On the bright side, it’s not as bad as France, where the government may have to be bailed out by the IMF. There the tumbrils are rolling and the French Left is planning what looks like a general strike, with the fun slogan, “Bloquons tout” or ‘block everything’. Emmanuel Macron has been in office for eight years and it’s looking like his day is over.
Sir Keir Starmer has been prime minister for just over a year but already it feels like he’s over too. There’s talk – well, among my acquaintances – about unprecedented disaffection, an insurrectionary feeling, which is quite something for a nation that hasn’t managed a revolution since the seventeenth century (twice). I’ve been in Norfolk where a friend who was practically born into the Labour party is now voting green as a protest against Angela Rayner’s policy of overriding local objections to new housing developments – we drove past Barratt Home hoardings on what was agricultural land (Labour’s imposition of inheritance tax on farms means that many won’t survive).
A government with an astonishing majority of 146 seats now looks like it’s got nowhere to go, and it’s got four years left.
As Browning put it, “never glad confident morning again”, though there never really was a glad confident morning for the PM to begin with. No sooner had Labour been elected than it turned out that the Chancellor, the Deputy PM and other bigwigs had had their clothes purchased for them by Labour donor, Lord Ali, not to mention the PM’s spectacles. That bargain basement venality was just for starters. That’s old hat now, but what hasn’t been forgotten are the commitments that Labour made – no tax rises on “working people”, stop the boats, break the gangs – which weren’t kept and probably never could.
There are several factors at play, but his deputy, Angela Rayner, is the immediate reason why Labour is looking wildly out of touch. Just as Louis XIV was compromised by Marie Antoinette, so Sir Keir is either upstaged or embarrassed by Ange. Right now, it’s her housing arrangements which are the problem. The Deputy PM has three homes; perfectly legally. Now it turns out that, remarkably, she has named her attractive new property in Hove as her main residence – not Ashton-under-Lyne, her constituency, not Admiralty Arch, her grace-and-favour home. Nope. And by naming Hove as the primary residence, she’s avoiding paying £70,000 stamp duty and is paying £30,000 instead. Oddly, according to The Telegraph, she has told Tameside council in Manchester that her constituency home in Ashton-under-Lyne is her primary residence, and informed Brighton and Hove council that her enchanting Hove apartment is a second home for council tax purposes. So, which is it? The taxpayer, incidentally, foots the bill for council tax on the London residence.
Now I have no doubt that all of this is perfectly above board, but that doesn’t stop it being crass.
It starts to become inflammatory when people living high on the hog are the ones making middle-class pips squeak
This week the spectacle of Ange lounging on a kayak on holiday smoking a vape (a fag would be cooler) is coming close to tipping people over the edge. There is no law against a prominent politician loafing around on holiday, or having a drink (wine is good for you) or a smoke. Free country and all that and no one minded Churchill and his pint of champagne for lunch. But where it starts being inflammatory is when the people living high on the hog are the same people who are making middle class pips squeak. For it’s the Deputy PM who has imposed a new premium on second homes. That’s when people start looking thinking that it’s all right for some,
The Deputy PM is probably a lightning conductor for generalised antipathy to the government, which is the flip side of being so very visible and outspoken, but Labour’s dreadful record goes beyond bad optics. As Jonathan Prynn reports, there are now 6.5 million people receiving out of work benefits, notably Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance. The proportion of the population drawing sickness benefits has gone up to 11 per cent. Do you think one in ten people is too sick to work? Me neither. Among claimants aged 25 or younger, the proportion claiming support for mental or behavioural problems was nearly seven in ten, an infuriating waste of young lives. And the bill for these payments, including Personal Independence Payments which people in work can draw, is rising inexorably: from £69.5 billion in 2020/21 at the start of Covid, to £92.8 billion in the last financial year. It is expected to rise to £108.6 billion by 2030.
Before the election Sir Keir confirmed “there will be no tax surprises”. Except there will be.
It didn’t have to be like that. The Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, had the opportunity radically to reform benefits earlier this year – though her reforms were strikingly bureaucratic - but a revolt by the Parliamentary Labour Party saw that off. This is one reason why the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will almost certainly have to impose new or increased taxes in the autumn Budget, including tax on “working people” – whoever they are. Angela Rayner declared that “you can’t tax your way to growth” before the election. Sir Keir confirmed “there will be no tax surprises”. Except there will be. That breaks Labour’s election commitments. It has however fulfilled its promise to introduce VAT on private schools at a rate of 20 per cent which has, as predicted, driven many out of business…how’s that going? It hasn’t translated into notable improvements in state schools.
But how else is the government to service national debt? Through growth? Interest due on our debt hit £7.1 billion in July, which was £200 million more than when Labour was elected. And the higher inflation gets, the more expensive it becomes to service the inflation (index)-linked gilts which the Treasury has been issuing. In the same year, the country had to borrow £60 billion to tread water. That’s £6.7 billion more than when Labour was elected. Yesterday, an economist, Simon French, claimed that we’re paying a “moron premium” on debt. A billion here, a billion there…soon you’re talking real money.
Immigration is out of control, and I mean legal immigration, not just the small boats which Yvette Cooper has signally failed to curb. That would have mattered less before Reform came on the national scene, and Nigel Farage’s promises to deport illegal immigrants, which would once have sounded unthinkable, now seem very plausible indeed.
After a year in office, the Government can no longer blame everything on the Tories as it always does; these crises are its problem. Can it go on for the next four years? More to the point, can we?
Melanie McDonagh is a columnist for The London Standard
