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22 January 2025

What is Labour in power for?

The government is failing, the Tories are out of ideas. Welcome to Britain in 2025.

By Andrew Marr

There is wisdom in crowds; the public is rarely wrong. If the country was able to speak in a single audible voice, then the most recent polling shows a nation with a shrewd grasp of reality.

In the winter break, like so many Westminster corridor bunnies, I returned fully to the land of family, friendship, neighbourhood – that other world of decent, empathetic people, who work hard and look out for each other, the everyday Britain outside the hysterical headlines of doom, the place politics sees as human putty to be shaped, but which magically outlasts every political lie, every political failure, every scandal.

This is the spirit in which to read the first big YouGov poll of the year, released on 13 January, with Labour on 26, Reform on 25, the Tories on 22 and the Liberal Democrats on 14 (other polls are similar). What is the country saying? Surely it is: “The government is failing and the Tory opposition is rubbish but we aren’t sure yet about Reform – they seem a bit scary – and we are happy to have the Lib Dems in our back pockets for a rainy day.”

And isn’t that correct? The government may come right – I think it will – but it is failing now. The rich are leaving and the young are off sick.

Migration advisers to the wallowing-in-it Henley & Partners estimate that one millionaire has left Britain every 45 minutes since the election, and that Britain lost nearly 11,000 millionaires last year.

It’s hard to be sure about the reasons and tax consequences, because much of the reporting is mere lobbying. But it does look as if the crackdown on non-dom wealth, and the Budget inheritance tax changes, may prove counterproductive. Unless you regard taxation as a virtuous punishment beating, rather than raising essential revenue for public services, then these may need to be reversed. If you feel that’s too humiliating, read on.

At the other end of the scale, since the beginning of last year there have been around 2.8 million people claiming long-term sickness benefits. Liz Kendall, the Working and Pensions Secretary, promises to get those numbers down and, again, the public finances depend upon it.

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Amid other controversies about migration, grooming gangs and the Chagos Islands deal, the two huge medium-term challenges are defence and economic growth, made more urgent by the poverty crisis. Labour could call itself a growth government, but it isn’t yet. It could call itself a security government – but that means spending money to rebuild our weak defences. Until they do, it’s neither. It has aspirations but no theme. The public has noticed.

Keir Starmer thinks (as I do) that the economy will revive under a consistent tax and planning regime from Rachel Reeves. For now, he must hunker down and wait. There is some wisdom in that. The ability to not panic, even on the worst days, is often underestimated in politics.

Meanwhile, if Starmer wants to cheer himself up, he can turn – as we now do – to the Tories. Kemi Badenoch’s strategy of not having policies is proving a short-term disaster, which should worry her because the short term may be all she has.

In her recent “apology to the nation” speech, Badenoch noted that her party had committed Brexit without a plan for growth outside the EU, that it had set net-zero targets with no idea about how to get there, and that it had overseen mass migration.

These truths instantly raise obvious policy questions. Such as: so, what is the post-Brexit growth agenda? Do the Tories accept that a return to the customs union, however embarrassing, would help growth? If not, if Badenoch is still committed to the “Singapore-on-Thames” model, how deeply would she cut public spending to allow for that? Would she dismantle the welfare state system – and if so, what of the lower-income voters that she’s struggling to keep away from Reform?

Boris Johnson let immigration rip to get growth: is Badenoch now saying she would go the other way? On net zero, if she still believes in it, what is her practical alternative to Ed Miliband’s investment plan?

I don’t say there are no conservative alternatives available in public policy. Badenoch suggested she would consider means testing the pensions triple lock. But there’s no point in apologising for past policy failures and not being straight with the public – if you have nothing to say about the future – which is what people are actually interested in. Again, as with discontent over the Labour government, the polling is eloquent: the public has noticed and is not impressed.

Which takes us to Reform, exploiting all of the above. In big policy terms, it is taking things off the shelf from Trump’s America, which won’t work here. In Britain, savaging central government spending (as Elon Musk has pledged he will) would have a more intimate, immediate and disruptive effect than in the much larger US. The Reform coalition includes millions of poorer Britons, many of them on benefits. Slashing the state will be very unpopular with them.

Like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage’s superpower is his optimism. But as with the Tories, the closer he comes to a hard policy agenda, the more cautious the reaction to him will be. He has huge organisational problems to resolve. And problems of tone: the chest-beating brashness and abusiveness of American politics is unpopular in conservative England.

Indeed, it was a stroke of luck for Farage to fall out with Musk. Recent polling shows 71 per cent of British voters dislike Musk. As so often, there’s a gap between the quiet common sense of ordinary Britain and a media high on hatred of Starmer and adoration of Trump. The more chaos comes to the US in the first year of Trump 2.0, with his mass deportation agenda and cuts in federal government, the bigger that gap will be.

The Liberal Democrats, finally forging a clearer identity again as the anti-Trump and pro- European alternative, may be where a bigger chunk of the country will eventually come to rest, though that’s a long way off yet.

What is the conclusion from all this? Columnists are supposed to brim and bubble with certainty. But I’m constantly struck by how quickly political stories that appear all-dominant vanish again.

These have been grim days for Labour. Starmer’s government, for which I had such high hopes, has made bad, newbie mistakes. Yes, there are still four years for recovery – in political terms, a lifetime. And yes, patience – the resilience Starmer has shown – is the underrated political virtue.

But when I talk to Labour MPs and ministers, there’s a drumbeat question which will not go away: what are we here for? However hard it is, Labour has to find a way to rebuild the nation’s defences – and that’s not for Trump, it’s for us. Then, coming in the spring is a taskforce reporting on the great question of poverty, and in particular, child poverty.

As a country, we must find ways to curb sickness welfare, for the benefit of those on it, as well as the finances. But elsewhere there is a crying need to respond to the black mould of destitution spreading up and down the country. Starmer used to listen to Michael Marmot, one of Britain’s leading epidemiologists, and should do again.

The country far from Westminster is tolerant, understanding and attentive. It isn’t transfixed by political headlines; it’s getting on with stuff. But it needs to be treated with respect. That means a government ready to own and reverse its mistakes, and to explain much more clearly who it is governing for. Once before, much earlier in his leadership, Keir Starmer lost faith in himself. It cannot happen again.

[See also: How will Labour handle Trump 2.0?]

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This article appears in the 22 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Messiah Complex