Warning. This column contains good news, when it is an (un)truth widely acknowledged that only grim stories attract public attention. News must be something someone somewhere doesn’t want printed, says the old maxim. Well, battalions of interests want to suppress good news: the overwhelmingly Tory or Reform UK press and antisocial media sites don’t want any stories to surface that might do credit to a Labour government.
Among this deluge of disinformation and malevolence, when asked, a sour and disengaged electorate struggles to think of anything good this government has done. True, the prime minister and his cabinet are partly to blame for failing to tell their story, paint their picture, draw us a map of where they are going and why. They too often do good by stealth, afraid of what the right and business might say if they dare trumpet the strong social justice themes that drive most of what they do. But lay out what the government has done and there it is, plain as a pikestaff. There have been blunders, missteps, bad timing and wrongheaded manifesto pledges, but follow the money to define its identity. What has Labour raised from whom and how was it spent? That’s what historians will look for.
