What sort of Labour is Keir Starmer’s government now promising? Before previous elections, the party’s promise has been the same. It is the expectation of a change for the better, whether or not fulfilled.
What that means – perhaps higher taxes and a bigger state – emerges in the months leading up to voting day. That is when policy is still fluid, lobbyists insistent and manifesto pledges up for grabs. To political radicals these are rare moments of hope.
On Tuesday, Starmer gathered his shadow cabinet to brief them on being “a big reforming government”. But that depends on him being a big reforming leader. So far, he has sung exclusively from Labour’s familiar hymn sheet of relativity, of more growth, a lower cost of living, cleaner energy, better health and better schools. His strategy is vaguely rooted in the maxim that governments lose elections, oppositions don’t win them. So sit tight and don’t frighten the horses.
When Tony Blair took office in 1997 his New Labour promised much but amounted to little more than an acceptable custodian of late-Thatcherism. Starmer has seemed content to be the acceptable face of Sunakism: a solid, competent big spender. When he recently mentioned that he might curb foreigners buying British houses I nearly fell off my chair. Was this really a policy? It turned out to be “under consideration”.
In Paul Johnson’s Follow the Money, a diagnosis of the dire state of Britain’s public sector and “how we reach a new economic normal”, the economist barely mentions Labour, and Starmer not at all. The forthcoming election might be an interview from an apprentice eager to learn on the job. That job is running a government machine, large chunks of which are facing collapse. Its crown jewel is the NHS. Since the advent of privatisation its hospitals have been hamstrung by a care sector in the grip of private asset managers. They charge monopolistic fees and ship annual dividends and interest payments offshore, as revealed by BBC Panorama last year. The NHS is torn by professional demarcation and a dental service in freefall. Yet when Labour’s health spokesman Wes Streeting mooted even modest reform, his party pleaded with him to shut up.
Some privatisations have worked and some have not. This should be Labour’s home turf. Yet it is left to investigative journalism to unveil the scandal of Britain’s water industry. The long-mooted renationalisation of the railways is in chaos and without a plan. There has been no murmur from Labour on its threat to cancel HS2 if its cost continued to spiral. I have seen no opposition reaction to the state of Britain’s airports. Heathrow’s soaring landing fees and tacky shopping malls are the result of offshore ownership carrying £15bn of debt, according to Brett Christopher’s book, Our Lives in their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World.
Starmer accepts that a key failing of these public services lies in their over-centralisation. He has said he wants communities to “take back control” by devolving powers to local authorities. Every opposition in modern times has made that pledge. None honours it, largely because, as with Starmer, they have no clue what it means beyond an abstract platitude. As for what powers are to be devolved – over taxes, schools, roads, houses, planning – we are in the dark.
Starmer seems petrified of even hinting at an open mind in areas where public opinion might be receptive. Most Britons now think Brexit was a mistake and would favour moves at least towards reintegrating with the single market. Does Labour agree? Half of Londoners favour decriminalising cannabis. Britain is still jailing young people for drug use, lagging behind almost every western country. Is Labour content with this?
The left’s traditional enthusiasm for public ownership and state intervention is no longer a question of socialist ideology. It involves a pragmatic approach to state ownership and regulation that is always in need of updating. That updating is most soberly undertaken when preparing for government, rather than in the whirlwind of office.
In almost all the areas where government is failing, other countries can show the way. Britain can learn from Denmark on how to run hospitals, Germany on housing regulation, France on trains, Portugal, Canada and US states on new drug laws. Norway’s prisons are light years ahead of Britain’s, with less recidivism and a third of Britain’s incarceration rate.
Public sector reform is a central issue in today’s domestic politics. It desperately needs radical ideas. Redrawing the boundaries between private and public finance, and between free markets and regulation, has been the bread and butter of Labour policymaking since the dawn of the welfare state. With Starmer facing at least the possibility of a Lib Dem surge – the Tories’ secret weapon – his timidity is understandable. But timidity is not what Britain needs just now, it needs salvation. Labour has to show it understands solutions as well as problems. Never more so than now.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
