With the local elections round the corner and the general election rumoured for next autumn, Keir Starmer, the measured lawyer, is rebranding. Faced with criticism over attack ads on Rishi Sunak, the newly bullish Labour leader has doubled down, insisting he will continue “no matter how squeamish it might make some feel”. Those who object to the new tactics are not expressing legitimate critiques, the argument goes – they’re just too soft for the fight. As one frontbencher put it: “We have come back from Easter ready for a scrap. Yes, this is a reset and we are ready to take a few swings.”
The attack ads levelled at Sunak are grim, but he is not the only – or most worrying – target of Labour’s blows. Last week, Labour blasted benefit fraud and error, claiming the cash lost could fund extra cost of living payments. Inadvertently or not, in doing so the party played into old stereotypes of “scrounging” benefit claimants. The tactic falsely suggests the benefits system is rife with fraud, while framing benefit claimants as the reason other “deserving” people aren’t getting the support they need. It conflates fraud with innocent error, reinforcing the long-term Tory attempt to bloat the figures of benefit fraud.
Politics, much like life, is ultimately a series of choices. And Labour has chosen to target families on universal credit rather than say, the £35bn lost to tax fraud and evasion.
This is a calculation of a wounded party long out of power. If you are serious about winning, the thinking goes, you cannot deviate too far from the toxic line on benefit claimants touted by many in the media. That the message for people struggling to feed themselves is “this party is not for you” is lost amid the blood sport. There will always be casualties on the long road to power – and we are expected to make our peace with that.
Look, too, at the strategies being used against social care users or NHS strikers. On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, ruled out social care free at the point of need as “hugely expensive” and too much of a “big overnight change”. Given the wreckage of the last 13 years of Tory rule, it is almost impressive that the opposition can frame “too much change” as a negative to squirm away from. Labour’s commitment to “fiscal responsibility”, in the form of limited spending, is in many ways a self-inflicted wound, pushing them away from any real form of investment that would actually make people’s lives better. Last week, Starmer said that the pay demand of junior doctors was unaffordable. There is no desire from Labour to challenge the economic and political status quo over what exactly we choose to afford or how we choose to afford it. Low expectations are regarded as a sign of maturity. The grownups know better, even as disabled people sit in their own faeces waiting for a care worker.
It is not simply that this is deeply disappointing coming from the party of labour – it is also unnecessary. With NHS waiting lists the key concern on the doorstep for next month’s elections and satisfaction with social care plummeting, now is an ideal time to argue for a radical increase in funding for health and social care.
Labour’s strategy is clearly designed to show it is unafraid to focus on areas – crime, benefits, fiscal responsibility – that are traditional Conservative territory. Generous minds would describe this as “beating the Tories at their own game”. But it could also be described as trying to out-Tory the Tories. Such capitulation only serves to push the dial ever further right, keeping the national conversation conservative and giving the government tacit permission to be increasingly reactionary and callous. Voters are likely to be unimpressed. Progressives will be turned off, while no one who genuinely believes that benefit claimants are milking the system will ever be satisfied with whatever Labour is willing to offer. A Tory party which is currently fighting for the right to display golly dolls will never lose a race to the bottom.
Starmer is keen to say he will be “ruthless” in pursuit of power. Fine. But there is little point in power if it is not used for transformative change. None of the crises facing Britain at present – from a broken NHS and social care, soaring child poverty, mass strikes and a meagre benefits system to the lack of affordable housing – will be solved by business as usual. Or, to put it another way: it is not wrong for Labour to be ruthless – it just has to be ruthless about the right things.
As it stands, its tactics are doing more harm than good. When it rails against benefit overspending or cautions against social care overhaul, it is not just the Tories it is attacking. It is the very people who need Labour most. Children are eating rubbers at school because their parents can’t afford lunch. Disabled people are turning off medical equipment when they can’t pay their energy bills. Come out fighting, Labour. But first, pick the right target.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
