As Nigel Farage indicated in his latest attempt at a speech to set out his party’s policies, he didn’t get where he is today without a certain chutzpah. Just in case anyone was in doubt, he was at it again as he faced the press for the first time since returning from his holiday in France – a trip that caused him to miss last week’s Commons debates on the EU reset.
At one point during the event, which marked his return to the political spotlight, Mr Farage – obviously stung by a common criticism – declared that he was “never a populist politician”. This will have surprised the more responsible party leaders, who have often come off worse against his well-documented and well-honed skill for telling voters exactly what they want to hear.
The leader of Reform UK – his latest and most blatantly populist vehicle – also ridiculed Sir Keir Starmer for not believing in much beyond his personal ambition; and, without irony, for “veering off to the left and right”. This was just as Mr Farage himself decided, while giving his speech, to veer off to the left and the right in the space of a few sentences.
It was widely trailed that Mr Farage would use what passed as a policy launch to call for the two-child cap on child benefit to be lifted, and this supposed enemy of the nanny state and big government duly delivered. For Mr Farage, though, the aim is not so much to promote social justice or relieve child poverty (not mentioned in his address) as to boost the birth rate and to incentivise, albeit mildly, bigger families.
That was the veer to the left, after a fashion, and an attempt to support his implausible claim that Reform is now “the party of working people”.
However, he could not resist veering immediately to the right by adding that he’d limit this enhanced social security benefit to “British families” – excluding any recent immigrants who wished to have lots of children, with the apparent presumption that they don’t count as British and perhaps never could. He thus managed to combine natalism and nativism in one outrageous policy, a notably perverse achievement even for him.
Given that it was coupled with a particularly nasty video targeting the leader of Scottish Labour, Anas Sarwar, it was clear that this attempt to formulate something resembling a conventional and serious policy was merely the thinnest and flakiest of veneers to camouflage the party’s same old distasteful nationalist-populist appeal.
With the Tories still marginalised by their recent electoral catastrophes, it falls to the Labour government to balance the express desire of the British public to maintain a fair welfare state with ensuring sustainable public finances. The pensioners’ winter fuel payment, disability allowances and child benefit are now all under serious review by ministers who – without Mr Farage’s flair for promising the impossible, and having made little effort to disguise the arguments going on within their own party – cannot avoid hard choices.
If the focus of the Starmer administration in its first year was to establish a reputation for fiscal responsibility and for Rachel Reeves to win a reputation as an “iron chancellor” – admittedly with varying degrees of success – then its focus for the longer term will be to give voters more of what they want.
Given an increasingly uncertain outlook for the world economy and world peace, this is an even greater challenge than the one they were confronted with on taking office last year.
One problem is what the actual policy should be. Restoring the winter fuel payment is by far the cheapest option – only £1.5bn a year was ever going to be raised by cutting it – and would bring the greatest electoral dividend. The voters hated the cut, and have punished Labour for it.
The prime minister has publicly signalled that the policy will be altered. That was inevitable. It’s not exactly “veering to the left”, but is undeniably a U-turn on an acknowledged mistake.
But how to do it? A more generous threshold for qualification would be most consistent with the change to means-testing Ms Reeves made so hurriedly last July. However, removing the allowance only from “rich” pensioners is administratively almost impossible, and would still leave vulnerable older folk having to navigate the bulky claim form.
Hence Kemi Badenoch and Mr Farage’s simple pledge to restore the status quo ante. Sir Keir and Ms Reeves’s least bad option would be to follow suit and hope that, by the next general election, the voters will have forgiven (doubtful) or forgotten (more likely).
Similar difficulties of detail surround child benefit, and revisiting the welfare reforms announced by Liz Kendall only in March. These are now underway, and were defended by Ms Kendall again in an overwrought performance last week. These are not as unpopular with the electorate, but they do disturb the conscience of the party, its increasingly restive backbenchers, and some popular senior figures, including Gordon Brown, Angela Rayner and Bridget Phillipson.
Plainly, the chancellor thinks she has better uses for the money – to boost growth, to keep borrowing under control (as well as the tax burden), to appease the financial markets, and to provide for the nation’s defence. Her job is made even more complicated by these extra, politically driven demands arising so close to the comprehensive spending review due on 11 June, and thereafter the autumn Budget. It is frustrating for all concerned, but no surprise, that the work of the government’s Child Poverty Taskforce has been delayed.
At the moment, the government seems not to know what it wants to do, or when it wants to do it. Under pressure from deadlines, ministers are in danger of drifting into policy choices without the framework of a (politically) realistic fiscal plan for fulfilling their ambitions.
The forthcoming comprehensive spending review would be the best time to set out such a plan. Even if some important policies are left undecided, of necessity, it should at least be the moment for Labour to restore the pensioners’ winter fuel payment in full, and in time for this winter. It might even consider a marginal increase. That would at least buy some time, if not gratitude.
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