Labour's self-elected sensible tendency has been busy today praising Keir Starmer's decision not to scrap the Conservatives' two-child benefit cap.
Leading it has been Polly Toynbee, who made her name as a journalist by revealing the reality of living in poverty.
The favourite tactic of Starmer's cheerleaders has been to accuse anyone who questions his decision of wanting to promise the voters that an incoming Labour government will reverse every cut the Tories have made.
This is a classic example of a false dilemma. In reality, there exists a vast territory between overturning everything the Tories have done and overturning nothing. And I suspect that somewhere within lies the best approach for Labour to take.
My worry is that Starmer and his supporters have overestimated his achievement. My impression is that he has failed to cut through with the public and is seen by them as 'just another lawyer'.
Labour's poll lead is less an achievement of Starmer's than of the last three Tory prime ministers. The government has been a shambles for three years and the voters have looked elsewhere because of it.
The real danger to Labour of Starmer's decision on the benefits cap is not the voters they may lose to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, though there will be some.
It's that the a growing sense that Labour are no better than the Tories would give the worldly 'they're all as bad as each other' type of Tory voter an excuse for drifting back to their old allegiance.
So far the Tories' flip-flop campaign against Starmer has failed to hurt him. It's too childish - maybe too American.
But it remains true that Starmer won the Labour leadership on a policy platform he appears not to have believed a word of.
Tony Blair used to rail against 'cynicism' when he generally meant scepticism, which is a healthy instinct. Keir Starmer needs to be careful that cynicism about his approach to politics does not become more widespread.
3 comments:
The brothers and sisters were ready to swallow Blair's conservative shift in the late 1990s because Labour hod been out of power for over 15 years. They were not certain of a working majority, having had apparent victory under Kinnock snatched away and did not want to take chances. Today there is widespread belief that a Labour victory at the next general election is nailed on. Hence many within Labour ranks feel safe to criticise in public Sir Keir's authoritarian rule, criticism which he should respond to sensibly rather than embark on another round of expulsions.
Gah, don't even get me started on the keeping Americanisation of the Tory Party. It wouldn't surprise me if Toxteth O'Grady is a guest speaker at their next conference. The Young Conservatives will probably have a farting competition, having eaten copious amounts of Elvis Burgers.
Starmer & Reeve could EASILY afford to lift the two-child benefit cap in government. The argument there's no money to do so is nonsense. They don't want to raise taxes on the wealthy or big business, so they can't afford to scrap the two-child benefit cap. They don't want to provide free school meals for those children that need them, or raise the cap on housing benefit. They want, as Jonathan Ashworth has informed us, to "crack down" on disabled benefit claimants. Labour are NOT the Party of Social Justice - they don't know, or care, what it means these days, any more than the Tories do. The Liberal Democrats should proclaim that fact from the rooftops, and not leave it to the Greens to do so, which they WILL, if we don't.
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