The tactics that gave Labour its huge majority in 2024 were no preparation for government – and the prime minister has proved he has nothing more to offer, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr
No, that’s why the Labour Left don’t like him, which is a pretty small segment of the population. His unpopularity is unprecedented and reaches swathes of people who never heard what he pledged during the leadership election, don’t care about “trans” and want fewer refugees.
You’re right he’s done little about the cost of living. But no-one would have; the only way to fix it is to “grow the economy” (as the mantra goes but which the government has little control over anyway) and wait for wages to catch up, which was always going to take years.
Services are crumbling because of 14 years of the Tories slashing investment into them due to a slavish adherence to austerity ideology at a time when balancing the books didn’t bring us any benefits. Now when interest rates are high and borrowing expensive, we are fucked. Labour can’t go back in time and un-fuck us, and they can’t run an increased deficit without spiralling interest payments. What are they supposed to do? People talk about a wealth tax - in its most common form raising about 25 billion. An extra 25 billion would be great, but it would not fix the cost of living crisis, and it’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reversing underinvestment and it is not possible to implement immediately (you’d need to set up a lot of apparatus to assess and collect the tax) so they’d still be woefully unpopular next year when everything is still shit and the wealth tax has never yet been collected.
That leaves them with broad-base taxes like income tax and VAT. Putting them up will genuinely help their finances and public services now but… is phenomenally unpopular.
I said ever since they came to power that they were screwed before they started. They’ve contributed to it with needless mistakes and U-turns they’ve pretended weren’t, but none of that is more than a skin of mould over the turd of a situation we’re in anyway. To round it off, the right-wing press won’t print any of their successes (and there have been a few) and screams about everything that they can’t fix.
No, that’s why the Labour Left don’t like him, which is a pretty small segment of the population. His unpopularity is unprecedented and reaches swathes of people who never heard what he pledged during the leadership election, don’t care about “trans” and want fewer refugees.
You’re right he’s done little about the cost of living. But no-one would have; the only way to fix it is to “grow the economy” (as the mantra goes but which the government has little control over anyway) and wait for wages to catch up, which was always going to take years.
Services are crumbling because of 14 years of the Tories slashing investment into them due to a slavish adherence to austerity ideology at a time when balancing the books didn’t bring us any benefits. Now when interest rates are high and borrowing expensive, we are fucked. Labour can’t go back in time and un-fuck us, and they can’t run an increased deficit without spiralling interest payments. What are they supposed to do? People talk about a wealth tax - in its most common form raising about 25 billion. An extra 25 billion would be great, but it would not fix the cost of living crisis, and it’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reversing underinvestment and it is not possible to implement immediately (you’d need to set up a lot of apparatus to assess and collect the tax) so they’d still be woefully unpopular next year when everything is still shit and the wealth tax has never yet been collected.
That leaves them with broad-base taxes like income tax and VAT. Putting them up will genuinely help their finances and public services now but… is phenomenally unpopular.
I said ever since they came to power that they were screwed before they started. They’ve contributed to it with needless mistakes and U-turns they’ve pretended weren’t, but none of that is more than a skin of mould over the turd of a situation we’re in anyway. To round it off, the right-wing press won’t print any of their successes (and there have been a few) and screams about everything that they can’t fix.