After his disastrous appearance on The World At One yesterday, it was a more relaxed Ed Miliband who took to the Daybreak sofa this morning. Asked about the ill-fated interview by presenter Lorraine Kelly and his refusal to say whether Labour would borrow more in the short term, he replied:
Look, that happens. You do interviews; some interviews well, some interviews not so well. Look, I was asked a question about VAT and Labour’s plans to cut VAT. I am clear about this, a temporary cut in VAT, as we are proposing, would lead to a temporary rise in borrowing. The point I was making yesterday was that if you can get growth going by cutting VAT, then over time you will see actually borrowing fall – that was the point I was making yesterday and it’s good to be able to make it today.
Although Miliband made it sound otherwise, the admission was a significant one. Labour’s “five point-plan for jobs and growth” has always rested on the assumption that the party would borrow more in the short-term. Were it do otherwise, and fund measures such as a VAT cut through spending cuts or tax rises elsewhere, the effectiveness of any stimulus would be dramatically reduced. Yet until now, Miliband has refused to concede as much.
Now he has finally done so, the task for Labour is to persuade the public that borrowing for growth, at a time of stagnation and rising unemployment, is the right (and responsible) thing to do. Today’s ComRes poll for the Independent, showing that 58 per cent of the public believe that the government’s economic plan has failed and that it will be “time for a change” in 2015 is a reminder of the appetite for an alternative.
The difficulty for Labour is that the Tories’ argument that “you can’t borrow more to borrow less” has a seductive appeal. But as anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage or founded a company knows, it’s not true. As families struggle to find affordable housing and adequate employment, Labour should make the argument that now is precisely the time for the government to take advantage of record low interest rates and borrow to invest. To the charge that it is burdening future generations with debt, the party should reply: what kind of country will our children inherit if we don’t build more homes, create more jobs and protect the services we rely on? When the private sector is unwilling or unable to fulfil these duties, it falls to the state to intervene and act as a spender of last resort. As Nye Bevan once declared, government must never become a mere “public mourner for private economic crimes”.
The failure of Labour to make these arguments since 2010 means it has a significant political deficit to overcome. But if Miliband is to offer a genuine alternative to austerity, he must now resolve to do so.
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