Thoughts on Starmer speech
Self-evidently highly political. Little in the way of policy, instead a framing of politics to come.
But there’s a paradox to it all
Self-evidently highly political. Little in the way of policy, instead a framing of politics to come.
But there’s a paradox to it all
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1828362636100042965
As predicted, Labour are trying to suggest things are worse than they knew. There’s a bit of truth to that though broad contours of state of economy/public realm were known.
We’re clearly in for more pain. Just like, checks notes, the past 14 years.
We’re clearly in for more pain. Just like, checks notes, the past 14 years.
That itself is an idictment of a generation of policymakers and politics. Voters might be forgiven for thinking they’ve heard all this before. Indeed they have, since George Osborne in 2010. Ernie Bevin said he wanted to be at the Ministry of Labour til 1990, ie to set the terms of thinking on industrial relations for a half century. It sometimes feels like Osborne will be Chancellor til 2050, no matter bow many times his vision of politics/political economy fails. You have to wonder how much more tolerance for it there’s going to be.
If nothing else, politically it was a huge contrast with the politics of optimism at last week’s DNC- instead now we have things are going to get worse before they get better.
Strongest sections of the speech were his diagnosis of the problems of populism and how Tories fell into that reap. Was authentically him and convincing.
If nothing else, politically it was a huge contrast with the politics of optimism at last week’s DNC- instead now we have things are going to get worse before they get better.
Strongest sections of the speech were his diagnosis of the problems of populism and how Tories fell into that reap. Was authentically him and convincing.
Front loading a load of pain and attaching it to the last govt may well be an effective short term political strategy, as it was for Osborne. Whether it’s an effective policy remedy is another question. This is the difference with Osborne. He believed public services not only could but *would* be more efficient with less money. No one in Labour seriously thinks that.
And given Labour also believes that public service improvement is the key to its re-election and smashing populist forces, one would have to imagine there’s deep thinking about how to do it without injections or cash.
But there’s not much evidence of that. Which leads us to Lab’s other problem…
But there’s not much evidence of that. Which leads us to Lab’s other problem…
And they’ve had this one for some time. There is a fundamental mismatch between Labour’s diagnosis and prescription. Starmer has long said, as he repeated today, that the country is on its knees, economically, socially etc. But despite the massive majority there isn’t any consistent sense of radicalism to deal with those problems.
Yes there’s the wealth fund, planning reforms, GBEnergy. But these are relatively modest long term changes. They’re not going to transform the economic model. The essence of the Starmer paradox is he’s saying we need expansion whilst practising the politics and policy of contraction. Of talking big but thinking sometimes small. Being more sensible, less populist, better managers of the state will help but it won’t get to where Labour says they want to go.
In other words, to be a success Starmerism can’t be Osbornism. Both Starmer and UK are going to need more than better management of decline. Starmer can certainly blame Britain’s problems on the Tories for now (though the economy’s immediate prospects are really not so bad) but longer term he’s going to need deeper thinking.
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