Newsletter - 11 August.
1.
In calling for a big package of measures to stave off the deepening crisis in living standards, Gordon Brown has done two things. One, he has proposed something that starts from the problem – ie, he has given his analysis of the overall problem and worked back from that. In doing so, Brown has shown the complete failure of the Tory party leadership candidates to even understand what is happening.
Secondly, by including an element of public ownership in the energy sector, he has calmly demolished the idea that such a move can be discounted.
Labour now has multiple problems to overcome. It makes no sense for the opposition to have ruled out public ownership in the energy sector at this time, a position reiterated from the Shadow Cabinet by Steve Reed today. The case for public ownership has grown, not diminished, since Keir Starmer became Labour leader. Yet Labour’s policy has gone in the other direction. Brown’s intervention shows how Labour has tied itself in knots on this matter.
There are ways in which the Gordon Brown proposals have their limitations. Brown’s proposition for public ownership is conceived as temporary and as a last resort, for example. In response, Andrew Fisher, the former executive director of policy for the Labour party, argued this week in favour of nationalisation “to run the energy system for public benefit not private profit - a massively popular and economically efficient policy.” A change in ownership would provide a long-term framework to tackle the climate crisis as well.
With Rishi Sunak’s emergency budget this May, the Tories set out a package of measures in response to the cost of living crisis – including a u-turn on the windfall tax. Andrew Marr, for the New Statesman, argued then that the “bigger problem is now Labour’s. In a matter of minutes it lost the only truly sizeable, widely understood and popular policy [the windfall tax] that currently divides the party from the Tories.” Here, Marr was raising the big question Labour would now have to address – how to pull the dynamic of the argument back onto the right terrain after Sunak’s u-turn. What was required was to dig in over living standards. Inflation and the wages crisis had not been abolished and even at that point it was known that the autumn would see a new crisis over household energy bills.
In May the warning signs were clear enough. James Meadway of the Progressive Economy Forum wrote that “Sunak’s announcement today will not cancel out the cost of the price cap rise and will prove to be inadequate.” James Forsyth, the political editor of the Spectator argued in The Times that “there is a recognition among cabinet ministers that, come the budget in October, the government will have to do more,” and that the “living-standards crisis will go on long enough that it won’t be the final intervention that ministers will have to make.” The General Secretary of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, tweeted that “the govt still doesn’t have a plan for giving families long-term financial security. Without proper pay rises we’ll keep lurching from crisis to crisis.” The former Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell warned: “despite all the hype, Sunak’s package won’t be enough to meet people’s needs & I predict we’ll be back here again.”
The big opportunity for Labour this summer was to run a big campaign on living standards, heading into the conference season having already framed the incoming Tory leadership and galvanised opinion in support of its position. It is common for Labour to come out of conference with an autumn campaign. But the scale of the present crunch is such that everything is much more front-loaded and urgent. The warning signs all year have been telling us this.
Labour’s communications team is staffed with professional and experienced individuals. The question here is not a presentational one but one of political will.
It is now promised that Labour will start to set out its alternative as soon as tomorrow. What Labour cannot afford to do is frame itself with a weak early offering as part of this latest package that does not get to the big structural problems. One effect of Brown’s intervention is to have set a new bar for Labour.
2.
The latest Left Q&A is now online. This time it’s with the Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament Mercedes Villalba. You can read the whole thing here now.