If Labour end up choosing the economy then it doesn’t make sense to draw additional attention to immigration – this was the mistake the Tories repeatedly made. If they take measures to push numbers down further – by, say, restricting graduate visas – that would hit OBR forecasts. Either way, without clarity, it’s hard to mitigate whatever cost is chosen.
Beyond immigration there are plenty of other tensions between McSweeney’s desire to appeal to voters and the instincts of the wider party (and most policy experts). Climate, and the potential cost to voters of net zero, is one source of conflict, with Miliband the subject of various disobliging off-the-record quotes from the centre of government. Welfare is another, with a child poverty review due to report later this year. If it doesn’t lead to either the end of the two-child limit or some other injection of cash for the most needy the neo-Croslandite backbenchers will get increasingly restless.
The dire fiscal situation makes all these conflicts harder to manage as it makes the costs of trade-offs nastier. The autumn budget was an exercise in buying time in the hope things would improve but the state of the bond markets is just increasing the pressure. Higher debt repayment costs are likely to mean the government’s fiscal rules are going to be breached in March without further spending cuts or tax rises.
This is the context for the summer’s spending review and a potential showdown between the neo-Bevinites and the neo-Croslandites. The former group want whatever limited investment cash is available to be spent on green energy, housing, boosting high-growth sectors of the economy and infrastructure like railways and roads. The latter, including most members, want new hospitals, rebuilt schools, and a reduction in child poverty.
Of course no one is taking a completely purist line here. Every minister appreciates the need for the NHS to improve in order to have a chance at a second term, and likewise few would argue there was no need to invest in housing or the environment. But spending reviews are a zero sum game and there a real disagreements about where the balance should lie. The Treasury is currently briefing that they will not sign off new spending committments that don’t improve GDP.
Pushing against the party
In our constitution prime ministers have enormous power, as long as they retain the support of their party. That support is always conditional. When a party has been out of power for some time there will be more willingness to let a leadership move ideologically away from the base in search of voters. But that willingness will always be time limited.
Even Blair, who was governing in a time of economic plenty and improving public services, was eventually forced out. This was, in part, due to his foreign policy adventuring, but as much if not more so his insistence on market-based public service reform and socially conservative messaging on crime, welfare and asylum. Likewise David Cameron was initially permitted to sound more liberal on issues like climate and poverty but ultimately needed to shift rightwards to keep the party on board.
Klemperer and Murphy’s key insight is that the Labour party is institutionally, neo-Croslandite – liberal and focused on welfare and public services. The leadership have been given tacit permission to push against this approach in order to win an election – with different ministers and advisers arguing for a more focus on industrial strategy, a “neo-Blairite” focus on reform and technology, and a Blue Labour style social conservativism. Starmer has leant into all three at different times without becoming particularly associated with any of them.
But ultimately the government will always be pulled backed towards the primary concerns of the party. We saw that in the budget. And the pressure for it to keep happening will only grow, especially if poll ratings stay low and general contentment amongst members deteriorates further. Future leadership hopefuls will want to signal policy choices close to the memberships’ instincts.
This is all the more true because Starmer, unlike Blair, has not made his own preferences clear, which means his substantial authority is not attached to any alternative philosophy. If he were to clearly convey his commitment to a different way of doing things then ministers would feel more compelled to follow rather than freelance.
The main barrier against a general drift to neo-Croslandism is the fiscal context. We’re at the point where more money for public services and welfare can, in the short term, only come from higher taxes given the state of bond markets and the cost of borrowing. Doing this in a substantive way would require breeching pre-election promises (more explicitly than in the budget).
The spending review will be the moment when the irresistible force of the party’s instincts and hopes meets the immovable object of those pre-election pledges. It will be impossible to make a choice, and defend it effectively, “unburdened by doctrine”.
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