Labour’s response to the Budget shows the party’s irrelevance
John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn listen to the Budget (PA Images)
Budgets are generally there to do two jobs: to define the priorities of the government and set traps for the opposition. This Budget delivered on both — for now. That it was delivered during a crisis that is likely to have a significant and damaging impact on our economy wasn’t lost, but didn’t feel like the big story. For now, the response has largely been driven by standard politics.
Rishi Sunak’s calm and polished delivery seems to have calmed Tory nerves after an early rebellion over Huawei slashed the government’s majority. But massive programmes of government borrowing and spending aren’t a natural policy offering for Tories. If the economy — as seems almost inevitable — takes a hit this year, this change might find it has fewer champions than is currently the case.
On the opposite benches, Labour has been defining itself as an anti-austerity party for so long that it hasn’t really known how to cope with the Tory spending spree. Half of the prominent Labour voices are claiming they “won the argument”. The other half points out that, while there will be more capital investment than at any time since the post-war period, revenue spending is still down sharply from pre-2010 levels. This means that, aside from the NHS and policing, there won’t be any marked improvement to run down public services.
One particular area missing was social care. Given the crisis of provision and the fact that this is an area likely to be hard hit by coronavirus, the government should have acted. It didn’t.
However, none of these arguments from Labour work particularly well at the moment. Labour didn’t win the argument — they became irrelevant to it, possibly just irrelevant altogether. They are continuing to talk to themselves about themselves throughout their never-ending leadership contest. The current leader seemed a diminished man as he responded to the Budget. We will see if the new leader can turn this around.
Furthermore, this isn’t Labour winning the argument. Building a lot of new roads may be investment in a way that isn’t natural Tory territory, but it’s hardly the green industrial revolution Labour was calling for. This isn’t the Johnson government taking charge of the commanding heights of the economy. It’s them creating a lot of new work for private contractors. All of these companies will be the large corporations that are either too big to fail or, like Carillion, hurt too many vulnerable people when they do fail. This isn’t going to be a small business revolution.
The public services argument has more depth and — unlike claiming Labour won the argument — it has the benefit of being true. The problem is that it is the argument on which Labour led at the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections, but to little effect. At the moment, people are hearing that austerity is over and with a new government in place, they want to believe it. They don’t trust Labour and with the Tories polling at around 50 per cent they clearly want to give this government a chance.
It’s going to be a long few years before the next election. So Labour’s response to this Budget doesn’t matter all that much. Under a new leader, with a new Shadow Chancellor, Labour will have time to frame their arguments against Johnson and develop new ones of their own. The government will fail in at least some of its undertakings — Brexit, the coronavirus and the coming economic downturn will better define the weaknesses of this government than any response to this Budget. They will also continue to expose the Tories’ splits.
Boris Johnson is considered a lucky politician. He gets away with things others don’t. Maybe that’s true. But the last politician considered lucky was David Cameron. He was lucky — right up to the point when he wasn’t. And when he wasn’t, the fallout was enormous, both for his reputation and for the country. Boris Johnson is larger than life. If all political careers end in failures his will too. But it remains to be seen whether Labour will be ready to capitalise on it. So far, the response to this Budget just shows how far they have to go.
