LABOUR have been panned for their “contradictory” and “empty-minded” approach to economic growth by a leading political scientist.
Professor Ben Ansell, of Oxford University, has accused Keir Starmer’s government of lacking a “coherent” strategy to achieve economic growth – though it remains its “lodestar”.
In a blog, the top academic said that growth has been “essentially zero” since Labour came to power in July despite the party identifying it as their top priority during the election.
Ansell compared Rachel Reeves with chancellors past, including Gordon Brown and George Osborne (below), who he said had identifiable, though different, “theories of growth” which helpfully guided their approach to the economy.
He said: “Labour’s current plans on their own will not get them re-elected because there are minimal gains for most and tax rises, which even if disguised, are still likely to have contractionary effects. For the plans to work politically, they have to work economically, which means they need to create a framework for sustained economic growth by 2029.
“But Labour does not seem to have a coherent theory of how that growth might emerge. Worse, the current agenda is a mishmash of different theories of growth that potentially offset one another.”
Ansell said Starmer and Reeves had cherry picked parts from competing schools of economic thought, including taking parts of New Labour’s investment in public services while indulging in a “dalliance with growth theories more associated with the post-liberal right”.
Starmer’s recent endorsement of the economic potential in artificial intelligence are “hard to reconcile” with other parts of the Government’s agenda, including providing stability for businesses, Ansell argued.
He said: “You can’t treat grand, clashing economic schools of thought like a jaunt through Woolworths pick and mix. You have to make a choice and direct the bulk of your policy in that direction.”
Ansell added that “borrowing bits here and there from incompatible ideologies” would create a “Frankenstein’s monster of an economic strategy”.
“And when the electorate come with their pitchforks and torches to ward off the monster, they won’t have much more sympathy for its creators,” he said.
Paul Johnson, the head of the influential think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, backed Ansell’s arguments and said that Labour’s incoherence would trouble both the markets and state institutions.
Writing in The Times, the economist said: “One problem, also evident in the approach to public service reform, is that if there is no guiding philosophy it is hard for ministers and civil servants to have a sense of which way the prime minister or chancellor will swing when it comes to any individual decision.
“That makes it harder for the civil service to advise. And if there is no guiding philosophy, it makes it harder for all involved to take decisions.
“It also leaves businesses uncertain as to the future direction of policy.”
The UK Government was approached for comment.
