Growth for Good vs Growth for Greed
The Tories are going to try and pin an 'anti-growth' label on opposition to their economic recklessness. Labour must have a message that resists this.
the ‘Trickle down ecomonics’ theory of growth has always been redolent of the South Park Underpants Gnomes’ theory of profit.
If you want to know how to beat the Tories, you have to listen to them. However mad you think they are, you have to understand both what they think they are doing and, more importantly, the story they think they have to tell about it.
That the non-mini, non-budget has landed controversially would be an understatement. The pound has tanked. The markets are completely spooked. The Tory backbenchers were desperately trying to control their facial expressions but they couldn’t stop the blood draining from their faces as move after move was made in order to enrich the rich and plunge the country into vastly increased (and, after the 20-year high interest rate rise of the day before, increasingly expensive) debt.
Ironically, even the biggest cheerleaders for all these supply-side reforms weren’t happy. Kate Andrews, Economics Editor of the Spectator and formerly of the Institute for Economic Affairs, was really quite gloomy on Newsnight. Because the plan was never to borrow to give rich people lots of money - it was to cut public services to do so. That Truss has only, so far, implemented the first part of the plan is not enough for the truly tiny state headbangers.
But the truth is, we can be pretty confident we know how this is going to go. This is supposed to be a plan for growth - but even if it produces the kind of anaemic growth that we can expect to see as we limp out of a deep recession, it will be exceptionally unlikely to lead to an unlocking of the 2.5% Kwarteng said would be needed simply to pay for the measures.
So don’t worry Kate, this is just step one in this utterly underpants scheme. And given the impact it has already had on the pound, public services have already been cut by default. As the money dedicated to them can buy less. That means fewer nurses and teachers. Fewer medicines and textbooks. Even less visible policing. An ever deteriorating public realm.
But that won’t be all. Sure as night follows day, we will start to see Tory rumbling about debt turn back to Tory promotion of austerity and there will be talk again of ‘tough choices’ which will be tough for those who rely on the state and not-so-tough on those who have just been given a huge handout. Your cuts to services will come.
But how will the Tories try to sell this? It is clear from the rhetoric of the week leading up to this and the immediate response from the outsiders that any opposition to this strategy will be painted as ‘anti-growth’. They are comfortable with the proceeds of growth being unfairly distributed. They don’t think that attack line will stick. The Tories want the dividing line to be pro or anti-growth.
On The News Agents Podcast Budget episode (where I thought Lewis Goodall was superb) Conservative commentator Salma Shah kept repeating the line “why is it controversial to be pro-business?” as if that was what anyone else was saying. But the truth is, you don’t have to be anti-business to oppose the shape, design and size of these tax cuts. You just have to believe that they are not the best way to actually ensure that businesses of all kinds thrive and ensure that their workers share in that success.
This is the line that Labour has to get right. This is a moment where many will be sorely tempted to fall back into the kind of anti-Toff rhetoric that has failed us so badly in the past. The country doesn’t care about posh - they care about fair. If the popularity among some of the working class of Boris Johnson teaches us anything, it has to teach us that it is about who feels ‘on your side’ not where those people come from.
Labour has long been actually quite middle class. University educated and property-owning, we look like your boss. However lefty our policies are, we look and sound like the management layer who piles on the unnecessary pain. Posh is actually quite removed from that. This is why these class attacks don’t work from our party - they have no authenticity. If we’re going to invoke class pain, we can’t do it while looking, sounding and being the managerial class.
However, we can also turn that sense to our advantage. We can and should lean into being pro-business and pro-growth - just better business and growth that works for all of us.
Business isn’t homogenous. Some work well for society and some don’t. It should be the abiding mission of a Labour government to create the conditions in which the former thrive and regulate the latter into either becoming the former or getting out of the way. Investment in infrastructure - as already planned for in Rachel Reeve’s green investment plans are exactly the kind of dividing line we should be highlighting. Labour will create a country in which businesses and workers thrive together. The Tories will create a handful of winners at the expense of the rest of us. The Tories are not on our side.
Outside of a small subset of deep greens, most people agree that growth is a generally good thing. But there are and should be vast differences in how we go about getting to growth and what we do with it. Growth that helps no one but the greedy is unhealthy, unsustainable and will only lead to worse outcomes for all but a very few if us.
Labour’s message has to be unashamedly pro-growth. But it also has to have a story to tell (a vision if you like) about what impact national growth will have on your life, your family, your community, your high street and your workplace. We have to tell people what the alternative to greed is. Greed is not good. Growth that only supports the greedy is not good.
Growth in which we all share and prosper. Now that is good.
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have given Labour a golden opening to truly be the party of good growth. This is the week for us to grasp it.
Triggered
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What I’ve been up to
No new reviews this week, but I was interviewed for the Metro (as a republican) on King Charles’s PR issues.
What I will be up to
I am speaking at two panels at the forthcoming Battle of Ideas. One on obesity and one really fun looking session on what the best protest song is. Details here!
A final appeal. This newsletter takes quite a while to think about and write. I know things are really tough all over at the moment, but if you can spare some cash to say you’ve appreciated it, I can’t tell you how much that would mean to me right now.
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_