There is a reason why the line ‘Vote Labour, get Tory’ resonates. It’s true. One of the frustrations of British politics is the Labour Party’s supine willingness to accept the financial rules set by their Conservative counterparts.
Yes, there’s a change of tone, a shift in some priorities. But where it counts, there is little difference between the two main parties.
In the Home Office, Yvette Cooper is channelling her inner Theresa May. Britain was, is, and will remain a hostile environment to people fleeing persecution (often from conflicts the British were at the root of).
In the Foreign Office, David Lammy cannot wean himself off Britain’s insistence that it must shadow American foreign policy. For all his fine words, Britain remains supportive of Benjamin Netanyahu’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza and the West Bank.
But it is in the Treasury where Labour feels it must kow-tow most to Conservative economic orthodoxy.
Since he won the general election, Keir Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves have been laying the ground for Austerity Mark Two. The decision to cut the winter fuel allowance for millions of pensioners, and the refusal to lift the two-child limit for families claiming universal credit, are the early markers for what is to come.
Reeves has been explicit about her determination to cut spending and raise taxes in the forthcoming budget – decisions which will play out here when resources are allocated to the Northern Ireland Executive.
Today, in a speech so well trailed in the Sunday papers that there is little point in him giving it, Keir Starmer goes full-pelt Tory. The “black hole” in the economy is worse than expected; Labour will have to take “tough decisions”; for working people things will not and cannot get better.
He’s not even promising the status quo. “Frankly, things will get worse,” he will say.
Starmer is like the character in a well-worn joke about a new boss who is given three letters by his predecessor. “Open these when the going gets tough.”
Things go off the rails quickly. He opens letter one. “Blame your predecessor,” it says. We are in that phase right now.
When things get even worse, he opens letter two: “Blame your team.” That’s when the reshuffles kick in.
When things go completely down the pan, he opens letter three. “Write three letters,” it says.
That is how a one-term Starmer government might end: writing three letters for the next leader of the Conservative Party.
The irony is that although Starmer is currently blaming everything on the previous Conservative administration (and let’s face it, they are guilty as charged), he appears to believe that the remedy is to stick to Tory fiscal rules, Tory spending plans, and Tory glorification of the rich who dodge their taxes and hide their fortunes away in off-shore tax havens.
For all his protestations and Reeves’ faux outrage when she finally got to inspect the books, the Tory financial legacy should not have come as a shock. You do not need a degree in economics to know that Britain is bust.
The ‘black hole’ Starmer goes on about is merely an excuse for a Labour leadership team that is still pandering to those who destroyed the economy in the first place – Brexiteers, the anti-immigration lobby, and populist politicians who preyed on their prejudices.
Brexit is the single biggest factor in Britain’s economic malaise, yet discussion about how to mitigate its impact remains off-limits. ‘Vote Labour, get Tory’ is fully manifested here.
And then we come to the most incongruous thing of all: Reeves’ determination to stick to Conservative ‘fiscal rules’ which determine levels of public spending.
These rules have not been handed down on tablets of stone from some economic deity. They are man-made by Treasury officials. They can and must be changed.
As currently constructed, the rules limit long-term investment in vital areas of public policy: health, education, energy and transportation, to name just a few. They undermine completely Reeves’ insistence that she is focused on growth; and they have a direct impact on the ability of developed administrations to meet the needs of their own communities.
For the north of Ireland, that means running an economy that is underfunded and unfit for purpose. It means more people here will be trapped by poverty and all that brings – ill-health, educational underachievement, fewer opportunities for employment.
There is no benefit for Ireland in having a broken Britain as its neighbour, but it can cope. On the other hand, the north – even with the benefits of its ‘special status’ in the European Union – cannot reach its full potential while part of a political union which is in thrall to Tory economic mumbo-jumbo.
Starmer and Reeves would do well to listen to some homespun advice from the US industrialist Henry Ford. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got.”
To put it another way, the ending of Orwell’s Animal Farm applies in spades to the recent change of occupants in Number 10 and 11 Downing Street: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to says which was which.”
Vote Labour, get Tory.