It is extraordinary, watching how this new government is performing. I know it’s easy to sound like a bad loser, having lost the general election last year, but the opinion polls agree that this new Labour government has had probably the worse start of any government ever.
Last week, we learned that the freezing of pensioners is to be reversed. The cut to the winter fuel payment to all but the poorest of pensioners was intended to affect mainly Tory voters. But after Keir Starmer realised that those same Conservative voting pensioners have angry, Labour voting children and grandchildren, he decided that prudent management of public finances comes second to being popular.
Similarly, the two child cap to child benefits is hugely unpopular amongst his backbenchers. Around 170 have indicated they will rebel if required to vote to keep it, so up to £5 billion will be loaded onto us all. And remember, the policy was as much, if not more, about driving behaviour. A single mother living with limited prospect of employment was, effectively, being told that having more babies brought higher income from the state. So whilst those of us who make decisions on how many children we bring into our families based on our means, benefit claimants had the opposite incentive. So now we go back to rewarding benefit claimants having more children.
And on it goes. But the problem is that we do not know what Keir Starmer, and the Labour government, stand for. Our prime minister, when seeking support for his bid for the Labour leadership, make much of his hard left wing credentials. He made a lot of his support for then leader and long term socialist Jeremy Corbyn. But as soon as he was elected, he knew that to stand a chance being prime minister, he needed to dump his left wing principals for a new, more popular set. And now he has made it to No10 Downing Street, like Groucho Marx, he proclaims that “these are my principals, but if you don’t like them, I have loads more.”
Government is very difficult. It needs balance and nuance. But it needs a guiding light, a North Star. It is no wonder that our PM has the lowest approval ratings ever. And it is no surprise that people look to alternative parties for an answer. But answers are rarely simple, even if the problems are clear.