A cornucopia of gifts to Labour tumbled out of Downing Street during the official mourning period. The royal order was “no politics”, and yet there was constant news of policies from the prime minister’s desk, leaks deliberate or malign. As one eccentric and unspeakable new plan followed another, Labour’s frontbench steadfastly obeyed the mourning rules with every lip zipped.
But that’s over. A rush of announcements this week will probably reveal these perverse policies, mostly unpopular, even among Tory voters. Strung together, Liz Truss’s remarkable list of free market, state-shrinking, deregulation, anti-nanny state ideological totems show her to be a conviction politician of striking recklessness. Where is her predicted “pivot”? Many assumed after winning the leadership she would ditch the wilder red meat she threw to Tory party members. But no. She seems bent on drawing lines with Labour; there’s no sign of pragmatism.
Abolishing the cap on bankers’ bonuses as a first gesture will brand her for life. Disgust at out-of-control top salaries runs deep, and FTSE 100 CEO pay rose by 39% last year, according to the High Pay Centre. A Big Bang 2.0 is designed to release the animal spirits of the City and boost their already colossal earnings. But these dark times are no moment to reprise the 1980s, with boys in red braces popping champagne corks. Even the City grandee banker Sir Win Bischoff tells the FT that “it doesn’t make us more competitive … It’s more of a symbolic gesture.” But it is not a symbol to please the public. Championed as ripping up “EU red tape”, a bankers’ bonanza was probably not the dividend that Brexiters in Barnsley or Bolsover, nor even Buckinghamshire, thought they were voting for.
Nor do most back a cancellation of the upcoming corporation tax rise. Previous corporate tax cuts did little to boost business investment, which has actually declined over the past two decades despite the UK having among the lowest tax rates in the EU, says the Institute for Public Policy Research. Not even personal tax cuts will be popular, as Labour focus groups show voters are far more anxious about failing public services and well aware that rich people benefit most. Refusing to impose a windfall tax on profiteering energy companies is greeted with indignation, while the EU targets windfalls of €140bn (£121bn). Nor is there much public appetite for re-opening warfare with the EU: wasn’t Brexit “done”?
In no particular order, here is the rest of the likely unpopular policy flotilla. Abolishing the obesity strategy would be bizarre when it has public support, as the sugar tax cut soft drink sugar content. Only extreme libertarians back this, but her new chief economic adviser, Matthew Sinclair, comes from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, so expect a lot more similar, however much it horrifies anyone concerned with the UK’s deteriorating health.
The animal welfare and trophy import bills look set for the chop: that’s no winner in this animal-loving country, and it will anger farmers undermined by trade deals not matching UK animal standards. Scrapping the online harms bill doesn’t seem wise when people fear social media risks, especially for children. A planned gambling bill, protecting addicts, joins the regulation bonfire.
Those people whom Truss and the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, call “idlers” can expect to lose EU working rights, such as the working time directive and holidays. A plan for new tax-free “investment zones” ignores extensive evidence that they don’t work.
The Conservative MP Graham Brady says his bill to lift the ban on new grammar schools will get government backing. How happy will children be returning to the sheep-and-goats life-defining 11-plus? A majority of voters would either abolish these schools or leave the status quo. This is pure dogma, denying evidence that they cause social segregation with zero good education effect. Nor do the public back cutting staff ratios in funding-stricken nurseries and creches.
Here we stand on the brink of recession, with inflation at 9.9%, a seventh consecutive interest-rate rise likely this week, the cost of living crisis consuming households, small businesses going bankrupt, worsening inequality, the Polish economy due to overtake us, Brexit worsening the balance of trade, with more strikes against pay cuts – and the pound crashing. That monumental £150bn borrowing for energy bill subsidies will get muted thanks: it only stops things getting worse, with bills having already doubled in a year.
Now add the crippling NHS crisis: the 6.9 million waiting list for elective care is the wrong sort of British queue, due to keep rising with 13,500 beds already blocked with patients awaiting social care. Thérèse Coffey, the fifth health secretary in five years, on Thursday announced her wishlist just like the others: A for ambulances, B for backlog, C for care and D for doctors and dentists – nurses would have been annoyed at no N. But targets with small dollops of emergency cash and no social care plan will not ease public alarm at no ambulance or bed to save them if they have a heart attack or stroke. Truss’s aim for growth is partly dashed by a phenomenal workforce loss of an extra 352,000 long-term sick since the start of the pandemic: that’s what NHS waiting does.
Growth, say Truss and Kwarteng, is their over-riding goal. Yes, it’s the only salvation, Labour agrees, as has every government. But deregulations and dogma are not “delivery, delivery, delivery”. If she dashes onward with no pivot, some may admire her sheer self-belief, and to hell with public opinion. If so, Labour can hardly credit its good luck: is she, the joke goes, really a mole, a sleeper destroying the Tories from within? But Labour knows Tory failure is never enough. Its own party conference will need a burst of good reasons to like, trust and hope in better from the opposition.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
