Spending and the language of priorities (or why the Left should want a zero-based spending review)

The “zero-based” spending review, which has been in the works within the party for quite some time but which is officially launched today, has been viewed with caution by many in the party. For some, the Labour Party saying that no item of spending is safe from the possibility of being cut is a truly terrifying prospect. For others, even suggesting that government spending needs to do anything but rise is baffling and uncomfortable suggestion. Ed Balls has admitted today in an interview with the FT(£) that the proposal will make him “unpopular” with some of his colleagues.

Yet the Labour Party and the Left in general should embrace a zero-based spending review, because at its heart it’s about the language of priorities.

Whisper it quietly, but there’s a great deal the government does that Labour supporters might be quite happy to see us chop. Perhaps the government currently spends far too much on expensive external consultants working within government departments when it would be far easier to build expertise internally. Or there’s the Bedroom Tax (currently costing more to implement than it saves the taxpayer. And that’s before we get onto perennial left-wing bugbears like Trident (which – if we were purely talking in terms of bang for your buck (pardon the pun) – might not make the cut).

And by making cuts based on what Labour considers a priority, we can also spend based on what Labour considers a priority. That means turning on the taps for infrastructure spending, boosting wages and living standards and reducing long-term unemployment and building homes. By adopting the language of priorities – and the hard-nosed decision-making that comes with that – we can start to provide a big, expansive, country changing offer to the British people. And by shifting the focus of the British economy towards strategic priorities – like jobs, growth, housing and pay – a zero-based spending review can also help to change the shape of the British economy too.

Fundamentally, the success or failure of such a review will need to involve the intersection of Blue Labour with what some have acerbically called “Brown Labour”. So that means investment in infrastructure based stimulus that gets creates quality jobs, but also a willingness to devolve power away from the centre, invest in early intervention and seek responses to problems that are community-based rather than necessarily state based. If the two can work together, we can build a British economy and society where people are a bit better off and a bit more in control of their own lives.

Not every pound of government spending is spent well, and if we ever get into the position where we’re arguing that falsehood then we’re in trouble. We’ve always got to believe that what we can do better. By going back to first principles and thinking more closely about “what” government needs to be, rather than just “how” it works, we can speak the language of priorities, and we can win. But more importantly, we can govern based on our priorities, rather than just accepting that things must always be as they are – as we have sometimes done in government before.