Shilly-shallying

We know the Tories broke Britain, that's why millions of us voted Labour in the last general election, but why aren't Labour mending it?

They will say they've only had eight months in power and inherited an even worse economic situation than they'd anticipated. This may well be true but they wasted no time in cutting pensioners' winter fuel payments, slashing the foreign aid budget and refusing to compensate WASPI women, while showing zero enthusiasm for abolishing the two-child benefit cap or taxing the super-rich and non-doms. Now they appear to be planning draconian cuts to disability benefits in an attempt to force disabled people into work. In other words, they are taking a leaf out of the Tories' playbook in going after the poor and disadvantaged in an attempt to court the rich. How does this differ from actual Toryism? If we'd wanted this, we would have voted for the real thing, not Tory lite, which is what we seem to have ended up with.

Had Labour under Sir Keir Starmer shown the same reforming zeal for socialist principles as they have for failed neo-liberal ones we might not be in the dire straits we find ourselves in now. Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, inflicted years of austerity on the country from 2010 onwards, with the results we now see. Labour's Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, by sticking rigidly to her cherished fiscal rules, has given herself no room for anything other than swingeing cuts to welfare and services when she comes to make her spring statement (NB: emphatically NOT an emergency budget) to the House of Commons immediately after PMQs next Wednesday. 

Compare this with the actions of the Labour government which took power in 1945 under the premiership of Clement Attlee after the Second World War. There was austerity then, of course, after five gruelling years of total war, but Labour negotiated a $5 billion loan from the United States and Canada (admittedly impossible now) in 1946, worth the equivalent of some $80 billion today. With this they set about rebuilding the British economy and setting up a national health service and welfare state which still forms the basis of our society today, though greatly diminished by decades of Tory policies since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 with her monetarist ideology.

History has a habit of repeating itself, whether as tragedy or farce, and Attlee's Chancellor from 1950-51, Hugh Gaitskell, was remarkably similar in outlook to Rachel Reeves. The closeness of his economic philosophy to that of his Conservative counterpart, Rab Butler, led to the pejorative term "Butskellism". Consensus between government and opposition during war is probably a good thing but in peacetime it is disappointing to say the least. Could it be that this is why Starmer is so keen to take on the role of a wartime leader, talking of British "boots on the ground" and committing to 2.5% (up to maybe 5.0%) of GDP to defence.

Rather than treating the mess they inherited as the aftermath of war - in this case a class one - Labour seems instead to be preparing for a real one on the European continent. While wartime economies undoubtedly stimulate production and create full employment, they require severe belt-tightening by civilians on the home front and huge sacrifices by service personnel fighting overseas. Can this really be the only future that Labour envisages for the United Kingdom over the coming years?

If so, it represents a counsel of despair and a gross failure of vision.

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