Holding their breath, curbing their enthusiasm, Labour people do their best not to burst out singing. High command bans glee and gloating, yet everywhere people exchange jubilation and frank astonishment at last week’s Tory conference bedlam.
That ship of fools reminds all who fret at Labour’s disciplinarian tight ship what the alternative looks like. Captain Ruthless at the wheel has taken them on a gruelling journey from the Corbyn cataclysm, throwing overboard any crew with a hint of mutiny in their eye, all new candidates on-message vetted.
Yet Labour has been oddly bad at spin, allowing the lazy trope that it lacks policy vim. But Rachel Reeves ratcheted up the decibels. The shadow chancellor had them on their feet over and over for her policy-rich green building surge, a magnificent mix of serious chancellor, punching politics and depth of purpose. Here’s the real divide: not culture war trivia but the battle for growth, and she wins hand down.
For journalists, last week was more fun: rows make news. So they eke out the tired line that Labour is too cautious, where’s the radicalism? But look at each jam-packed meeting room to hear policies ready to roll from day one. Angela Rayner promises an employment rights bill within 100 days, to make work pay. Ed Miliband’s pledge to run the electricity system on 100% clean energy in six years would be a triumph. Wes Streeting’s national care service for England is an early starter, Bridget Phillipson fast off the blocks with early years plans, and “the biggest boost in affordable and social housing for a generation” includes Keir Starmer’s 1.5m homes built in five years.
To those doubters who still think Labour’s plans tame, take time to read the national policy forum document. The mood music will remind you how a victory for this Labour party would herald a sea change. “Breaking the class ceiling” was never said by Tony Blair. Jobcentres will stop the venomous culture of sanctions against “scroungers”, with positive support into work instead. Cutting child poverty is what every Labour government does. Gone will be meanness to children, and that Gradgrind fixation with exams designed to eliminate, not encourage. It’s good to see the words “bolster the BBC’s independence”, and a hundred other things a world away from Torydom.
Doubters pull a long face and say there’s no money. Reeves’s fiscal rules say no spending beyond income, only borrow to invest, debt must fall. She’s locked herself into a straitjacket: no tax rises or wealth tax, and every new minister will have to hold out an empty begging bowl to her. Grim, grim, grim. That rigour is the Starmer-Reeves price for winning public trust in a remarkably short time.
But that’s not the whole story. Expect Reeves, Houdini-like, to find escapes without breaking her rules. She drops hints and clues. The taxes on non-doms and on private equity are just samples, like appointing a Covid corruption commissioner to chase billions lost to waste, fraud and flawed contracts: Labour estimates £7.2bn. Margaret Hodge MP provides plentiful evidence in her all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax to hunt down evaded taxes hidden offshore. (Reeves should appoint her as tax evasion tsar.) These things no Tory chancellor would do, but Reeves looks ready to dig for gold wherever she can.
I was delighted to see she brought with her to conference Follow the Money, the acerbic and witty book on tax perversities and deformities by Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. A fountainhead of fiscal wisdom, he points to bad tax reliefs needing reform, which would bring in sizeable sums. His book will add to her own inventory of warped tax-relief barnacles on the bottom of the Treasury boat. Just before the conference, I asked Johnson where Reeves might hunt for funds without breaking her rules. Last week it emerged that freezing tax thresholds would bring the Treasury £40bn, instead of the £7bn predicted. Johnson reckons it could be more.
He reeled off ripe plums: self-employed people and landlords should pay the same tax as the rest. Capital gains should be taxed at the income tax rate, he said. I told him that Reeves had specifically ruled that out. “Any chancellor would have to say that,” he said. “If she pre-announced it, everyone would take their gains out overnight.” He suggests council tax revaluation: Wales is already doing it. Freezing fuel duty cost £80bn in 13 years: “She will have to tax electric cars.” Other billions can be had, and she’s reading about them in his book.
Of course, tax alone is no long-term economic answer to the country’s plight. As she stressed, only growth can rescue us from decline. Her £28bn green prosperity plan will be a hefty kickstart to lever in many multiples in private green investment. But right now, there’s money to be plucked. The first harvest should go straight to hungry children: Scotland already pays £25 a week for each child and has lower child poverty rates than in the rest of the UK.
Starmer and Reeves need people to trust they will do more than they promise, as Blair and Gordon Brown did. Both are more radical by nature than they get credit for. Reeves’s forthcoming book on female economists is full of Keynesian admiration for Beatrice Webb, with contempt for austerians and monetarists. But some won’t believe that until they see it done. As Reeves said to me briskly: “Do you think we’ll have waited 14 years to do nothing when we get there?”
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
