Ripe plums fall into Labour’s lap. Without the opposition lifting a finger, each day brings another revelation that tells wavering voters all they need to know about what these bumptious ministers think of the little people for whom they set the rules. The world of golden wallpaper, 3am Downing Street karaoke parties and £335 trainers might have provided vicarious glamour in normal times, but not when living standards are plunging and so many people have raw memories of lockdowns and lives lost.
I was recently sent the words of the chair of a local Conservative association. With shameless cynicism, his “political overview” opened by referencing war: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has taken the headlines away from Partygate. The absence of a vote of no confidence in the leadership means we now have the opportunity to stabilise the leadership and rebuild trust with the electorate and of course our lead in the polls.” As it is, recent polls put Labour at 39%, the Tories on 35%. “Rebuilding trust” looks a bit herculean right now.
A newly “serious” Johnson-of-Ukraine could revive party loyalties. If not, Labour could win as the capable, clean and decent alternative to this corrupt, arrogant and politically tin-eared crew. But I am taken aback by people I meet – keen followers of politics – who struggle to define what Labour stands for. “On your side” is OK, but Labour still fumbles for what George HW Bush once clumsily called “the vision thing”.
Oppositions struggle to be heard. Labour is brim full of policies, more radical than it gets credit for, more radical than Tony Blair’s in 1997, but often lost in the government’s noisy command of the news agenda. Some do land with impact, That windfall tax on North Sea oil companies awash in profits – to help recompense hard-pressed bill-payers and extend the warm home discount – hit home against the chancellor’s mean austerity. Rachel Reeves, who has promised to be “the first green chancellor”, mapped out a huge £28bn-a-year green investment to kickstart the economy with battery “gigafactories”, insulating 19m homes, and massively increasing wind power; but Labour hasn’t yet received the credit its ambitious plans merit. The same goes for Reeves’s promise to abolish small business rates – replacing them with a 12% tax on big tech – to restore high streets.
As Reeves reviews an estimated £175bn worth of tax reliefs, she has already committed to equalising tax rate on earned and unearned incomes, as well as targeting landlord rents, private equity and “carried interest” loopholes. It makes a strong contrast with these non-dom, tax-minimising ministers, never straight about their money until half-truths are dragged out of them. Sajid Javid’s former non-dom status, because his father was born in Pakistan, defies any notion of tax fairness: if it was morally OK, why drop it when you enter politics? Labour’s radical tax clean-up needs to be heard, and to yield richly for the Treasury.
While the government’s promised employment rights bill has vanished, Labour – true to its name – would revolutionise the power balance in the workplace. Reeves has promised “radical insourcing” to bring services back into the public sector from profiteering contractors. Labour policies would have made P&O’s disgraceful abuse impossible, by banning zero-hours contracts, “fire and rehire” and bogus self-employment. It would ensure employment rights started on day one, and that all workers enjoyed the benefits of sick pay, parental leave and protection from unfair dismissal, with flexible hours the default. These policies would transform millions of working lives. A new right for unions to recruit in every workplace, and fair pay agreements in every sector, would reset decades of rewards unjustly flowing backwards from workforce to shareholders, turning the tables on bad employers not just in sectors such as care, deliveries, warehouses and retail, but higher up the scale as well. Yet here too, Labour struggles to be heard.
As voters would expect from Labour’s successes on schools and the NHS whenever it has been in power, the party has convincing priorities for repairing the damage done to both since 2010. It has pledged a renewed emphasis on early years, permanent mental health support in every school, universal breakfast and after-school clubs, and a youth drop-in mental health hub in every area. “Excellence” plans are not all Gradgrind: they include a guarantee for every child on arts, sport and expeditions – funding that was stripped out by Tory cuts. An eye-catching pledge to charge VAT on private school fees would raise £1.7bn to spend on state schools, and is in stark contrast to Rishi Sunak’s personal £100,000 donation to Winchester college.
The need to clean up Westminster – with its tainted donations and lobbying by MPs with second jobs – hardly needs mentioning. Levelling up, too, is natural Labour turf, in its DNA, from restoring the £20 cut to benefits to introducing a genuine national living wage. The party has pledged not to “balance the books on the backs of working people” as George Osborne and Sunak have done. While the government fails on its impossible northern promises (not one spade is in the ground for its proposed local rail projects), Gordon Brown is producing local devolution plans. At local elections in May, crime will be home territory for former chief prosecutor Keir Starmer. On Monday, he promised to create “victim payback boards” for local communities to settle antisocial behaviour. These may sound like small potatoes – but many complain about being powerless to act in their neighbourhoods.
The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, recently made a speech calling for a radical rethink of foreign policy, and laying out what “make Brexit work” should look like, swivelling back to European security, reversing army cuts and escaping Britain’s fuel dependency on autocrats. He promised to restore the country’s soft power against what he fears is the “age of authoritarians”, with full foreign aid and a strong BBC World Service and British Council.
In two years, Starmer has turned Labour into a force that is now well beyond its initial “permission to be heard” stage. Now, people need to know what Labour will do. The policy samples I’ve mentioned are random: I could list shelves-full of others, each costed under Reeves’s grip, her fiscal rules underpinned with a new “office for value for money”. For the first time in recent years, Labour is starting to lead on the economy. But it’s still not trusted on defence, where Labour is on 19% and the Tories 38%. Put out more flags and talk loudly of security, for defence now tops Ipsos Mori’s list of public concerns. Labour can’t let Boris Johnson’s posturing occupy this ground.
But policies on their own are not enough. A few chosen beacons need to illuminate the way. This shadow cabinet barely needs lift a finger to discredit this self-disgracing government, but Labour has yet to crystallise its meaning. It takes time to implant an idea in the public mind, and time may be short, if Johnson’s fortunes ever momentarily look up and he dashes for an election.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
