In recent weeks, a rare bout of political concordance has broken out. Rishi Sunak has suddenly taken to agreeing that the Tories’ time in office has been a disaster. In his conference speech ruing the past decades of broken politics, he added John Major and David Cameron to the ever-expanding list of people he considers responsible for his failures. His ministers find themselves campaigning against decisions they have taken in government: just wait until they get their hands on whoever has been running the country these long 13 years.
Whether you consider this the latest cynical act of a Tory party with nowhere left to turn or just downright bizarre, it’s difficult to disagree with the prime minister when he says it’s “time for a change”.
After 13 years in power, five prime ministers, seven chancellors, an economic crash, a mortgage bombshell, record NHS waiting lists and billions of pounds of taxpayer money handed to associates of the Tory party, Sunak has realised he simply has no record to run on. Tory MPs, asked to list the successes of their time in office, mumble and shuffle their feet. Shorn of anything positive to say, they are reduced to scorching the earth on which they stand. Sunak has been forced to rebrand as a recently hired management consultant: the man from McKinsey, rather than the chancellor who cut school budgets and left classrooms roofs crumbling.
But the year zero act has run out of steam. There is no escaping that it is year 14 of the Tories – and nothing in their record warrants giving them another five.
The reality is that only a disciplined, ambitious and reforming Labour government can offer the change the country needs. In the past fortnight alone, we have set out plans to start to fix Britain’s dentistry crisis with 700,000 new appointments, cut NHS waiting lists with 2m more appointments, and get Britain building again with 1.5m new homes – creating the next wave of new towns, complete with GP surgeries, schools, businesses and transport. That comes on top of our existing commitments to seize the economic opportunities of homegrown, clean power, bring back neighbourhood policing, recruit thousands of new teachers – and break down the barriers to opportunity that face young people across the country.
Contrast that with whatever it is the Tories think they are offering. As far as anyone can tell, Sunak’s big idea involves letting the cost of HS2 run out of control, before scrapping it and replacing it with a series of Network North projects, many of which have already been thrown into doubt – or had already been under way. Meanwhile, his own advisers have told him that his plans to push back our transition from imported fossil fuels to clean British energy will increase household bills for people across the country. Just last week, we discovered that criminals are to be spared jail because of the shambles the government has made of the justice system. Rising costs for working people, public services failing and nothing getting built – just a few weeks in, this Tory “change” already feels eerily like the ghost of Tory governments past.
The real danger in all this is not only the damage done, but what would unfold if the Tories won again. Lurking in the background is the spectre of Liz Truss and the Tory right – those who wrecked the economy and left millions of households picking up the pieces, desperate to tell us they were right all along and to get another chance. The prime minister’s failure to stand up to them destroys his claim to be a force for change, and his attempts to win them over by adopting their policies only emboldens them. If you want a vision of how the Tory farce of the last 13 years could get any worse, look no further than an enfeebled Sunak running a government that is entirely reliant on keeping Liz Truss’s followers happy, while Nigel Farage tangos with Tory MPs.
It is now clear that the only way Britain can break out of this cycle of chaos, low growth, high taxes and stagnant wages is with a Labour government. This alternative is not one of wild promises, fantasy economics or old ideas. It’s an ambitious policy programme, focused entirely on improving the lives of working people, built – without exception – on iron-clad fiscal responsibility. This is a changed Labour party. We will never allow the sort of madcap economic experiments that we have seen under the Tories to again put at risk the livelihoods of hardworking families.
That the Tories have failed is now so indisputable that the prime minister himself is saying it. But voting Labour is not just a vote to end that failure. Instead, it is a vote to get Britain building again, to invest in clean UK power – Great British Energy – to get the NHS back on its feet, to take back our streets and to break down the barriers to opportunity. In short, it is the start of national renewal.
Pat McFadden is Labour’s national campaign coordinator
