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September 13, 2024 - 2:30pm
There have been actual honeymoons that have lasted longer than Keir Starmer’s metaphorical honeymoon with the British electorate. Two months in, only one in five respondents to a recent poll said they approved of the new government, while Starmer’s popularity is at a record low.
Pollsters and analysts have offered explanations for why this might be. But Labour had better get used to being unpopular, because the party is going to face many of the same economic and social conundrums that the Tories did. London Mayor Sadiq Khan brought attention to a few of these Gordian knots this week when he floated the idea that ex-convicts — this week’s early prison releases created an extra 1,700 of them — might be able to jump the queue for social housing as a way to reduce re-offending.
This is not a completely terrible idea. It has a certain logic, and is potentially a way of minimising costly and dangerous recidivism. But it betrays a disastrous misunderstanding of the current political conditions. If housing were plentiful and affordable for the law-abiding general population, then it might not cause much controversy. But housing is not plentiful and cheap, and Labour does not have a better plan than the Tories did about how to fix this.
As well as constant pressure on the demand side from immigration, the supply of housing is severely limited by planning restrictions, green belts, and the great power that our system gives to objectors — the much-disliked (but not always unreasonable) Nimbys. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced major planning reforms in order to build 1.5 million homes in this parliamentary term. Labour will reform the green belt and approve building on “grey belt” land, as well as planning new towns akin to those built after the Second World War. Even if this government does achieve its target, the country will still lack sufficient housing — the Financial Times reports that around half a million new homes must be built every year to keep up with demand.
Over this parliament, Labour will find that many of the country’s problems are of this kind — intractable without fundamental structural reforms. And the party is likely to find this out sooner rather than later, because sustained large spending increases of the kind that Tony Blair was able to unleash in his second term are simply not possible in the current climate. Starmer and Reeves can’t help but frequently admonish the Conservative Party for the disastrous inheritance it left. Yet the Treasury this week refused a freedom of information request about the specifics of the much-touted £22 billion fiscal “black hole”.
On issues such as the NHS, law and order, prison capacity, and infrastructure, we should look out for a dawning realisation that there are deep flaws in the way we organise the provision of state services. The Tories may or may not have achieved this realisation — but if they did, it doesn’t seem to have filtered through to policy. Their theoretical and rhetorical commitment to supply-side reform, removing unnecessary regulation, and individual liberty was entirely unmatched by any kind of practical action. In the same way that only Richard Nixon could go to China, perhaps only Labour can come to terms with the need for clearing administrative blockages from British public life. But, as the Zen masters say, we’ll see.
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