a clear guiding philosophy for Labour
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The British government’s appeal to regulators to come up with ideas for growth is easily derided. It’s not entirely foolish to alert regulators that their remit may change – but only as long as you also consult those who know what it’s like to be regulated. Here, as so often with this government, the signals are confusing.
Governing is difficult. There is a certain schadenfreude among veterans of previous governments that Labor is beginning to acknowledge this after six months in office. When Sir Keir Starmer railed against what he described as a “lukewarm bath of controlled decline”, he expressed the frustration felt by every new prime minister. But in his case, the lack of a clear guiding philosophy makes matters worse.
The new government is full of energetic ministers who work hard. But there are few analogies. The Cabinet feels more like a group of individuals with completely different views on the world than a team that offers anything like a coherent analysis of what Britain is suffering from and what can be done about it.
Listening to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster promising to “make the state more like a start-up,” the Minister for Science and Technology raving about artificial intelligence, or the Health Secretary talking about patient choice, you can be optimistic. A very different impression is conveyed by the education minister, who wants to turn back time by tearing apart two decades of improved bipartisan policy Schools. And from the deputy prime minister, whose gigantic workers’ rights package is further eroding business confidence even as the Treasury tries to restore it.
All government parties are a coalition of interests. But the extent of the dissonance in this case makes it difficult to say for sure where it lies Government will land on a specific topic. Which in turn makes it more difficult to build trust.
The argument for Angela Rayner employment According to the draft Human Rights Bill, low productivity in the UK is partly due to insecure workplaces. Against this background, some of the measures seem sensible: eliminating “fire and rehire” practices that impose new working conditions on workers, helping the self-employed to get paid on time and weakening some aspects of zero-hour contracts. But the bill contains a whole host of other rules: on rights to sick pay from day one, on parental leave and unfair dismissal, on stronger union powers and others that are directly at odds with the growth mission that Starmer believes is central.
Insecure work can actually have a negative impact on productivity. But that’s not work at all. The Independent Regulatory Policy Committee has strongly criticized the government’s impact assessment of the bill “not useful” and warned that the measures would harm low-wage workers. Business surveys suggest the bill will speed up implementation Invest in technology, not people. Of course, the complexity and scope of the new rights means that an entirely new regulator will be created to oversee them.
Number 10 and the Treasury are concerned by the economy’s response to the rise in Social Security and are deeply concerned about recent economic news. One would think that they would radically withdraw the employment proposals. Instead, a weak compromise of a nine-month probationary period was offered on the issue of unfair dismissal.
Given concerns about the impact the package could have on workers’ future prospects, only two groups will clearly benefit: lawyers and unions. The same applies to them Draft school law from the Department for Education, where Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson appears to be working on a freelance basis and has no connection to anything the rest of the government is doing.
Phillipson wants to scrap reforms started by Labor’s Andrew Adonis, who grew up in foster care, and later pushed by Conservative Michael Gove, the adopted son of a Scottish fish processor. As a result of the reforms, England’s schools rose in international rankings and are among the best in the world. They were based on the two principles of creating academy schools with more freedom, for example to pay good teachers better, and demanding greater accountability through league tables. Academies became a tool for turning around failing schools.
Phillipson wants to sweep away much of this, without a compelling alternative philosophy on how to push the standards forward. Their answer to the question of what should be done about schools rated “inadequate” appears to be to replace that word with something broader, which does not provide the same clarity to parents
None of this makes any sense. Improvements would be possible, for example in the audit of multi-academy trusts. But why change a system that has helped large numbers of the poorest children?
When it comes to investment, the Labor majority has provided much-needed political stability. But investors also need trust in the consistent direction of politics. They also need a well-trained and flexible job market. Ignoring this seems unwise to say the least.
Unlike Boris Johnson, Starmer is neither lazy nor chaotic. But like Johnson, he finds that ideas, some of them very bad indeed, fill any hint of a vacuum at the center. In meetings, he is known for asking for solutions rather than problems. But in Whitehall, the most persistent questions move up the system until they end up on the Prime Minister’s desk. Without a clearer statement of what he wants, it will be difficult to control the machine.
