Wes Streeting enjoyed himself in the Commons on Thursday, taunting the Conservatives: “It must be so painful for them to watch a Labour government doing the things that they only ever talked about: reducing bloated state bureaucracy; investing in defence; reforming our public services; and bringing down the welfare bill.”
This was confirmed by a two-word text from a Tory adviser to a Financial Times journalist who had reported the health secretary’s words: “It is.”
Streeting, one of the few front-rank politicians who obviously enjoys politics, spoke an extraordinary truth in jest. The circle has turned, and it has turned further than anyone, possibly including Streeting himself, expected.
This Labour prime minister, who served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and who was elected to his party’s leadership on a sub-Corbynite platform, is now adopting more Conservative policies than Tony Blair ever did.
Streeting did not even mention cutting foreign aid – a policy on which Blair and Gordon Brown so succeeded in changing the weather that David Cameron felt forced to complete their work. Cameron saw meeting the aid target of 0.7 per cent of national income as essential proof that the Tory party was kinder, gentler and finally electable. Keir Starmer now sees more votes in the opposite policy.
Streeting’s list also glosses over the big issue of the moment: the cut in welfare spending. New Labour did succeed in cutting the benefits bill – eventually. But it never contemplated anything quite as brutal as the £5bn-a-year reduction in planned spending that Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, will announce in the next few days.
George Osborne as chancellor tried to cut the personal independence payment (the disability benefit known as PIP) in the 2016 Budget. This was when the Tories had stopped governing in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and didn’t need so much of that kinder, gentler stuff. But even then Osborne couldn’t do it: Iain Duncan Smith resigned as work and pensions secretary “and I had to back down on it”, Osborne said in his podcast with Ed Balls on Thursday.
Of course, the policies on aid and welfare are both the product of a fiscal squeeze that could not have been imagined in Blair’s time. Sixty quarters of successive growth was a golden age of long ago: all sorts of things were possible then that are not possible now.
Even so, there is an element of glee in Streeting’s crowing that relishes toughness for its own sake. Everyone has noticed a growing confidence in the prime minister’s demeanour too – glee is not the right word for him, but there is a proud satisfaction in taking decisions that would have been too “right-wing” for the Conservative government only eight months ago. Starmer now has the courage of Morgan McSweeney’s convictions.
The prime minister’s chief of staff is now setting the tone of this government after its early directionless blundering when Sue Gray was in post. This means some abrupt decisions. It was said, for example, that staff at NHS England were given three minutes’ notice of the abolition of their quango; when one journalist checked the story, they were told it was “more like three seconds”.
And it means some incoherence, simply as a result of the speed of such a drastic transition. In his article for The Telegraph on Wednesday, Starmer dismissed the debate about the size of the state: “I’m not interested in ideological arguments about whether it should be bigger or smaller. I simply want it to work.”
That is a truly authentic Blairite sentiment – but it was contradicted by the harder Tory line of the rest of the article, which criticised “an overcautious flabby state”. In his speech the next day, Starmer declared bluntly: “We’re going to cut bureaucracy across the state.”
But it is the welfare cuts that mean trouble. The curious incident of the story so far is that of the dog that has not barked. The dog – in this case, the Labour Party – has whimpered a bit. Backbenchers have been summoned in groups to see Starmer and McSweeney to try to defuse opposition. Cabinet ministers have recorded their “concerns” in the minutes so that they can distance themselves from the decision if it all goes wrong.
The success or failure of the policy depends on Kendall, who I think is a more capable politician than her predecessor Duncan Smith. If she is pushed into making cuts for the sake of balancing the books, it will end badly. If, on the other hand, she can reform the rules so that more people have an incentive to work and are supported to do so, then there may be big savings in the long term.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the rise in mental health problems since the pandemic is genuine, but the question is whether the benefits rules give people an incentive to drop out of the labour market when it would be better for their mental health to be in work.
Too many Labour MPs believe the reforms are driven by the need for cuts rather than the moral imperative to support people into work. They do not believe Starmer when he says, as he did yesterday, that he would be doing this whether it saved £10 or £10bn.
At some point, the dog is going to bark.
Project Chainsaw: So, prime minister, which quango is next for the chop?
With ministers on resignation watch, welfare cuts could be make or break for Starmer
As Starmer axes NHS England, is it time for another bonfire of the quangos?
Abolishing NHS England gets full marks for ambition
I’m a ‘sad beige mum’ like Meghan – it’s the only way I can cope
