“It is not a coincidence that the spending that is deemed irresponsible is typically for the benefits system or wider welfare state. Tax breaks for a CEO’s investment portfolio are prudent, while funding for a disabled person’s care worker is wasteful.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Every time Keir Starmer has refused to commit to repealing a Tory benefit cut over the past year, and every robotic delivery of the dog whistle of being on the side of “working people”, has given the same message: the grownups are in charge and they can give directions to the local food bank.
Such capitulation is in part a rational response to a media ecosystem in Britain that enables a small group of rightwing newspapers to shape Labour’s policy agenda, painting the party as economically unsound the minute it attempts to make ordinary people’s lives slightly better.
In response to the budget, Starmer declared “the national credit card is maxed out” while Reeves opted for the old chestnut, “There’s no magic money tree.” Adopting such framing is not just economically illiterate, it fences Labour in for how a future government can raise funds and spend them.
Before you know it, Reeves is announcing that – now that Hunt has taken her non-dom tax revenue policy – she intends to pay for the NHS and school breakfasts through (wait for it) “future savings to public spending”.
If you reinforce the fear that disabled and sick people are a burden on the struggling taxpayer, there is less pressure to address real insecurity such as low wages and crumbling services once in office.
If you put the responsibility for the gaps in the labour market firmly on the individual now, there will soon be less focus on the structural issues – from long NHS waiting lists to poor housing – that are actually causing them.
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