Labour has published what amounts to a pre-manifesto, a 24 page document called Let’s Get Britain’s Future Back. Hours, blood sweat and tears will have been shed coming up with this title. I am willing to bet that there was some debate about whether the word ‘Great’ should have appeared somewhere. Let’s Get Great Britain’s Future Back or perhaps Let’s Get Britain’s Great Future Back. Clearly that discussion didn’t go anywhere. We don’t want MAGA overtones. As a pre-manifesto the document deserves some scrutiny, I am guessing that we are now too close to the general election for Starmer to launch a document with his signature on it which will be shoved onto the shelf like his many previous slippery and cynical non commitments. We are also entering a period when as has been widely reported, Labour shadow ministers and their teams will be given the customary access to civil servants to discuss their plans. This means that we should hear less of the old excuse ‘we need to see the books’ which people like Rachel Reeves (and her many predecessors of all persuasions) hide behind when they refuse to talk about what is financially possible). The Great Leader proclaims in LGBFB that ‘his’ Labour Party has changed under his leadership so it is fair to ask what has changed. One of the very first policies that caught my eye was a cast iron, no holds barred commitment to keeping our nuclear ‘deterrent.’ I highlight this first because that commitment is immediately followed by a promise to hold a strategic defence review. Talk about putting the atomic cart before the horse, but this is the ghost of New Old Labour, with its craven obeisance to some conservative notion of patriotism and national dignity. Some may have noticed this week the story that the Royal Navy has withdrawn three ships for want of crews. Well, our enemies will have picked up on that. Anyway, the glass is half full. Here’s a picture of Our Beloved Leader in his borrowed kit. Or is it borrowed? Is it proper NATO or TK Maxx? Proper service personnel by the way wear hats when they’re in uniform, I really object to this pathetic dog whistle signalling which can’t quite cut it (yes, I was told off once for not wearing a hat. It hurts). I think the prominence given to the nuclear deterrent is simply to show how Labour has ‘changed’ since Corbyn’s day—even though JC didn’t junk the policy. Theresa May said she would have no compunction pressing the button. JC was iffy. Starmer would hit it with a sledgehammer (if given permission by the White House). Man of Action! And what a break with the past = real change! But that’s just one policy which just happens to be a bugbear of the left, and should not be allowed to prejudice our take on the whole LGBFB document. Here’s some of the things I like: Abolishing non-dom status for the super rich, potentially generating £3 billion. According to LGBFB this £3 billion will pay for a great many of the promises made in the document. Cutting tax breaks for private schools—which it is said will pay for investment in schools. Creating a national energy company to corral investment in new green energy - fine so far as it goes, but co-incidentally the £28 billion figure (absent in the document) for green investment is just the sum the nuclear industry thinks it needs to develop its new modular nuclear reactors. The document recommits to the NHS principle of ’free at the point of need’ but that’s not to say that structures within the NHS won’t continue to be privatised. No mention of this or how it will be controlled. At the core of everything of course is the economy, and here we have a solution fit for the age, ’securonomics’ which sounds like it’s straight out of a policy wonk’s doodle pad. How will everyone benefit from securonomics? The proposals in LGBFB are fine in themselves—more powers to the Office for Budget Responsibility, an Office for Value for Money, a clampdown on cronyism in public contracts, cutting consultants but most importantly setting a ’fiscal lock’ to temper any outlandish tax and spend proposals—which sounds like maintaining austerity– or having ’tough fiscal rules’ as the document puts it. Given the crises we face, LGBFB doesn’t present a vision for lasting change, but merely tempers some of the worst aspects of Toryism. In so much as it does that, if implemented it could provide some temporary relief for ordinary people. But its core message is don’t rock the boat. Don’t mention the equality gap, don’t mention the urgency of climate change or the radical response that demands, don’t mention the botched deregulation of the City. Steady as she goes! To have credibility as a government in waiting it is important not to challenge very much. Perhaps I’m wrong. When Rachel Reeves was in Davos last week, I am sure she was mercilessly challenging the business execs all the time.
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