The British general election of 2024 will, we are advised by the prime minister, be held in the second half of the year. The result of no such contest can be judged a foregone conclusion, at least outside North Korea or Russia, but the opinion polls have long pointed to a Labour government equipped with a working majority.
It will be an administration that faces formidable challenges as it prepares Britain for the 2030s. Thus, attention is now being paid to what the leader of the Labour Party has got to say, and what he has to say turns out to be sensible, measured and sober. That matches precisely the mood of the country.
It is perhaps summed up in one passage of the keynote speech Sir Keir Starmer delivered in Bristol: “To truly defeat this miserabilist Tory project, we must crush their politics of divide and decline with a new ‘Project Hope’. Not a grandiose utopian hope. Not the hope of the easy answer, the quick fix, or the miracle cure. People have had their fill of that from politicians over the past 14 years. No – they need credible hope, a frank hope, a hope that levels with you about the hard road ahead, but which shows you a way through; a light at the end of the tunnel. The hope of a certain destination.”
It’s not quite “blood, sweat and tears”, but it does prepare the public for some tough times ahead – and constitutes a rejection of the never-never-land “cakeist” approach to politics that characterised the leadership styles of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and, indeed, Jeremy Corbyn. Whereas they were cavalier leaders, promising things they could never deliver, Sir Keir is more of a roundhead – if not a puritan. He rejects “populist, pointless” gimmicks and “gesture politics”.
Mercifully, Sir Keir is not, on the whole, trying to pretend that the good times are about to roll, or that he possesses a miraculous cure that will restore the economy and the public services to some kind of health. He is certainly not trying to market the impossible, or even the improbable – but “hope” and “change”. It is a message that resonates with an electorate still emerging from the devastating social and economic effects of Brexit, the pandemic, and the cost of living crisis. Indeed, given Sir Keir’s understated demeanour, too often derided as “boring”, the message is the man – and vice versa.
The Labour leader and his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have made no secret that the public finances and public services will need years – perhaps two terms of parliament – to restore. Together with shadow “spending” ministers, including Wes Streeting (health and social care), Bridget Phillipson (education) and Liz Kendall (work and pensions), they have also dampened any expectations of a spending bonanza after the election – for the NHS, schools, or social security.
Rather, the emphasis will be on reform, efficiency, and value. Perhaps, in due course, there may be more room for tax cuts – especially raising tax thresholds that have been frozen for a record period – but an increased burden of taxation is the more likely scenario in the short term. It is puzzling, therefore, and against the general thrust of Labour’s pledge to “level with [voters] about the hard road ahead”, that Sir Keir suggests that cuts will arrive as soon as the economy grows – because growth is likely to be too anaemic for such a move, and it would make it far more difficult to meet the fiscal rule that requires debt to fall as a proportion of national income.
So while Labour will – almost by definition – deliver “change” and “hope”, by relieving the nation of a Conservative government in a state of visible decay, there remain some sharp questions about exactly how the party will end the cost of living crisis, improve public services, and set the public finances on a sustainable footing, when (as Sir Keir concedes) there won’t be much money around.
Does he intend to tax the middle classes harder? Those with savings and investments? Companies? Will he raise VAT? Or make the “polluter pay”? If Sir Keir wishes to be as candid with the voters as he says he does, then he and Ms Reeves will need to be more open about how they propose to make it all add up. They will need to explain exactly how the green new deal (originally priced at £28bn a year) and ambitious infrastructure investment in the regions can be funded. What, for example, will become of HS2?
Like the last Labour government, Sir Keir will also fall back on measures that have no fiscal impact but would nonetheless mean a fairer, more honest and more democratic society. He could, as he has indicated, abolish the House of Lords; reverse the voter ID laws that suppress the franchise; and legislate to ban former ministers from taking up lobbying. He could impose criminal sanctions on MPs who use their influence improperly to further their own interests. More than anything, the first term of a Labour government could do much to reduce trade barriers with the EU; and in due course, the party might consider the future of Britain’s relations with the bloc in a broader sense.
Labour has no doubt been working on its manifesto, and an accompanying fiscal plan, for some time. It will continue to refine its plans as the election approaches. The next Labour manifesto will be the first since 2005 to be published with a realistic chance of actually being implemented, so it deserves more than the usual degree of care in its framing.
As with Sir Keir’s pathfinding speech, it will need to balance ambition with means, and answer honestly the questions Labour will face from opponents, the media and the electorate. A tried and tested rule from Labour’s last successful attempt to return to government is that a party should never promise what it can’t be sure of delivering. For the most part, Sir Keir, with his vision of what might be called “affordable radicalism”, seems to understand that well.
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