Keir Starmer launched a new Labour policy initiative yesterday. It managed 20 seconds on Channel 4 news, below the SNP leadership election. And there was good reason for that. It was a total, meaningless word salad.
This is the summary on the Labour website:
What does mission mean? Is it just an alternative to pledge because they have used that before?
And how is sustained growth reconciled with net zero?
Come to that, why is net-zero electricity the only sustainability goal? What about everything else?
As for the NHS, it does not need reform. It needs a lot of money. And there was no mention of whether that was on offer. But the private sector will be playing a part.
I could say the same for the police. Sure we need to weed out corruption. But having the money to recruit decent people in sufficient numbers is the answer there as well.
And barriers to opportunity exist because of a failure to tackle inequality because Labour is far too relaxed about wealth and will not tax it.
These opening headlines were all poor.
The speech Starner gave was if anything worse. On the economy, we are going to have sound money, respect for the institutions within the economy (the neoliberals in the Treasury, OBR and Bank of England will be lapping that up) and fiscal rules intended to ensure Labour cannot spend just to keep those same neoliberals happy.
This was a desperate vision for government from a party without a clue as to why it actually wants power.
I genuinely despair that when there is so much need for new thinking - and when that thinking is available - we get an offering as bad as this. Heaven help us, because we will need it.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Richard,
I purchased the FT this morning hoping there might be a sensible article about the Labour mission.
Nothing there except a list of the pledges.
Again producing a tory lite list shows either an utter lack of ideas and/or pandering to the Sun.
I do not expect any new thinking from Labour.
It’s now up to the public to produce the ideas because our mediocre politicians are incapable of doing so.
Presumably missions instead of pledges because Starmer broke all the “pledges” he made when running for the leadership.
He continues to move the party over to the right and some. Here from an e mail to a CLP (constituency local party):
“Organisations that are nationally affiliated to the party are eligible to affiliate to any CLP provided they pay the appropriate fee and the CLP cannot debate or decide on their affiliations.
…The following affiliations are therefore no longer valid and the CLP may not renew its affiliation without approval from the NEC. To do so would breach party rules. These are:
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Stop the War Coalition, Republic, London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Jewish Voice for Labour, Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, All African Women’s Group, Health Campaigns Together, The Campaign against Climate Change Trades Union, Peace & Justice Project.”
The thought police are out
I guess Jeremy Corbyn is a member of a few no longer valid groups in your list. Got to make sure there are multiple hurdles to stop him being the Labour candidate in the constituency in which he has been so popular for decades.
Most of the groups are valid. The Peace and Justice Project was set up for Corbyn. However the worrying group in that list is the Health Campaigns Together, which was set up by John Lister in order to make sure that those who support a truly national NHS don’t dissipate their energies and give up. The easiest way to fnd out about them is through SOSNHS. They are doing a big demonstration in London on 11th March.
https://www.healthcampaignstogether.com/aboutus.php
So you can see how many groups belong to it and realise how scary it is.
John Lister has written a very good book called NHS under Siege, which gives information on all the changes and challenges for the NHS. There is no mention in it of Starmer or the Labour Party being against the NHS and pro privatisation.
I find this one really bizarre
And then I note the presence of Streeting and his made desire to privatise the NHS through ‘patnerships’
And that explains it
That makes for dire reading. Some of it is just childish “stop criminals getting away without punishment”. This ignores the ACE’s research and any social, economic and political factors at play. Also, education is important, but what if everyone uses it and gets a better job? No more people frontline in retail, hospitality, social care, cleaning, delivery, factories and on and on. Education doesn’t change what work is available, or how much it pays, it’s used politically to divert from those things and blame outcomes on people’s “potential”. TINA seems to be true.
Ok, so we have the headline, but we need some policy specifics. For example, what exactly is Labour planning to do to change a situation where over 60,000 reports of rape each year turn into only 2,500 prosecutions, about 70% of which result in convictions? How many criminals are getting away without punishment?
And how is that – or indeed any of the other policy proposals – any different to what the Conservative Party might propose?
I wish I knew
The labour party’s health changes go even further according to this.
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/02/23/labour-bans-clps-from-links-with-string-of-human-rights-peace-health-groups-incl-psc-jvl-corbyns-pjp/
It looks like any CLP with links to Health Campaigns Together is likely to be proscribed. If you look at the membership of Health Campaigns Together, it looks like every union, every campaign fighting for a real NHS, like weownit or KONP, every group you’ve ever heard of, is a member.
Is he really trying to destroy the labour party from the top down?
I am sure he is
Silly boy Streeting is very dangerous
Richard, you are so right, and I also have the distinct impression he isn’t very bright.
He and the rest of the leadership have consistently shied away from engaging with fundamental ideas as to how things might be fixed, or to discuss fundamental problems such as austerity, inequality, monopoly, tax havens, etc etc.
Its as though they are afraid of proposing anything which might inspire support – and maybe get a Channel 4 headline-, because it may put other people off, or provoke the dreaded question ‘but how will you pay for it?’ ‘Who will you tax?’ – when he immediately retreats into ‘sound money’ mantras.
Someone said yesterday that not only were they not particularly socialist missions, Sunak could easily have put his name to them.
Polly Toynbee
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/23/keir-starmer-five-missions-prime-minister-leader-long-term-broken-britain
is very happy to accept Starmers ‘there is no money to do anything much, so it will take 10 years’ message, even though a combination of subsidy withdrawal, taxing climate-ruining activites, wealth, and some money creation etc could produce billions to get NHS, schools, police etc back on track.
At least they have put these out and invited a response – so hopefully will have to begin to engage with reality – but as you say Richard, so depressing.
Here you have an excellent example of why many, myself included, consider the Guardian to be anything but left-wing. When push comes to shove, it does nothing except support the status quo by speaking only in terms of the existing and (as we know) false narrative regarding money. Far from being left-wing, Toynbee is a gift to the Tories.
Indeed. They must have been secretly very pleased with themselves in 2019 when Labour got a drubbing – after their enthusiastic and relentless participation in the character assassination of Corbyn. Having effectively campaigned for the benefit of the incumbents for several years, it’s amazing anyone takes seriously the Guardian’s crocodile tears over what the Tories have inflicted upon us since 2017.
Some years ago, I wrote to Toynbee and mentioned MMT explicitly, setting out some of its tenets. All I got back was a brief reply telling me that she knew all about it. Neither in that reply nor in any subsequent column have I ever seen any indication of any understanding of how the real national monetary system works. I don’t feel that I can tar every Guardian with her brush, however.
Guardian writer.
UK politics today has great similarities to the period 1995-97.
Nearly two decades of ideological madness from the Tories had destroyed public services, British manufacturing and the millions of good jobs that went with it. It was a tiny rump of its former self. The only thing that was thriving was the City of London and its poisonous fingers of corruption were reaching ever further into British life.
We were presented with a choice. Either we could vote for New Labour, which appeared to be an agreement that the rich would accept a Labour government as long as it did not do anything to change the parasitic Thatcherite system, or we could vote for, …….. who or what exactly?
Thirteen years later we saw the results. Massive improvements in Health, Education and cities, but the fundamentals of the rotten system had not been changed. The Tories were back and the improvements were easily undone. Emboldened by the lack of threat from any real opposition, they were worse than ever.
The fundamental question for Starmer is, what is he going to do to ensure that the same thing can never happen again?
“What does mission mean?”
Re-expressing: I guess you could call it Labours “missionary position” – lay back, think of England and………. copy the tories/compete with the tories to produce the most meaningless slogans.
There are more charismatic speak-your-weight-machines than Starmer and his acolytes,
The Liebore hope is clearly that UK serfs, battered by the tories for 13 years will vote even for a party that is the very definition of vacuity.
Years ago I used to go to Speakers Corner to listen to various political groups. I was always interested in the then-Socialist Party of Great Britain speaker pointing out that there was no difference between Tories and Labour. How right he was! After all these years I can now see how right he was. I have never been a Labour supporter and only once voted for Blair in 1997 as there was no Green candidate and I was fed up with 18 years of Tory misrule. What a fiasco since – wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, fiscal rules, privatisation of the NHS …….- never again!
I think this is what missions are:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/public-purpose/files/190515_iipp_report_moiis_final_artwork_digital_export.pdf
Oh….
So Labour has adopted a Tory inspired initiative
Well, this is the either the biggest political under statement ever or the foundation of a new era of Fascism for this country and the world.
There is only one policy that we need: Government Investment.
Stymied by name, stymied by nature, that’s our Keir.
Weownit has a big demo in London tomorrow against the privatisation of the NHS.
Weownit is a member of Health Campaigns Together, which has been proscribed by the Labour Party.
Every other health campaign I have heard of is also a member.
Interesting to see how many of them are also members of labour CLPs.
https://weownit.org.uk/act-now/557-deaths-too-many-action-page
Why have the been proscribed?
That is absurd
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/02/23/labour-bans-clps-from-links-with-string-of-human-rights-peace-health-groups-incl-psc-jvl-corbyns-pjp/
Because they appear to have been linked with the Peace and Justice Party which supports Corbyn?
Most unions are in Health Campaigns Together. I don’t think Starmer has thought this through. He’s not thought about how many of his party’s members want a properly funded and public health service.
This is the membership of Health Campaigns Together.
https://www.healthcampaignstogether.com/aboutus.php
Doctors for the NHS?
The surprise in that list is that there is only one UCU group.
I read Poly Toynbee’s article in the Guardian today, dated yesterday, and despaired too.
She claims Starmer is the man for the job?
Well reading some of the responses to that, one in particular summed it up for me,
WhileRomeBurns
19 hours ago
Guardian Pick
Starmer’s promise to bring “the highest sustained growth rate in the G7” may be possible from such a low base, but it feels hubristic: do it first, boast afterwards.
Well he’s not going to do it with these policies. The core problem of the causing low growth in the UK economy is unproductive capital locked into rentier sectors and rent seeking businesses. In order to generate growth markets need to be regulated to force the productive use of capital entrepreurial investment.
New Labour make the mistake of accepting the Thatcherite elision that all business is good, it isn’t the, unproductive misdirection capital undermines growth and exacerbates inequality because it’s parasitic. The consequence of New Labour making this mistake was that it had to use government expenditure via tax and spend to drive growth, in order to do this it had to turn itself inside out with ‘creative’ bookeeping such as tax credits and PFI to ‘hide’ state debt. State dept is not ,of itself a bad, thing but the current economic circumstances are so constrained that even the old New Labour options are not available.
The economy is now so badly structured, the ‘real economy’ so distorted and growth so weak that Keynesianism will not work because attempts by the state to pump prime the economy are simply absorbed by the ‘bad actors’ of rentiers and rent seekers extracting wealth out of the economy.
Keynesianism cannot work without first regulating the parasitic practices of the rentiers and rent seekers out of the economy in order to allow entrepreneurial capital to operate freely. Unproductive capital is blocking the productive use of capital so that until the logjam is broken productive state investment will just be misdirected into the pockets of rentier parasites and not benefit the economy as a whole.
The theory of Keynsianism is built on the state ‘pump priming growth’ via the multiplier but rentiers weaken the multiplier because they suck income out of the economy and turn it into unproductive capital so that state expenditure becomes less effective and under certain conditions ineffective. Keynesianism doesn’t work in a rentier economy.
This is why it is such a mistake for Starmer to back off from nationalising the utilities because the privatised utilities are rent-seekers. A windfall tax is just a sticking plaster, a temporary solution, such a tax will be spent by the state but it won’t help the economy because the money will just end up back where in came from, in the hands of the rent-seekers.
Much to agree with
And remember, Polly was SDP and always in the centre
The new language has to start with insisting public recognition of where we are: in the middle of a major, multiple front, overwhelming crisis. A crisis brought to breaking point by Brexit, by the Ukraine war, by the Covid pandemic, by international (non-domestic) inflation, by the failure of JIT driven Globalisation, by a cost of living crisis, by the failure of thirteen years of UK Austerity (failure to protecti living standards, to secure domestic energy supplies that are affordable, or to produce any substantive economic growth, or productivity growth, or provide vital infrastructure investment) outside London in 13 years, and that has produced a serious shortfall in labour availablity, with no capacity to fill the gap (without increasing immigration, against current government policy or at least joining the EU Single Market and Customs Union). A compound crisis that merely demonstrates the disastrous over-reliance on services over industry; including financial services with limited future growth potential for Britain in international trade as London gradually loses its present position. A failure of industrial policy that has left Britain in a serious predicament in a post-Ukraine war world ‘order’, from energy, to defence spend; under-resourced armed services, inadquate defence spend, from ammunion to equipment (and a failure of defence strategy demonstrated by a war in Ukraine unconsidered in British defence or industrial thinking). In sum, the British economy has been degraded by forty years of neoliberal incompetence and charlatanism, and the country is now in a complete shambles. The multiple crises we are in is the equivalent of facing a Depression, or being at war: and we are perilously close to the latter – and demonstrably ill prepared for what confronts us over the next ten years, or more.
Enough is enough.
Historically, over the last three hunderd years British National Debt has rarely ever been below 100%, which is not even an everage, but more often – a floor. For periods at the heights of Britain’s imperial-industrial power it was over 150%. The periods when it was less than 100%, these periods are typically short. In 1945, at the end of WWII, the Debt was 250% of GDP – and we still created the NHS, and unlike now the problem of debt was the loans from the US. The problem was foreign currency for a war exhaused UK economy. That is not the case now; although most of the money problems are created by the overdependence on the City of London and international money markets of the UK economy.
In the crisis we are in it is almost criminally culpable to consider 100% Debt to GDP as a ceiling. This principle must be set aside; it is in crisis that a Keynesian approach to public spending, especially on infrastructure; whether in health, transport or industry, and ensuring ordinary people are able to spend and improve their living standards (WWII no only stopped the worst effects of economic depression, but provided a floor to people’s expectations in a post-war future).
The unsustainable absurdity of continuing an austerity driven, deficit obsessed, demented drive to reduce the national debt at such a time is appalling, unjustifiable and must be broken, before it breaks the country. We cannot afford the failure of neoliberalism anymore, and I mean any longer. Two more years of this is unacceptable.
It is long past the time that Labour (or SNP) danced around this nonsense about “borrowing” any more. They, whomsoever must ‘front up’, and find a backbone. The Neoliberals need to be confronted, head-on. The facts, the history, the evidence is against them.
As always John I find myself in much agreement with what you have said.
I would only add that after nearly fifty years of Tory speeches telling us that their new, dynamic way of running the country would produce new, creative, world beating businesses, I have to ask, where the hell are they?
German and Japanese manufacturing based in the UK seems to have done well, although Brexit is already thinning them out and the well known cheapo Irish Airline has thrived, but otherwise nothing.
The economy now consists of remnants of the old pre-Thatcherite economy, privatised rip-off monopolies and a financial sector grown grossly obese on trillion pound tax payer support.
It would be funny it it was not so sad.
Reading reports of Starmer’s speech and reading the document Labour released in which they set out Starmer’s ‘missions’ I was reminded of some material I wrote for an OU Masters course on strategy back in 2016.
One of the approaches to strategy I discussed was ‘template based strategy’, which I noted at the time, had become the most popular approach to strategy/strategic management by then (at the time there were over 76 million ‘hits’ on Google). The approach was the result of the merging of strategic management and vision-led leadership, which led, in turn, to the emergence of what I referred to as an ‘industry’ producing template-based or styled systems of strategy/strategic planning, not least because it was ‘a money-spinner for a significantly sized army of consultants and experts (including academics).’
A typical template designed for a variety of entities consisted of the following:
The Vision: a unique vision of what the organisation/nation will be like in the future.
The Mission: a high-sounding politically correct statement of the purpose of the organisation/nation.
The Values: a statement describing the organisation/nations values. Make sure they are noncontroversial.
The Strategies: describe some aspirations/goals but call them strategies.
Later in the module I drew on the work of Richard Rumelt (‘Good Strategy, Bad Strategy’, 2011) who noted that, ‘To detect a bad strategy, look for one of more of four major hallmarks:
Fluff. A form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking.
Failure to face the challenge. Bad strategy fails to recognise or define the challenge. When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy to improve it.
Mistaking goals for strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.
Bad strategic objectives. A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.’ (Rumelt, 2011:32).
It struck me that there are quite a number of similarities between Starmer’s ‘visions’ and Labour’s current attempts at strategic thinking, and template-based and ‘bad strategy’. Maybe some of the members of the ‘industry’ of consultants and experts that I noted existed at the time are now members of Starmer’s advisory team.
Can I post that as a blog?
Richard
By all means, Richard,
Thank you
Is it pretty infographics with inoffensive words and little content or value. It would be just as useless if it were carved on a large lump of stone.
Breaking it down:
* “sustained growth” – ok, if you think GDP is the be-all and end-all – and we know that approach is very flawed – but at any cost? How do we square that with environmental concerns? And then “good jobs” and “productivity growth” and “everyone … better off” – great. Yes yes – and motherhood and apple pie and rainbows and sunbeams and unicorns. But how? What precisely are you going to do to create “sustained growth” and “productivity growth” that has not been done before? Does “everyone … better off” mean rising all boats, some more than others? or are there any positive steps to address rampant inequality?
* “clean energy superpower” – what does that even mean? Nuclear? As for “net zero” – unless we can invent a way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere at scale, that means “zero”. There is no “net”.
* “build an NHS fit for the future” – I’d settle for an NHS fit for the present, but where are the doctors and nurses and other healthcare professionals going to come from and when? And how are we going to fix the decaying infrastructure? Even if 40 new hospitals existed, that would be a small part of it.
* “make Britain’s streets safe” – much though the TV and newspapers and doom-scrolling social media might suggest otherwise, statistically our streets are pretty safe already. But the courts are falling apart and the prisons are heaving, while many crimes continue to go unpunished. Yet more police with guns in paramilitary uniforms do not make feel safe at all.
* “Break down barriers” – look, rather than slogans, can we just invest more in education please? Teachers and schools, early years, primary, secondary, HE and FE, life long learning.
Now consider whether any political party would campaign on the opposite platform – no or negative growth, bad jobs, worsening productivity, more carbon, abolishing the NHS (they might do it, but they won’t say it), increasing crime, erecting barriers to education.
It is all meaningless puff until they present some specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely policy destinations and some actual policies to attain them.
We are of one mind
All that’s missing is “sunny uplands”.
These are the colours of the Sustainability Development Goal icons which are internationally recognised https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/news/communications-material/
They have just copied most of them for their own political purposes
Well spotted
Mmm, close but not quite, it seems to me. The colours of the first box and four of the five missions are similar, but there are 17 SDGs and no purple one.
The boxes here are close to a six colour rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue violet) but with pink instead of yellow.
Feels like a fairly generic set of friendly colours that any graphic designer might suggest.
The NHS used to go after any company that used what they called NHS blue. Not sure if they still do.
I wonder if the party asked for permission to use the colours. It’s supposed to suggest UN endorsement.
I can’t find any acknowledgement or attribution anywhere.
No mention of bringing the financial sector under democratic control. According to experts like Ann Pettifor there can be no change unless that happens. Churchills words are relevant. “bankers must be on tap, not on top”
Has Ann changed her mind on independent central banks then and given that idea up? I was unaware of that.