Reasons to be cheerful

It was great to be able to sit down in front of the telly at 12.15 today to watch the much-anticipated return of BBC2's Politics Live programme.

To describe this niche show as the highlight of my day would perhaps be to paint a rather more dreary picture of my life as a pensioner than the reality warrants. Nevertheless, it is a very welcome part of my daily routine and, whilst the politics never goes away, despite Parliamentary recesses, the sensible analysis does - and is sorely missed.

Of course, presenters such as Jo Coburn and Laura Kuenssberg richly deserve a break when Parliament isn't sitting, the more so after all the bullshitting, evasion and downright lying they have to put up with from politicians during term-time. They need to recharge their batteries as much as the rest of us - probably more so - but it's good to have them back on our screens.

Today's Politics Live was a good start to what is, effectively, the next five years of parliamentary cut-and-thrust under a new Labour government. Okay, so Labour won its parliamentary landslide back on 4th July but MPs only had a few weeks in the Commons before the summer recess started on 31st July and will be off again for conference recess from 13th September to 6th October.

The next fortnight will thus be crucial for the new Labour government to set the agenda and put its stamp on government for those next five years. The process began before the summer recess with Chancellor Rachel Reeves' brutal take-down of her Conservative predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, for an alleged £22bn budgetary shortfall caused by 'in-year' departmental spending. 

This so-called 'black hole' in the economy came to light once Reeves had had a chance to 'open the books'. A lot of this was performative but, despite much huffing and puffing from Hunt, the charge stuck and facts emerging over the summer have only served to consolidate the indictment. The cudgels will doubtless be taken up again in earnest this week and Wednesday's Prime Ministers Questions (PMQs) will be one to watch.

But here's the thing: while Labour has understandably put much effort in over the summer managing (downwards) public expectation of what it will be able to achieve in its first term, it has risked spreading doom-and-gloom amongst an electorate whose mood is already at a pretty low ebb. 

The strategy may have been to overstress the direness of the economic legacy in order for Reeves to surprise everyone by pulling a rabbit out of the hat in her first budget on 30th October. Then again it might have been to get the pain out of the way early in the hope that the economy will have perked up before the next general election, scheduled for 2029, when Labour will be granted a second term by a grafeful electorate.

Or maybe not. Labour may already have overdone the grimness by laying it on with a trowel as they have done. Hunt warned against 'talking down' the economy and the danger now is that government finances really are in such a parlous state that Reeves' rabbits have run for the hills - along with all the investors she so assiduously courted over the summer.

Her post-election announcement of axing of pensioners' winter fuel allowance for all except those on means-tested benefits left ten million older voters feeling immediately trepidatious, if not betrayed. For those who, like me, voted Labour grudgingly it will also have come as an unexpected and unwelcome reward for our support. And for those who didn't it will merely have confirmed what they already believed; that they were better off under the Tories.

As it embarks on the Parliamentary session which leads into winter Labour needs to promote a narrative of hope and positivity, while praying it isn't going to be a harsh one. We already know the Tories messed up badly, that's why so many of us voted Labour - duh! However, many of us did so purely to get rid of the Tories rather than out of any deep commitment to the Labour prospectus set out by Starmer, Reeves and Co in their manifesto.

Tony Blair's 1997 promise that 'things can only get better' was made against the backdrop of a buoyant economy. The current Labour leadership doesn't have that advantage - we get that - but after fourteen years of Tory misrule we've had a bellyful of austerity. The promise of jam tomorrow won't wash.

And 'things can only get tougher' really won't cut it.

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