nitrogenNever interrupt your enemy when he makes a mistake. So said Napoleon (although judging from recent movies, you’d never know he ever had interesting ideas). Labor therefore watches Rishi Sunak run headlong into a huge trap.
Neutralizing your negatives is another rule. Labor follows this to the letter – and some complain it goes too far. Labor has traditionally had little faith in the economy, but they put fiscal integrity first, strangling with their bare hands any shadow minister who tried to spend a penny without permission. Labor is well aware of the negative consequences of its past: profligacy, tax increases, softness on crime and defence.
That doesn’t bother Sunak as he sinks into the quicksand of traditional Tory negativity. As voters revolted against years of extreme cuts to broken public services, he declared in an interview on Sunday that “the priority for the country is to make sure we control spending, we control benefits so that we can reduce people’s taxes”. In the current public mood, the Conservatives’ old wild cry will hardly sway votes.
To paraphrase another old military saying: “The greatest victory is to defeat the enemy without fighting,” as Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War. As long as it avoids making serious mistakes, Labor can watch as the Tory rat pack jostles each other into an ideological morass of policies that have little connection with the electorate beyond its core loyalists and their delusional media. Every day, the anarchist Conservatives cause more friendly fire.
To counteract their negative sentiments, the Conservatives should quell fears that they will cut everything and drive those already poor into poverty: voters already expect them to be the toughest, meanest and most likely party to cut taxes , so Sunak should try to sound surprisingly broad. Voters already expect Labor to spend more on improving public services and welfare because it has always done so: the public’s new trust in its fiscal integrity is hard-won.
Look at the calls from Conservative MPs to cut or abolish inheritance tax, which is a very acute trap. The chancellor’s unpopular announcement over the weekend of calling it a “harmful tax”, but announcing tax cuts only for the top 5% will confirm any doubts about the people he governs: four-fifths of the benefits go to Millionaire IFS says families love their families. Labor was quick to attack: Keir Starmer was “fundamentally opposed” to the idea and would overturn it. In other tax cuts, Labor campaigned on the fact that small national insurance cuts were worth far less than a quiet income tax increase in 2024. While cynical voters acknowledge bribery and dirty political tricks to empty the Treasury for the incoming opposition, Labor fears some will still be tempted.
Now let’s look at the other side of tax and spending politics. Sunak spoke of spending cuts, with around 280 flood warnings in place and Conservative voting seats making urgent calls for protection: the National Audit Office reported that the environment agency’s flood defenses program had been slashed by 40%. It was a good symbol of the dilemma he was in, as he wisely vaguely demanded “tough decisions on public spending” and “a more efficient public sector”. (Whose “inefficiency” is this?) The cuts are “comprehensive”, but he only dared to mention foreign aid, welfare and civil servants: Hunt announced a reduction of 63,000 civil servants, but did not say which departments would reduce which jobs. Sunak’s recent Telegraph headline “I will cut taxes by limiting benefits” may even inspire cynicism among the miserly elements of the party’s remaining voters, as many are unfit to work on the NHS waiting list People made welfare claims.
Any slogan, no matter how banal, will bounce back into the government’s record. ‘The future will be better’, Sunak tells Laura Kuenssberg [people’s] The children” opened another trapdoor at his feet. Does he really want to remind us how the Conservatives treat children? A further 350,000 people will be pushed into poverty in 2021-2022, largely due to the withdrawal of the £20-a-week Universal Credit increase that kept families afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. Benefit cuts target families with children. Whenever Sunak extols work, he seems unaware that 71% of poor children live in wage-earning households.
Children are becoming more unhappy, according to the Children’s Society’s annual survey. British children improved in maths but fell to the second lowest level in life satisfaction, according to the OECD. The number of children in care continues to increase.
Real school funding has dropped by 9%, and the educational attainment gap is widening. Park funding was cut, school playgrounds were sold, and swimming pools, youth centers, soccer fields and libraries were closed. Fewer children: Birth rates rose under Labor but have recently fallen to their lowest levels in two decades, making childcare and housing unaffordable.
This is what happens to children before mentioning the NHS, social care, courts, police and everything else. As for climate, Labor welcomes a green stance against the Conservatives abandoning their net zero emissions target, which led to the resignation of Chris Skidmore. Labor is being grilled over its £28bn green prosperity plan, but note that Starmer is sticking to its most expensive and difficult promise: 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2030. The Conservatives, meanwhile, escape what the Institute for Fiscal Studies calls “easy” same scrutiny. “Incredible” plans, including Hunt’s impossible £20bn of cuts by 2025.
The longer Sunak tied himself to the mast, the more reckless his rebellious crew became. Neither tax bribes nor spending cuts could save him, and his leaderless party was doomed.
