Further and faster on the road to nowhere

Labour and the elections

Overnight and all day today, Labour talking heads in broadcast media studios have been saying the same thing about the party’s defeat in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, and often catastrophic results in the local council elections. Durham was one such disaster, with Labour losing 38 seats to come fourth whilst Reform secured 65 councillors and political control of the council itself.

Labour 14,700-vote majority in Runcorn and Helsby was demolished, with a 17 per cent swing to Reform and Labour’s share of the vote down from 52.9 per cent to 38.7 per cent.

In response to last night’s vote, Labour’s line has been to say, as Keir Starmer put it: ‘we were elected in to deliver change, we’ve started that change – waiting lists are down, wages are up, interest rates are down, but the message I take out of these elections is we need to go further and we need to go faster on the change that people want to see. That is what I am determined to do.’

On the broadcast panels Labour spokespeople stuck to the same theme, essentially: we were elected to deliver change, it’s not possible to deliver that immediately given the mess we inherited from the Tories, but we will go further and faster.

This analysis is faulty. Of course it is true that people wanted change and they are not seeing what they expect from a Labour government, and in particular they see no evidence that their disposable incomes and living standards are rising - or will do. But they strongly oppose some of the key changes the government has imposed. The winter fuel payment cut caused Labour’s satisfaction ratings to head downwards sharply and is now emblematic of negative perceptions of the government. Far from a rethink, Labour is proposing to go further and faster in exactly the same vein as the winter fuel payment cut - by next imposing massive cuts to welfare, particularly PIP. Further and faster on that basis is a road to nowhere. ‘On every door it was the same story – winter fuel and PIP,’ reported the BBC’s Henry Zeffman from Runcorn. Behind all this is a wrong economic framework that ruled out progressive revenue-raising measures and adequate public investment.

Since the Labour leadership is not listening, the strongest possible pressure should be built up to ensure the maximum number of MPs vote against the welfare cuts.

I have written more about the elections for Byline Times and the full article is here.