Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. So said Napoleon (though you would never know he ever had an interesting thought, judging by the recent film). And so, Labour observes as Rishi Sunak plunges headlong into mammoth traps.
Neutralise your negatives is the other rule. Labour follows that to the letter – too much so, some complain. Traditionally less trusted on the economy, Labour puts fiscal rectitude first, strangling with bare hands any shadow minister tempted to spend an unlicensed farthing. Labour knows its old negatives all too well: spendthrift, tax-hiking, soft on crime and defence.
It will not interrupt Sunak as he heads into the quicksands of traditional Tory negatives. As voters rebel against years of extreme cuts to broken public services, he goes into Sunday interviews declaring his “priority for the country is to make sure that we control spending, control welfare so that we can cut people’s taxes”. That old Tory call of the wild may barely shift a vote his way in the present public mood.
To use another old military saw: “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle,” as Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War. So long as it avoids egregious errors, Labour can watch the Tory rat pack pushing each other deeper into an ideological swamp of policies that connect little with voters beyond core loyalists and their delusional press. Every day, anarchic Tories inflict more friendly fire.
To neutralise their negatives, Tories should be calming fears that they will cut everything to the bone and impoverish those who are already poor: voters already expect them to be tightest, meanest and most likely party to cut taxes, so Sunak should instead try to sound unexpectedly expansive. Voters already expect Labour to spend more on improving public services and benefits, because it always does: new public trust in its fiscal probity has been hard won.
Watch Tory MPs clamour to cut or abolish inheritance tax, a trap with very sharp spikes. The chancellor called it “a pernicious tax” over the weekend, and it is indeed unpopular, but headlines announcing tax cuts only for the richest 5% will confirm all existing suspicions about who they govern for: four-fifths of the gain goes to millionaire families like theirs, says the IFS. Labour was quick to attack it: Keir Starmer is “fundamentally opposed” to the idea and would reverse it. On other tax cuts Labour made the running, exposing the fact that a small national insurance cut is worth much less than 2024’s silent income tax rises. Though cynical voters recognise bribes and a dirty political trick to empty the Treasury for the incoming opposition, Labour fears some will still be tempted.
Now look at the other side of the politics of tax and spend. Sunak talked up spending cuts with about 280 flood warnings in place, and Tory-voting seats calling urgently for protection: the National Audit Office reports environment agency flood defence plans have been cut by 40%. That’s a good symbol for his dilemmas as he was wisely vague about cuts requiring “difficult decisions on public spending”, with “a more efficient public sector.” (Whose was this “inefficiency”?) Cuts would be “across the board”, but he only dared mention foreign aid, welfare and the civil service: Hunt announced 63,000 fewer civil servants, but not which services will do less of what. Sunak’s recent Telegraph headline, “I’ll cut tax by curbing welfare”, might arouse cynicism even among Scrooges among his party’s remaining voters, as benefit claims rise from the many people unfit for work on NHS waiting lists.
Any slogan, however banal, will ricochet back on to the government’s record. Sunak telling Laura Kuenssberg that “the future is going to be better for [people’s] children” opened another trapdoor beneath his feet. Does he really want to remind us how the Tories have treated children? An extra 350,000 fell into poverty in 2021-2022, largely because of the withdrawal of the £20 a week universal credit uplift that kept families afloat in Covid. Benefit cuts have been targeted at families with children. Whenever Sunak extols work, he seems not to know that 71% of poor children live in working families.
Children have become unhappier, according to the annual survey by the Children’s Society. The OECD records English children rising up the ranks in maths, but sinking to the second lowest in life satisfaction. The number of children taken into care continues to increase.
Schools have suffered a 9% cut in real-terms funding, and the education attainment gap is widening. Funding for parks has been cut, school playing fields sold off, swimming pools, youth centres, football pitches and libraries closed. There are fewer children: the birth rate rose under Labour, but fell to its lowest level in two decades recently, with childcare and housing unaffordable.
That’s what’s happened to children, before mentioning the NHS, social care, courts, police and everything else. As for the climate, Labour welcomes a green stand against the Tory retreat from net zero targets that caused Chris Skidmore’s resignation. Labour is toughly grilled on its £28bn green prosperity plan, but note Starmer sticking to its most expensive and difficult pledge: 100% zero carbon electricity by 2030. Meanwhile, the Tories escape the same scrutiny for what the Institute for Fiscal Studies calls “plain implausible” plans, including the impossible £20bn of cuts Hunt wrote in for 2025.
The longer Sunak straps himself to his mast, the more reckless his rebellious crew grows. Neither tax bribes nor spending cuts will save him, with his rudderless party set to go down with all hands.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
