Building a coalition of the unwilling: why splits on the deficit are still hurting Labour

While immigration may be boring itself into all current political discourse, attention will soon be back on the other topic that managed to slip its way out of Ed Miliband’s conference speech: the deficit. George Osborne’s Autumn Statement is scheduled for December 3rd, and with an embarrassing by-election defeat penned in for November 20th, the Tories are likely going to try and ensure that the media focus is on the economy over the coming month. Labour, meanwhile, are expected to start announcing the outcomes of the zero-spending review.

Yet disagreements on the deficit still run right to the top of the Party, with one Shadow Cabinet member telling Patrick Wintour:

“We need to decide whether we are the bleeding stumps party or the bleeding hearts party.”

Labour are straining themselves hugely in attempts to come across as fiscally credible. The restraints set on shadow ministers too means there is not a great deal Labour’s top team can do to share the responsibility in the run up to May, because they have so little they are allowed to say.

Take, for instance, the speeches made by Labour frontbenchers at this year’s conference: most were only a several pages long. I spoke to one lobbyist from a charity (and veteran of decades of party conferences) who only caught the final few minutes of shadow minister’s speech he had intended to watch. Tracking down a copy of the speech later on to see what he’d missed, he was surprised to find the only sentence he wasn’t in the hall to hear was: “Conference, it is a pleasure to meet in Manchester.”

Yet more telling than that speech, or even, really, Miliband’s, was Chris Leslie’s. The man nicknamed “Cutsmaster General” mentioned the deficit only once – and only in reference to the fact that it is rising under the Tories. What is most surprising is that Leslie is not usually afraid to talk about the deficit. He is one of very few who seem perfectly comfortable on the subject.

Now, I don’t have a problem with Labour restraining themselves because we need to keep spending under control. I don’t have problem with us being honest about cutting public spending. In fact, I welcome it. We will not restore faith in politics by pretending that we are not going to make cuts, and then doing it anyway.

Labour has talked about curbing spending in the search for fiscal credibility without yet fully making the case for reducing the deficit. This runs the risk of deterring would-be Labour voters before the election and actual Labour voters after.

For many, the lack of a focus on the deficit makes them not really believe our narrative on cuts. For others, that lack of attention to the deficit makes our narrative on cuts look dishonest: why sign up to cuts if we do not really believe the reasons for making them? The voters we are attracting are essentially an electoral coalition of the unwilling – those who are largely sceptical about deficit reduction. That is dangerous political ground.

While Osborne’s focus on December 3rd will be the deficit, the truth is this Government has missed every target on it they have set themselves. Yet the Tories are in such bullish mood they now feel they can announce billions worth of tax cuts in the next parliament – pie in the sky stuff if they’re serious about balancing the books. Cameron may now think it is his “moral duty” to cut tax, but in 2009 it was his “moral obligation” to reduce debt. What changed?