The sinking feeling caused by Labour’s clumsy start

IT IS AS if the honeymoon started to go sour at the airport. Labour won power less than three months ago, yet Sir Keir Starmer’s personal approval ratings now stand below those of Rishi Sunak, the man he replaced as prime minister. Insiders brief about dysfunction at the heart of government. The headlines are all about missteps, most obviously over gifts of glasses, clothing and other freebies for Sir Keir and his wife. The Conservatives suffered their worst defeat in modern history in July; one poll has them just four points behind Labour.

Plenty in the party argue that these difficulties are just froth. Polls don’t matter when the next election is still almost five years away and the government has a huge majority. New prime ministers always take time to bed in; it is too early for a definitive verdict on this one. Sir Keir himself is dismissive of “the politics of noisy performance”: what Westminster talks about is not what the country cares about.

Some of that is true. And this government is better than the shambles that came before. Planning is a good example. The government has lifted what amounted to a ban on onshore wind farms and stiffened housing targets. On September 22nd it published proposals to accelerate building in urban areas. Sir Keir has also forged closer relations with politicians from the EU without having to fear Brexiteers braying betrayal.

But waving away Labour’s pratfalls would be a mistake. For one thing, time is not on the government’s side. Its political capital peaked the morning after the election; from here on, its credit may decline slowly or quickly, but decline it will. Growth-enhancing policies take time to have visible effects. And the arc of British politics bends towards chaos. Because it would not take a big swing for lots of new Labour MPs to lose their seats at the next election, falling opinion polls will be a recipe for indiscipline.

The bigger problem for the government—and the reason for the sinking feeling among those, like this newspaper, who do not share many of its beliefs but want it to do well—is that its seemingly trivial mistakes are a symptom of deeper flaws. To get elected, Labour chose a strategy that reduced its room for manoeuvre in office. It lacks a clear project. And for all its incessant talk of hard decisions, it now appears unprepared for many of the choices that governing inevitably requires.

The original sin lies in the election campaign. Sir Keir’s aim was to reinvent the Labour Party and win back power. He achieved both admirably. But to avoid scaring the electorate, Labour ran a risk-free campaign. Fearful of reopening the wounds of Brexit, it rejected the idea not just of rejoining the single market and customs union but even European overtures to negotiate a youth-mobility agreement. Desperate not to be painted as a tax-raiser, it promised not to raise national insurance, income taxes or VAT. These pledges did indeed reduce the risk of losing the election, but they also made it harder to govern. As a result, Labour entered office with no mandate to touch taxes that account for a majority of government revenues or to make radical moves on Europe, the single issue that weighs most heavily on growth.

That same caution means Labour has never defined what it is for. Because of the haplessness of the Tories, it needed only to promise stability and to offer voters competence and integrity. Stories about infighting between aides would matter less if Labour had not based its appeal on managerial effectiveness. If the party had not made so much of its devotion to public service, freebies would not smack of hypocrisy. Without a compelling analysis of what ails Britain and a clear sense of direction, the wheels of government are more liable to spin. Without a vision of what he wants to do and why, Sir Keir will struggle to avoid being distracted by events or to explain the trade-offs that governing demands. A decision to means-test winter-fuel allowances for pensioners was supposed to signal the government’s toughness. Instead it has come to stand for its political ineptitude.

It is telling that the area where Labour has made most progress—planning reform—is the one where it has been clearest about what needs fixing and whom it is willing to fight. The best passage of Sir Keir’s speech to his party’s conference was when he was explicit about the choices involved in building: prisons, pylons and housing have to spoil someone’s view.

Elsewhere, however, things are muddier. The government says its central mission is raising the country’s growth rate, but that is not how it is behaving. It is unwilling to get a lot closer to Britain’s largest trading partner. It claims to be an unalloyed fan of wealth creation, but because of its tax pledges, it is thinking about balancing the books in the budget on October 30th using growth-crunching increases in capital-gains taxes. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, stresses the importance of infrastructure but is still filling holes in the accounts by cancelling transport projects. An employment-rights bill is more likely to deter hiring than increase mobility. Even in a bright spot like housing, the government has focused on affordability rather than productivity: it should be building more in cities like Manchester and Birmingham.

If The Economist had its way, the lodestar of the government would be productivity growth. That is the only means to raise living standards in Britain and to fund public services over the long term. To this end, Labour should press ahead with even bolder planning reforms. It should pursue a closer relationship with Europe. Mending the public finances in the most growth-friendly way possible means raising the very taxes Ms Reeves has pledged not to touch. The party should perform a U-turn in the budget, which has become a crucial test of its intentions and ability to carry them out.

Sir Keir will not do all of that. But he does need to grasp that his stumbling start is not just a succession of local difficulties. Britain’s centralised system of government rests on the exercise of prime-ministerial authority. Its stagnant economy demands radicalism. If Sir Keir does not set a clear direction for his government, confront the trade-offs growth entails and pick his fights wisely, then he really will be sunk. ■

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