This is a young Government. Labour have only been in power for five months. Yet already it has a tired, worn out feel about it. There is a sense of drift and pessimism. Every couple of days, a new sleaze scandal appears in the media.
This should be the phase when ministers are swanking and swaggering on the airwaves, basking in the limelight, confidently proclaiming the progress they are making for the brave new world. Yet do they come across as enjoying themselves? They do not. They come across as hunted and downtrodden. If they admit the Government is doing badly, that would be a gaffe, a story, a pit: ‘Minister breaks ranks…’ Yet if they insist the Government is doing well, that is so absurd a claim as to invite ridicule. So they try to say as little as possible. The Prime Minister engages in the displacement activity of constant foreign travel.
The farmers are protesting in their tractors, opinion poll ratings are sliding and civil war in Downing Street saw the ousting of Sue Gray. Nearly three million people have signed a petition calling for an early general election.
One could say the Government has already run out of steam – but it didn’t really build up much puff in the first place. This week comes the ultimate signal of malaise: a relaunch. The ‘missions’ are to be reset. There will be a ‘Plan for Change’ with a different set of targets. The pledge repeated so often at the election – to make the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7 – is to be dropped. Probably realistic. Not only is our Government throwing sand in the engine of our economy with more tax and regulations, but others in the G7 are going in the opposite direction. We can expect to see new governments coming in next year, not just in the United States but also in Canada and Germany, which will be determined to unleash free enterprise rather than hobble it.
The promise to build one and half million homes over this Parliament is also likely to be downgraded. The Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook says it will be ‘more difficult than expected’ for the government to achieve, and the pledge seems to have become merely a ‘target’.
So far, the promise to cut the average annual energy bill for a household by £300 by the end of this Parliament is still being maintained by Ed Miliband – but few believe it. The claim that the promise not to increase tax on working people has been honoured is so clearly false that it has been met with derision.
Why should a new set of targets have any more credibility?
After 14 years in opposition, Labour might have been expected to have come up with clear ideas and to have thought through their implementation – whether you agreed with them or not. Yet instead of making decisions, the new Government keeps announcing more reviews. Kudos to Sky News for keeping count. According to Sky, there have been 61 reviews, consultations and taskforces set up since the election. That’s equivalent to one every two and a half days. A taskforce on New Towns. A review on whether or not to impose a sugar tax on milkshakes. A Home Office inquiry into how to counter extremism. A Strategic Defence Review to work out what defence policy we should have. On it goes.
Due to a wish to avoid policies before the election, there is a complete lack of clarity over what this Labour Government hopes to achieve. It turns out there wasn’t a secret plan. They were genuinely clueless.
In announcing the appointment of Sir Chris Wormald as the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, Keir Starmer waffled on about ‘mission-led government’, ‘breaking down silos across government’ and ‘nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform’. It’s just a word salad.
Often ‘ideological’ is used as a term of abuse in politics. But without a coherent set of beliefs, any Government is likely to flounder – leaving the bureaucrats to build their empires without any effective democratic check.
Consider the contrast after Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister for five months. That took us to October 1979. That month, exchange controls were abolished – a radical change that transformed us into an open economy that faced the world with confidence. The end of July 1979 had seen controls on the dividends companies could pay abolished. Price controls were lifted and the Price Commission abolished. Wage controls were also scrapped. The Budget on 12 June 1979 cut the top rate of income tax from 83% to 60%. The Queen’s Speech on 15 May announced legislation that would give council tenants the right to buy their homes.
Previous Labour governments also had a clear sense of direction – albeit moving towards socialism, with an increased role for the state.
It is true that politicians focusing on elections and worrying about what to do if they win later on is nothing new. It has been a target of political satire for decades. In the 1970 film, ‘The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer’, the new Prime Minister is advised by Rimmer to ‘create the impression of activity. Talk in terms of keeping your options open.’ Episodes of ‘Yes Minister’ often saw Sir Humphrey Appleby triumph through some face-saving announcement that really meant the status quo would continue.
Disillusionment with government is by no means novel. Yet the pace at which this administration has decayed before our eyes surely sets some sort of record.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
