Thread by @admcollingwood

In November, long before #zeroseats, even as the media was reporting politics as usual, I wrote a thread on why the Tories were heading for an epochal defeat. Now that this is received wisdom, it's time for a new thread, forecasting how Labour will govern. Be very afraid.

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https://twitter.com/admcollingwood/status/1726947177682133456

The first thing to understand is that there is very little room for a stereotypical Labour spending splurge. In fact, it's more likely that @RachelReevesMP will have to engage in serious austerity. Sovereign debt is near 100% of GDP, and the 2023/24 fiscal deficit was 4.4%.

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The Institute of Fiscal Studies recently reported that the fiscal outlook was the worst in 70 years. It said it would be "miraculously lucky" if growth bounced enough to save the Treasury, leaving three options: (i) cut spending; (ii) raise taxes; (iii) borrow even more.

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Given the bond market has already told Britain it will not tolerate much additional borrowing, and given Labour will resist spending cuts, the emphasis is likely to be on higher taxes. Non-Doms, private equity, private schools and oil companies are already in the crosshairs.

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But there will likely be more. What else? Windfall taxes on banks (the flip side of the Farage-Tice proposal to stop paying interest on BofE reserves), wealth taxes, pensions tax relief (personal and employer), and a higher top rate of income tax are all probable targets.

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N.B. A higher tax burden without commensurately more spending *would* be austerity, despite efforts to redefine the meaning to 'spending cuts'.

Yet, even if there *was* fiscal room, @Keir_Starmer has shown no interest in breaking from the status-quo. In fact, the opposite.

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In an illuminating article for @unherd in Dec 2022, @ddhitchens revealed that Sir Keir had been assiduously building ties with the City and big business insiders. This included hawking out space at the Labour conference to representatives of the finance sector, working to...

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...help the Bankers for Labour group, and even seconding corporate lobbyists to work with Shadow Ministers. Mr Hitchens suggested that Sir Keir was "uprooting any possibility of genuine economic reform." Rachel Reeves is palpably just as wedded to the Treasury View.

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Unable to engage in a public sector and social spending programme due to fiscal constraints, and not minded to engage in much needed economic reform anyway, Sir Keir will *have* to offer enough red meat to satiate his backbenchers and media outriders. But what?

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Instead of economic reform, the coming Labour government will enact a programme of radical constitutional and social reform. Examining the likely specifics (those in the plan, *and* those driven by 'events dear boy events') it seems that @ClarkeMicah is probably correct...

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...to warn that the practical outcome of the Starmer Ministry will be to make it next to impossible for any future government to follow a socially conservative legislative agenda. Likewise any government that wanted to seriously reform the economy. How will it do this?

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Much of Labour's constitutional reform will be based on Gordon Brown’s report from the Commission on the UK’s Future, "A New Britain: Renewing Our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy". Is this is the most dangerous political document in British political history? Perhaps.

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And much of it has landed -- explicitly or between the lines -- in the Labour manifesto. The first frightening sign is that it recommends extending 'Rights' into the social sphere. For example, a right not to live in poverty. It's easy to see how such a 'right' could...

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...used to hobble a future government keen on economic reform. Courts might be able to strike down certain clauses of an Act because they are likely to break people's 'Right' to social assistance that prevents them from falling into poverty. Will the Civil Service legal...

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...advice take a strict view on such social rights, leading to governments being as hamstrung on, say, welfare reform as they now are on removing failed asylum seekers? To give slow learners in the Tory and populist millieu an idea of how such ideas can be made law...

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...without an explicit legislative debate, this 'right of protection against poverty' has found its way into the Labour manifesto, but not as new policy per se. Instead, Labour will "enact" the socio-economic provisions in the Equality Act of 2010, per the @NewStatesman.

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But it gets worse. Brown also called for House of Lords reform, increased powers to the Blair-created Supreme Court, Scottish-style devolution for the English regions (because it's worked so well in Scotland), and Devo-Max in Scotland itself, including the right to...

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...make certain international treaties, a sine qua non of the sovereign nation state -- offering SNP Union-smashers a near infinite suite of options with which to pick divisive fights with Westminster. This lumpy batter would then, according to Mr Brown, be leavened...

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...by 'A Council of Nations and Regions'. Crucially, much of this finds its way into the Labour manifesto. As @timothy_stanley (one of the few columnists to grasp how dangerous all this is) has written, Labour's constitutional programme goes far beyond the usual...

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...legislative 'gerrymandering' parties engage in. Social conservatives, who have slowly come to realise the cunning malevolence of the last Labour govt's legislation (especially the HRA 98 and EA 10) -- and frankly all those who fall outside the Blairite 'centre' --...

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...should gasp at once Labour's ambition and feel an icy ball of fear in the pit of their stomachs. Yet very few people are talking about it, and those who do, like Peter Hitchens, are told that it's actually all benignly centrist. It's the same for Votes for 16 year olds.

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Wrongly written off as a cynical vote grab, it is in fact a way to force all parties to fight for a new demographic that is extremely socially liberal and left wing. Equally, Labour's plan to give greater power to the OBR might end up giving an unelected quango de facto...

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...vetos over fiscal policy -- one of the most important powers of any government. With monetary policy decided at the Bank of England, and the OBR watching closely over any government's spending, what's left for democracy?

Next we move to Labour's social programme.

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Labour's social policy in reality will put Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into the heart of *everything*. This will have significant effects on everyday life and social cohesion, but we'll cover those in a future thread. Here, we'll just cover the policies.

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Labour will prioritise trans rights. While the manifesto suggests there will be no self identification, given it promises to maintain the gender dysphoria medical examination, the language it uses (below) suggests it would be a surprise if we didn't get de facto self ID.

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Might Labour follow the SNP in cutting the period during which a person must live their new gender from 6 to 3 months, while lowering the age at which a person can change their gender from 18 to 16? Possible. Finally, @miriam_cates has argued cogently that efforts to...

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@miriam_cates ..ban so-called conversion therapy have previously been defeated by MPs because of the impossibility of producing definitions of 'conversion therapy' and 'transgender' that would not risk criminalising parents, teachers who wish to protect...

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https://x.com/miriam_cates/status/1801295803371176084?t=txyZd3oFUAFWf_IJuD9mEg&s=19

@miriam_cates ...children from gender ideology. Obviously, that's not going to be a problem or a concern for Labour, so expect it to go into Statute. Meantime, all levels of government will be compelled to put LGBTQ+ rights at the centre of everything, from schools, sports teams and...

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@miriam_cates ...hospitals, to changing rooms, public lavatories and the Army. Part of its LGBTQ+ legislative effort will be to tighten so-called hate crime laws. In its manifesto, Labour says it would make all existing stands of hate crime an aggravated offence. But if they're going...

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@miriam_cates ...to dip into hate crime legislation, how far could they go? The infamous 2021 Hate Crime Law in Scotland gives us an idea. This removed the requirement that a perpetrator had to have *intended* to hate in order to be indicted, changing the hurdle for prosecution to...

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@miriam_cates ...“where it is likely that hatred would be stirred up.” Even more sinisterly, the Act also eliminated the distinction between public and private speech, meaning something said in one’s own home or in a private message could be prosecutable. Francis Hoar, a barrister...

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@miriam_cates in human rights, called the law “an astonishing attack on freedom of expression”, while Lindsays, a Scottish law firm, warned that it placed “unprecedented power, and burden, in the hands of the police and courts.” Will Labour follow? It's easy to imagine them doing so.

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@miriam_cates But Hate Speech laws are only part of the story. For instance, Labour promises "special courts" at every Crown Court to deal with rape cases. Obviously, there are few more noble projects then to try to reduce the number of rapes. But why 'special courts' rather than...

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@miriam_cates ...additional funding for existing courts? Could rape trials take place under different rules? Campaigners have long wished to have rape tried with the lower, preponderance of evidence standard of proof rather than presumption of innocence standard, for instance. Could...

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@miriam_cates ...the "special courts" in Labour's manifesto do this? We don't know, but it *has* been a longstanding goal of progressive campaigners. It is impossible to overstate how important the presumption of innocence is to our freedom. Abrogating it would be a mortal blow.

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@miriam_cates Schools will also be a focus. @kimleadbeater, the MP for Batley and Spen, suggested in a Westminster Hall debate on 6 December 2022 that Ofsted grading of schools should not be so “narrowly focused on academic achievement." Instead, she said, schools should should take...

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@miriam_cates @kimleadbeater ...“a more holistic approach and look at things such as how schools work…to create a happy and healthy learning environment, which gives pupils the skills and values they need to be well-rounded citizens." We all know what sort of 'values' Labour would like to...

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@miriam_cates @kimleadbeater ...instill in schoolchildren. It will seek to achieve this in two ways. First, by rewriting the curriculum (see manifesto screenshot below). Expect lots of subjects to be "decolonised". The second, and more cunning, method will be to simply change the metrics by which...

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@miriam_cates @kimleadbeater ...Ofsted grade schools to make the 'values' being taught relatively more important. Schools, knowing they will fall and rise up and down school league tables at least partly based on how they teach such values, will respond by starting to teach them.

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@miriam_cates @kimleadbeater This thread is already too long, so we will not cover Labour's migration policy. Obviously it will deal with neither the Small Boats Channel crossings (and in fact cannot, as my pinned thread should show), nor reduce overall numbers. As aforementioned, though...

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@miriam_cates @kimleadbeater ...events dear boy events are as important to governing than the plan. Nowhere will this be more in evidence than migration policy. Labour's instinct will be to respond to every humanitarian crisis and business/university lobby demand opening the floodgates. Then there...

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@miriam_cates @kimleadbeater ...is the inevitable effort to force companies to publish full wage info by gender, race, religion and sexuality, after which Labour will blame *any* discrepancy on mysoginy, transphobia, racism or islamophobia. Hard to imagine a more divisive policy -- 'Kulak' territory.

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@miriam_cates @kimleadbeater This thread does not represent an exhaustive list, but I believe I've covered the most important aspects of the coming Starmer Ministry. In the next (shorter) thread, we'll try to forecast the political, social and economic consequences of the coming election.

ENDS.