A frightened Labour party will only accelerate Britain’s decline

Ducking hard truths in opposition is no way to succeed in government

Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer keeping very quiet indeed

On the rare occasions when the centre-left has a chance of taking power in the UK, the political correspondents of the Conservative press and BBC turn into a crowd at a strip club.

“Get ’em off,” they cry, as they insist that the Labour party discards essential policies that might require taxes to rise. And go they do because vicious experience has taught the party that there is no other way to shift wavering voters than to assure them that Labour will be prudent to the point of fanaticism.

By my far from complete reckoning, Labour has abandoned its commitment to remove the two-child limit on welfare payments, a measure that was once described as the “worst social security policy ever” after it pushed hundreds of thousands of households with large families into poverty. It has gone back on commitments to abolish tuition fees, to spend £28 billion on decarbonising the economy, to raise taxes on the wealthy, and to redraw the benefits system.

The Sunday Times had an unsourced report that Labour will commit to following Conservative tax and public spending policies until growth returns. Given that Conservative spending projections are so tight, no government, even a Conservative government, could stick to them, you must wonder about the sanity of whoever briefed the paper. All Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor will say in public is that “Labour will not play fast and loose with the public finances.”

 You get her drift, I’m sure. To replace the Conservative party, the opposition believes it must become a conservative party, or near as damn it. And I understand why.

People who live in a leftish milieu find the idea that Keir Starmer’s Labour can seem too radical to millions of voters, perplexing to put it politely. Labour under its current leadership seems a soppy, wimpish movement, far removed from the radicalism they believe – nay, know - is essential. The only reasonable objection to a party so feeble and compromised is to cry that it has sold out. (And, believe me, those cries will ring out within seconds of Labour taking power.)

That is how I thought in the 1990s. Every week in the Observer I damned the compromises Tony Blair made to win the 1997 general election.  Now I understand how difficult it is to remove Conservatives from power; how the very name “conservative,” with its suggestions of familiarity and stability, is a formidable electoral advantage; and how at the last minute in the polling booth millions can worry about their tax burden and job security and, with varying degrees of regret, reject the risk of change.

Ever since modern democracy began in the UK in the 1880s, Conservative governments have been the norm. Across Europe today, from Greece to Spain, right-wing and far-right governments are in power or are about to take power. By 2025, it is likely that Britain will be one of the few large countries in Europe with a centre-left government, and perhaps the only one if Olaf Scholz’s German coalition government falls apart.

I accept that Labour politicians have excellent reasons to reassure nervous voters. The characteristic I admire most in Keir Starmer is that he wants to win. After 13 years (and counting) of a government that has sent this nation into decline, there is a lot to be said for doing whatever it takes to just get rid of them.

But, and you may have guessed there was a but coming, the depth of the crisis will destroy Labour in government unless it is prepared to be radical. The tactics it thinks it must follow to reach power will undo it when it is in power. Labour appears to believe T S Eliot’s line that “humankind cannot bear too much reality,” and that the way to power is to avoid mentioning the awkward questions and hard choices the UK faces. Better to win an election without a mandate to change the country, than never to win at all.

But reality has a way of asserting itself. Unless Keir Starmer and his colleagues find the courage to level with voters on the consequences of Brexit, inflation, and the need for investment in public services, humankind, or at least that portion of humanity found in the British electorate, will turn on it, and rightly so.  

Humankind may not be able to bear too much reality but it cannot bear too much evasion either.