The Labour manifesto is a stark reminder of the havoc a Tory government will create over the next five years if it wins a sizable majority next month.
From the holes it identifies in NHS funding to the need for an investment bank to promote infrastructure spending, the document has something to say about many of the areas crying out for government intervention. It works as a handy guide to those parts of the economy, the welfare system and public services the next administration must address – or risk the foundations being further undermined.
Listening to Tory MPs in parliament over the past year, you would think that the person behind the wheel of a white van was all they cared about. Ministers seemed to be of the same mind. They treated stories about nurses quitting their jobs, mental health services on their knees and schools making cutbacks as side issues when there were roads to repair, motorways to widen and broadband cables to install.
The white van driver was at the heart of the Brexit vote and that person’s needs came first. Figures from the car industry illustrate how driving has become a national obsession to rival shopping. Three years of double-digit sales growth have put a shiny new piece of metal on wheels outside millions of homes. (Set aside for a minute the fact that these cars were mostly acquired with credit plans and are not really bought at all, but leased. Just accept that it is one of the major developments in consumer spending in recent years.)
And what do people with average or above-average incomes need if driving and shopping are their main pastime? Why, the most expensive car their credit rating will buy, a bigger road to drive it on and, when the shopping is online, superfast broadband.
This is not to say that the private sphere of cars and broadband connections are irrelevant when considering the future of the economy. It’s just that the public sphere of hospitals, social care, further education, youth services, hostels for the homeless and libraries matters too, but is a second- or third-rank consideration.
Almost every spare penny in Philip Hammond’s spring budget went on infrastructure spending – that infrastructure being almost exclusively roads. Hammond, a former transport minister, also kept fuel duty on hold to keep his audience of drivers sweet.
In too many instances, Labour lazily offers as its remedy more cash for civil servants to spend. Not to take the economy back to the 1970s – that criticism is unfair – but back to the early noughties, paid for by higher taxes.
However much the extra spending is justified or demanded by the people affected, Labour has failed to understand – or deliberately forgets – that there is no appetite among mainstream voters for governments of any colour to spend vast sums on their behalf. More specifically, what capacity, experience or qualifications does Labour’s senior team have for spending such vast sums wisely? That is the supplementary question people ask, and the answer is none on all three counts.
Mainstream voters also don’t want to be taxed at a higher rate. McDonnell says that for the vast majority, taxes will remain the same, which is true: his new income tax threshold would start at £80,000 and VAT will be frozen.
But an income of £80,000 is a level that many people can aspire to, even if their income is lower now. And charging an extra 5p in the pound to this group is punishing.
Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and those behind the New Labour project in the 1990s understood the mood of the public and its reluctance to commission the rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure without people who looked and acted like structural engineers on board.
For all the missteps Blair made in subsequent years, he understood that elections were not about laying out economic programmes and waiting for everyone to realise what good sense they made. New Labour officials worked tirelessly to convince hundreds of niche audiences – from the youth club to the rotary club – that it was not only justified in its analysis, but capable of implementing a programme of reforms.
There may be some who believe it is worth spending billions of pounds renationalising Royal Mail and taking university finances back under state control. But you need to spend years convincing people that the government is a better custodian of these assets.
And why would a sensible government bother when public services are crumbling and renters on low incomes are having to borrow money to pay their rent?
Labour says it will commission more affordable homes than the Tories. But who can say they will be built to a higher standard than the cheap and flimsy flats currently thrown up by the private sector? Can a denuded local authority planning department guarantee that? No it can’t.
The wish-list manifesto contains many sensible measures, but there is so much work needed to put flesh on those bones. No one is going to say to themselves that if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour says extra funding for this or that would be money well spent, it will be. It takes more work than that.
