Britain’s general election is set to be held this year, and given his dire polling, there is speculation Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could be rolled by his party before he even pulls the campaign trigger.
Labour is sitting pretty, with leader Keir Starmer near certain to inherit the keys to 10 Downing Street. So what can we expect from a Starmer government in office?
After initially promising party members he’d maintain much of previous leader Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity manifesto, Starmer pivoted upon winning the leadership, ruthlessly quashing the left’s influence, asserting his faction’s dominance and crab-walking away from various progressive commitments.
Some on the left are despairing. Guardian columnist Owen Jones, for instance, publicly ripped up his Labour membership last week after 21 years of begrudging loyalty. His decision was reached, he wrote, after “a gradual, painful process of realising the party won’t even do the bare minimum to improve people’s lives, or to tackle the crises that have led Britain to catastrophe; and that it will, in fact, wage war on anyone who wants to do either”.
Concurrently, many pounced on reports that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves was due to liken herself to Margaret Thatcher in a lecture to business executives. But the actual speech was hardly a homage to the Iron Lady, nor even her Labour progeny Tony Blair.
Indeed, Reeves repudiated Britain’s neoliberal experiments, both under the Conservatives and Labour. But she didn’t articulate a rediscovery of postwar social democracy, nor Corbyn’s left populism. Her vision, rather, borrows elements from her Anglosphere counterparts in Jim Chalmers and Janet Yellen, with a dash of colloquial British pessimism.
It is as instructive a blueprint of how Starmer’s cabinet will govern as we’re likely to see before election day.
Neoliberalism goes…
In some ways, Reeves’ speech seemed more geared toward Labour’s union backers than the business community. Despite unreconstructed Blairite Lord Peter Mandelson urging her to water down Labour’s commitment to industrial relations reforms, Reeves stood firm on her New Deal for Working People. It includes abolishing zero-hour contracts and guaranteeing all workers full rights from day one, including protection from unfair dismissal, sick pay and parental leave.
She also articulated a more active role for government in the economy, including via industry policy and (limited) public ownership. Labour’s plans include a National Wealth Fund, a publicly owned Great British Energy company, and the re-nationalisation of railways as private contracts expire.
The only similarity with Thatcher was a desire to refashion a flaccid economic stasis into something more virile. In substance, it sounded more like Bidenomics.
…But austerity stays?
But here’s the catch — Reeves also committed to strict fiscal rules imposed by current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, which seek to balance the Treasury’s chequebooks. As the New Statesman’s Freddie Hayward wrote, “The decision piles pressure on Labour to deliver immediate economic growth. This is because [absent such growth] the spending cuts the government’s fiscal rules imply are brutal.”
The Guardian’s Will Hutton noted Reeves hadn’t technically signed up to all of the government’s rules –she would only aim to balance “day to day” spending and revenues, cordoning off certain public investments.
Nonetheless, agreeing to cut national debt within five years already appears to be constraining Labour’s spending commitments. Reeves recently dropped the party’s flagship £28bn green energy plan, instead promising to unlock billions in private investment.
James Meadway, an economist and former adviser to Corbyn’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell, thus depicted Reeve’s vision as ditching neoliberalism but keeping austerity. The government would impose costs on companies (higher wages) and coax them to invest in desirable areas like renewables, but wouldn’t spend too much itself.
More pessimistically, author Keir Milburn wrote that “the emerging Reeves agenda looks like social democracy for capital (industrial policy) and austerity for the rest of us”. Others dubbed it “Bidenomics without the money”.
More Albanese than Thatcher
This will all sound familiar to Australians. Anthony Albanese’s government has also prosecuted industrial relations reforms and sought to steer private investment to green technologies. It’s even modestly expanded certain social programs like childcare, while Reeves and Starmer have promised only the most urgent repairs of forlorn institutions like the National Health Service.
But amid heightened inflation and a pending revenue shortfall, both Labo(u)r parties are frugally counting their pennies. Absent Biden’s greater leeway with debt finance, neither party is brave enough to embark on tax reform to finance much-needed social spending… yet.
But for parties whose raison d’etre is expanding social well-being, not managing decline, a reckoning is nigh. As our societies age and the climate warms, spending pressures will only rise. If Chalmers leads, Reeves just might follow. Just as Australian Labor inspired British Labour’s small government turn, it ought to lead the way out.
Yet another rabble-soothing dollop of pabulum from this writer who seems intent on being the next Polonius Kelly – always lurking behind the arras, full of advice and consistently wrong.
Interesting choice of words/symbolism – “…a desire to refashion a flaccid economic stasis into something more virile.” – which suggests either an over reliance on Roget’s rubbishy compilation or a cut’n’paste from someone with a phallacious corporeal, rather than cerebral, outlook.
Did you mean ‘…a desire to refashion a
flaccidLIMP economic stasis into something morevirileVITAL.”?Parliamentary Labo(u)r Party looking to win Guvmint, will gravitate towards the Capital. Nevermind Chalmers and Yellem. Tis the P.J. Keating manoeuvre. Minus the iron ore, but hopefully with enough common decency.
Big business has spent 50 years building fortress neoliberalism. If Starmer and friends are genuinely resolved to take it apart they will have a battle on their hands that will make WW 2 look like a kiddies playground.
I watched the doco on the ABC last night (in place of Media Watch and Q+A) on Johnson. He makes people laugh so they vote(d) for him. Starmer will have an uphill battle unless he applies a humour schtick. It’s almost as frightening as US politics in the shallowness of the voting public.
Yet again I am glad that Aussies are expected to vote if they are on the electoral roll.
Yes, like both the US and Australia, MSM landscape has been weaponised for the right wing parties, since Obama esp, to prevail over anything centrists e.g. ongoing and multiple campaigns directed at and dog whistling anything centrist, for influential ageing and low info voters, especially in regions.
Centre or left parties cannot prevail by simply presenting good policies in a balanced MSM, as they will be misrepresented and denigrated to induce voting against them; meanwhile the right is disappeared….. no wonder the Kremlin has replicated many similar RW MSM techniques with their media and messaging.
If they want to take some clues from Australia, they could (and no doubt do) remember Shorten snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by startling the horses at the last minute.
Big difference is that in UK, as in USA, “getting out the vote” is a big problem.
Providing transport to the polls and tea & bikkies is the norm for ward heelers in the UK.
It should be recalled that the only reason we have Compulsory (yeh,yeh…) voting is because all the politicians wanted it but the populace did not.
A Private Members Bill (1926 – Qld had it in 1915) passed both Chambers in a day – Reps in the morning, Senate in the arvo.
Anyone remember the last Private Members Bill to pass so swiftly?
Compulsory voting is probably the single best feature of our electoral system.
The worst is the lack of PR in the Reps – some electorates are ‘rotten boroughs’ which never change, eg COOK and look how well that served the nation.
He had some very good policies but was destroyed by the MSM.Look at electric cars,he was ridiculed for even suggesting them but now they are becoming popular.
Its their modus operandi nowadays as the right has nothing credible to offer except unpalatable ‘Kochonomics’ policies, hence they are often disappeared by RW MSM to focus on and denigrate or dog whistle centre issues & leaders; some are criticising Starmer’s Labour on Netanyahu – Hamas, but they are not even in government, yet….
Steering calmer toward extinction.