The road to recovery

The road to recovery

First in 1945, then 1997 and now 2024. The three times in history that a Labour government has been elected on a sweeping majority, crushing the Conservative incumbents. What Keir Starmer achieved is a once-in-several-decades event, with a governing majority only just shy of what Tony Blair achieved in 1997. There has been much analysis in recent weeks of what this all means: some analysts have pointed out that the stonking number of seats Labour won is tempered by the fact that turnout was only just higher than the lowest-ever, in 2001, and that the Labour vote share was only just above what it scored in 2019.

These facts are not unimportant; they point to an anti-politics mood in the country and a general cynicism that politicians from either main party can deliver. However, the fact that Labour looked set for a huge majority throughout the campaign probably deterred some people from turning out to vote; it may also have reassured those who wanted to vote for smaller parties, such as the Greens or Reform, that they could do so without jeopardising the chance of a Labour government (or simply a change of government).

Far more important is the question of what Labour will do with this huge majority. The fact there are still question marks reflects a general election campaign in which neither party really levelled with voters about how tough the economic circumstances facing the country are. We know what Labour’s five overarching priorities (the ones Starmer has dubbed “missions”) are: to achieve the fastest growth in the G7, to halve violent crime, to make the NHS fit for the future, to remove class barriers for children and young people, and to ensure the UK has completed the transition to clean energy by 2030. They are extraordinarily ambitious, given the mess Labour has inherited – some of it a product of circumstance, but much down to fourteen years of Conservative neglect. More than a decade of sluggish growth has been underpinned by a productivity crisis that’s been worsened by Brexit; the national debt has spiralled; the NHS is in a perilous state following years of chronic underfunding; and the attainment gap between children from poor and more affluent backgrounds had started to widen before the pandemic and has become worse since then. Set the manifesto pledges against these missions and they start to pale in the scale of the challenge. Of course, that was part of Starmer’s electoral strategy: to promise incremental steps in the right direction rather than a radical agenda for reform. His calculation was that the latter would put off more voters than it would attract, because so many voters are now cynical about the capacity of politics to change lives for the better. His pragmatic incrementalism worked exactly as he wanted it to: it delivered him that huge majority.

Labour will need to move beyond its electoral strategy to deliver on its missions

The question is: does his steady, gradual agenda for change go far enough in government to get Labour anywhere close to achieving those five missions? Unless it gets incredibly lucky on economic growth – with the global economy taking an unexpected and significant turn for the better – the answer is no. Labour’s manifesto is full of good ideas that will improve things, but not swiftly or widely enough. Reform of the UK’s snail-like planning process will help address the housing crisis and provide a much-needed economic boost; but Labour’s pre-election scaling back of plans for public investment in the green transition has left a hole in its growth plan. And planning reform alone will not deliver sufficient levels of affordable homes. Funding 6,500 extra teachers through VAT on private school fees sounds good, but in practice means less than a third of an extra teacher per school.
Primary school breakfast clubs will mean children won’t start the school day hungry, but the measure won’t tackle the root causes of child poverty. An additional 40,000 NHS appointments a week will help, but it doesn’t equate to wheeling out sufficient resources to turn the NHS around.

It seems certain that, in governing, Labour will need to move beyond its electoral strategy in order to deliver on its missions. It will need more resources to play with, not only for investment, but simply to maintain current spending on the welfare state and public services. That will necessitate either raising taxes, such as capital gains or a levy on inheritance, or borrowing more to invest in things that will deliver a higher rate of return than the rate of interest on government debt – or both. It needs to quickly supplement its manifesto plans in three key areas. First, a proper plan for child poverty, which cannot be done without finance, but which will continue to blight children’s life chances so long as it goes unaddressed. Secondly, in terms of housing, it could both improve growth and affordability with a programme of public investment in affordable housing; these rentals would be offered to young people trapped living in areas where there aren’t career opportunities. A third huge gap in the manifesto was a concrete plan for reforming social care, where a lack of dedicated personal provision for older people and disabled adults has terrible consequences for their quality of life. It also creates huge long-term costs for the NHS, as people who should never have needed to be admitted to hospital end up there, through a lack of care.

Keir Starmer achieved something historic on 4 July. But the question facing Labour now is whether it can pull off something even bigger: to set the country back on the road to recovery after the past fourteen years. Doing that will require resolve and moral fibre. Enduring qualities that are altogether different to those required to win an election.

Sonia Sodha is chief leader writer at the Observer and a Guardian/Observer columnist

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August / September 2024, Comment, Home Front

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