“It is not a coincidence that the spending that is deemed irresponsible is typically for the benefits system or wider welfare state. Tax breaks for a CEO’s investment portfolio are prudent, while funding for a disabled person’s care worker is wasteful.”
The point of Starmer’s Labour is that it’s a step towards shifting the Overton window back towards the left, for which there’s no hope under the Tories who are sliding further and further to the right without any sort of regulation.
Short of revolution - and good luck with that, even Starmer’s a kettler - it’s the only way there’s any hope of it. We got into this mess gradually, and we’re going to have to get out of it the same way.
The real problem is that there’s no party to the left of Labour, so what the next step is after that is a more difficult one. Still, might as well take the obvious step while there’s a chance.
Perhaps we can convince Labour to slide left once they’re in.
They can’t do that now because they need the votes of Overton-affected floating voters and need to be “in touch” with what those voters want. Or at least appear to be.
What do you mean no party left of labour? Greens are an option
The point is that Starmer gets to be Prime Minister and in doing so gets power and money.
I would imagine that if the British electorate decides to vote for the Conservative Party, that The Guardian’s opinion section is going to be able to dig up a considerable number of reasons why there’s a point to voting Labour.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Every time Keir Starmer has refused to commit to repealing a Tory benefit cut over the past year, and every robotic delivery of the dog whistle of being on the side of “working people”, has given the same message: the grownups are in charge and they can give directions to the local food bank.
Such capitulation is in part a rational response to a media ecosystem in Britain that enables a small group of rightwing newspapers to shape Labour’s policy agenda, painting the party as economically unsound the minute it attempts to make ordinary people’s lives slightly better.
In response to the budget, Starmer declared “the national credit card is maxed out” while Reeves opted for the old chestnut, “There’s no magic money tree.” Adopting such framing is not just economically illiterate, it fences Labour in for how a future government can raise funds and spend them.
Before you know it, Reeves is announcing that – now that Hunt has taken her non-dom tax revenue policy – she intends to pay for the NHS and school breakfasts through (wait for it) “future savings to public spending”.
If you reinforce the fear that disabled and sick people are a burden on the struggling taxpayer, there is less pressure to address real insecurity such as low wages and crumbling services once in office.
If you put the responsibility for the gaps in the labour market firmly on the individual now, there will soon be less focus on the structural issues – from long NHS waiting lists to poor housing – that are actually causing them.
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