In the diplomatic words of Emma Little-Pengelly, “a considerable amount of confusion has been allowed to develop” over last Friday’s ‘pause’ in Northern Ireland’s four city deals.
While the exact cause of that confusion has yet to be explained, there is no mystery over why the government is behaving so strangely in general.
It is the same reason Chancellor Rachel Reeves has means-tested the winter fuel payment – a justifiable economic policy, but still a bizarre thing to announce in isolation three weeks after taking office.
It must also be part of the reason for cancelling Casement Park.
Labour wants to tell a story, or ‘create a narrative’, to use the tiresome political phrase, about inheriting a broken economy from the Tories and doing the hard work to fix it.
Its aim is to reverse the public’s deeply-ingrained sense that Conservative governments look after the public finances and Labour governments bankrupt the country.
Although the Tories wrecked their reputation over the past 14 years, Labour must burnish its own to complete the reversal. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the instinctive tilt of the British electorate.
The problem with the story is that it is not entirely true. The Tories broke the economy but they had already begun to fix it. Former prime minister Rishi Sunak had brought inflation under control and growth was spluttering back to life.
The danger for Labour is that it undertakes the enormously difficult work still required and suffers all the political pain that entails, only to find a narrative taking hold that the economy was recovering anyway.
So the new government has been hammering home a message of economic gloom from day one.
In July, Reeves ordered her officials to conduct a rapid audit of public spending, turning up a £22 billion “black hole” in Tory plans.
She announced immediate savings to address this, including the winter fuel payment cut. For the longer term, she has launched a spending review of budgets over the next three to five years. This year’s budget is on October 30 and the entire review should be completed next spring.
Northern Ireland’s four city deals came under the review, with at least two ‘paused’ until October 30, when it is presumed they will be un-paused.
In a statement after last Friday’s confusion, the government said: “We are facing the challenge of a £22 billion black hole in the public finances that we have inherited.”
The extent to which the black hole exists is up for debate. It is largely based around adjustments for unanticipated inflation, which helpfully trashes Sunak’s reputation. What is beyond doubt is that claiming to have found a black hole requires strenuous efforts to appear to be filling it in.
There is a nervous debate within Labour about the wisdom of all this gloomy axe-wielding. However, the party leadership is unmoved and reportedly delighted to see its message sinking in.
The thinking of the government and its advisers is that by the time of the next election, perhaps five years from now, voters will have forgotten about specifics such as the winter fuel payment. All they will have is a vague sense the Tories trashed the economy and Labour bravely fixed. To that end, the more pain now the better.
Last Friday’s carelessness suggests the government has barely considered how this might play in Northern Ireland. Suffering for the good the country holds little appeal to people who would prefer to be under another country. Nationalism has enjoyed several days of righteous indignation, a tendency of both communities here when their complaints appear vindicated.
Although Labour wins no votes in Northern Ireland, it is deeply committed to selling its message in Scotland, where similar politics applies. So it is ultimately taking the same view across the UK: everything will work out in the end.
The problem with a message of pain now and reward later is that it has a real economic impact that may simply cause pain. Business groups are concerned the chancellor is damaging consumer and investor confidence. Growth spluttered out again over the summer.
Even a brief pause or doubt over Northern Ireland’s city deals is far from harmless.
These deals are not just about new pavements in Carrickfergus or a cable car up Slieve Donard. Their main aim is to lever in private investment through projects such as the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Newtownabbey.
Nothing deters such investment like an unreliable partner. Gloomy stories can make themselves come true.