I wrote a piece of Mike Phipps, Labour Hub, called, Labour in crisis must change direction, published on 30 Dec. It was a comment on the More in Common poll run on behalf of the Times, reporting that if there were an election tomorrow, Labour would lose 200 seats including those of Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper and Wes Streeting. The Independent reports that they would be joined by Ed Miliband, John Healey and Bridgit Phillipson.I plugged the numbers from the independent into electoral calculus, and made the following chart,

I said, “There can be little doubt, this government has had a poor start. Its decisions to cut the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, and to fail to pay compensation to the WASPI women have not gone down well. While the changes to IHT have provoked massive resistance from rich land owners, pensioners and contributors to private defined contribution schemes have not yet cottoned on to the impact of the IHT changes proposed in the budget.

Labour’s plan is, as it’s always been, to grow the economy and use that growth to fund improvements in services. There are huge questions about whether Labour’s growth plan is sufficient, particularly while they seek to remain outside the European union’s customs union and single market. It can also be questioned whether construction and financial services can really be the engines for growth that can or will be shared with the population at large. While the budget was better than expected, and better than threatened, the failure to alleviate the crises in local government and higher education is disappointing and stores up trouble for the future.

One of the reasons the Democrats lost in the United States earlier this year, is that while, they pursued policy that led the economy to grow, they took their eye off the ball on the questions of inflation. Many voters were poorer due to a stagnation in real earnings. The lesson to be learned is that growth is not enough, it has to be evenly shared and real wages/earnings need to rise; this means the government needs to regulate and tax profits, rigorously pursue the new deal for workers and increase expenditure on income transfer programmes targeted at increasing the real incomes of poor families, i.e. state pensions, income support allowance, child benefit and the so called welfare cap should be removed. This will also have the macro-economic benefit that consumption i.e. aggregate demand will rise. On republishing this on my blog, I should have added, that energy pricing is controlled by the Government and they should look at ensuring the energy customers aren’t gouged by the structures and policies left by the Tories.

Politically, the UK and Labour has the frightening example of Germany, where a timid Social Democratic party, forced into a coalition with an ultra neo-liberal Liberal Party have failed to deliver a better life to the German electorate, partly because they didn’t try. They are likely to lose the coming election. In Germany, the AfD are currently polling in second position, with the SPD as third. The MiC poll suggests that Reform UK will come third in the UK, replacing the Lib Dems. Also, across Europe, we see a decline in support for the Greens as combatting climate change is seen as a further cause of the cost-of-living crisis.

The current Labour leadership are completely unequipped to combat the growth of ethno-populism and also underestimate its organisational capability and internet presence as shown by their ridiculous and cowardly position on the threat of foreign funding of Reform. Its strategy of appealing to Tory voters to switch to Labour did not succeed; dissatisfied Tories on the whole voted Reform or in even larger numbers stayed at home.

The big problem Labour faces is it designed its manifesto to win the election, not run the country. It’s still triangulating and refuses to recognise that triangulation reinforces & legitimises the politics of their opponents. This is particularly so on the issue of immigration and racism.

Some are suggesting that a change of leader is needed, what’s needed is a change of direction that genuinely puts the country first. It remains, “the economy stupid”, but the economy is real wages/incomes.


.The featured image comes from the Hansard Society. This blog is non-commercial and thus use on this blog is covered by the standard OGL.

Hard-a-port to avoid the rocky shore
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