Lines of attack

By James Valentine

There is much angst about Labour’s opposition stance and in truth much of the party still hasn’t got used to its new situation. The economy is key and it’s an area to be handled carefully. Labour’s position, that we would have made cuts but not so drastically, is difficult to put across. And in warning of economic dangers the party mustn’t sound as if it’s unpatriotically willing them on.

Effective politics is about talking in pictures, not arguing figures. Cuts to school sport are more vivid than details of the OBR’s projections. And the dire economic situation in the Euro area is highly illustrative. Dozens of Labour Party supporters and members have commented to me about George Osborne’s £9 billion loan to Ireland. It’s not that he shouldn’t have made the loan – he was correct to do so, and Labour was right to support the action.

But it belies the picture which the Tories have been painting of a UK economy which was supposedly, in their words “close to bankruptcy”. If the public finances were really in ruins, we couldn’t have afforded the loan. It is notable that they are taking steps to rescue foreign banks when Gordon Brown was pilloried for much of his efforts in rescuing our own financial system. Ireland’s recent difficulties also prove that if you cut too fast, as they have done, you jeopardise economic growth and therefore make it more difficult to pay off debts.

All this is understood by many in the country and the party but not, it appears, by our own shadow chancellor Alan Johnson. Faced with an open goal, an opportunity both to attack and explain, Labour has dithered and failed to score. Johnson prefers, it seems, to bang on about 50p tax rates – and if he had any understanding of the business community he would know that it is worrying at the moment about survival, not taxes.

Events have moved quickly and not always predictably on the education front. The demonstrations against the tuition fee hike have been far more widespread and determined than anyone could have imagined. Labour’s theologians seem to take the line that until the details of the graduate tax are finalised we can’t oppose the government, but only months into opposition, while a policy review has only just been started, this is hardly reasonable.

Welfare reform is another area in which Labour’s opposition to specific government policies has to be nuanced. If IDS’ “universal credit” could be made to work then there is virtue in simplifying benefit arrangements. But Labour needs to nail the lie that poverty is just about unemployment. We must highlight the situation of the working poor and the fiddles like bogus self-employment that perpetuate their plight.

The unfairness of large-scale tax avoidance by the rich also helps to put the welfare reform argument in context. Labour is nervous about supporting protest movements and any action must be lawful. No-one want to go back to the 1980s and mindless Dave Spart-style campaigning which risks letting the far-left back in. But the influence of internet-inspired movements such as UK Uncut is undeniable, and there will be more such movements as the cuts start to bite.

As LabourList has often pointed out for most of the time when the Tories were in opposition they barely had any policies but that didn’t stop them criticising Labour in government, usually unfairly. If it was acceptable for them to tell lies about Labour then it is acceptable for Labour in opposition robustly to tell the truth about this nasty, hypocritical government.