What Labour should really learn from Elon Musk
The lessons for Labour about what happens when you 'move fast and break things' can be seen more in Tesla than in the US Government.
It is reported that the Labour leadership are finding government difficult and the mechanisms of government very annoying. They aren’t wholly wrong to be infuriated by it and want to change it. I’m currently reading, and furiously nodding along to, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson who are looking at the ways the administrative state - much of which has been the result of policy that was initially progressive - has blocked progressive economic programmes in the US.
I think a programme of long term, deep governmental reform is both long overdue and something you have to do at the start of any government to have the slightest chance of embedding it and making sure it takes hold – not just in shape but in spirit.
But Labour people who reportedly look with envy at DOGE and the speed with which Elon Musk1 is tearing through government are wrong to do so.
There’s a reason business people are almost never good at government when they get there. It’s because running a government is much more complex than running a business. The things government do are trickier. It’s not a case of a bottom line. The ‘shareholders’ are millions of voters wants millions of different things - not a few rich people wanting to be richer. The things they want are things the market cannot do; is not designed to do; in fact actively impedes to in many cases.
Equally, while businesses may want those sweet, sweet government contracts when it comes to procurement, they aren’t prepared to face elections every half a decade to hold onto such contracts. In fact they employ armies of lawyers – probably larger than the UK’s standing army – to ensure that whoever is in power, they are tied into 20+ year contracts for the private sector delivery of what they, the elected politicians, will be held accountable for.
Anyone who is charged with implementing a programme of government reform must be willing to absolutely question everything and change much. But they cannot do so in the same way you would if trimming the fat from a corporation. They cannot do so with only a spreadsheet where their heart and imagination should be.
And while that change can and should include the structure of Whitehall and the overlap and waste of quangos. It must also look at how, when and why government contracts from the private sector. Because it would be pure madness to think that this area alone has escaped bloat, poor practice, unfavourable negotiations, wild levels of overlap and wilder lack of accountability.
Dodgy DOGE – a money gouging machine for the interests of oligarchs may be active with a pace of change that Labour can only dream of, but it is not activity that Labour should in any way emulate.
I spend a lot of my time thinking about how government works and the way the people who do that work think. Sometimes I think I focus on this a little too much.
Last weekend, for example, my Dad and I had a bit of a quarrel2 about Harold Wilson’s famous quote “The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing”. Dad loves that quote and used it in a letter he wrote to the Guardian recently. I, on the other hand, have long been sceptical about what the sense that we are on a moral mission does to us as a party and activists and our ability to debate and persuade both internally and externally.
But, in part, I was being quite bloodless in my quarrel and frustration with my Dad – not least that we absolutely agreed on the substance of his letter. We were quarrelling about tactics and framing and I think I was a little bit right and a little bit wrong.
Coming back to what Labour should learn from Elon Musk, I am thinking about the sharp change in the attitude that consumers have to his products – and in particular Teslas.
It’s hard to remember, but liberal lefties used to really want a Tesla – even if the price tag excluded the majority of us from ever actually doing so (my 11 year old, ULEZ compliant, 21,000 miles-on-the-clock Ford Ka suits me just fine thanks!). But as the market for electric vehicles rose, so too did Musk’s stinky public presence. He jumped hard on the MAGA train and his followers on X whoop and hollar at his every pronouncement.
But people have dramatically stopped actuallybuying his cars. He forgot who his actual market were – people who buy electric vehicles – and started endlessly grandstanding for people who buy gas guzzling trucks. The result has not been the latter turning to electric vehicles, but the former turning to other models. He abandoned the ethos that made his core business a success.
What is the lesson in this for Labour?
Well I come back to what I was saying last week – that the disenchantment with Labour may not be bursting with revolutionary fervour within Labour ranks, but it is building and not being stemmed. And in part, this is because – in the mould of Musk – Labour’s communications seem to be obsessed with a message that actively puts off its base.
Labour does have to do difficult things under difficult circumstances and in ways that activists like both myself and my Dad don’t like (I don’t include the petition my Dad wrote his letter about which I think was a dumb and cackhanded attempt at email farming Labour/Reform switchers which is unlikely to work and will cause more hurt to activists than it will benefit to the candidate). But the leadership are going to have to learn – and learn quickly – that they need to remember who their activists are and stop trying to cleave them – emotionally, politically and intellectually – from the country they want to run and the story they want to tell about it.
Labour politicians are already finding their stock falling in public and internal polls. Maybe now is the time to stop their Muskovite message pivot and remember who they are, where they come from and the values they share with their party.
This is the fortnightly free version of my weekly email. I rely, in part, on the income I get from my writing, so I would be delighted if you sign up to get the whole shebang!
The price of this newsletter is now £5 per month or £50 for an annual subscription. You can subscribe by clicking below. Paid subscribers get double the content - access to everything I write on a weekly, rather than fortnightly, basis.
Your support for independent media is greatly appreciated. This project takes work and care, and I cherish your support and recognition.
My new play, Four Weigh-Ins and a Funeral is happening on 6-10 May. I’m so excited about this piece. It’s absolutely NOT a play about losing weight, but a play about finding community. I’d love you to come and see it. Click the poster for a link to buy tickets!
I don’t touch type and my fingers keep instinctively going to call him Elon Mush. Which is what he seems intent on turning his brain into.
It is worth saying that for Dad and I, quarrelling about politics (and whether I should, in fact, wear a coat) is how we show our love.