The joke doing the rounds over the past couple of days has been that the choice of Sir Keir Starmer’s successor is between a candidate too frightened to go for it, another who is salivating over it but can’t go for it, a third who was investigated over her tax affairs and a fourth who has already done it and was so bad at it that his successor was Jeremy Corbyn.
If you think we have had stasis under Starmer, just wait until we have a PM at odds with Labour MPs
As an unashamed admirer of Tony Blair, I should be thrilled that there is at least one potential Labour prime minister who has a basic understanding of the real world. Wes Streeting, who resigned yesterday as Health Secretary, is usually described as a Blairite, although in reality that’s now meaningless as anything other than code for ‘not on the left’.
However he is labelled, it’s clear that of the putative successors – Streeting, Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband, along with anyone else who might emerge now that the former Health Secretary is going to trigger a proper contest – only Streeting has the necessary ideas, outlook and competence to actually do the job. To put it another way, only Streeting doesn’t think we spend too little on welfare, that the public sector is by definition morally virtuous, and that when borrowing is at a record £132 billion, it’s a problem for the lenders rather than the government – and taxpayers.
All of which good sense is precisely why Streeting would be a disaster as PM, because he would be leading a Labour party whose MPs are, overwhelmingly, economically illiterate, politically bone-headed and intellectually unable to grasp even the most basic points about the real world. If you think we have had stasis under Starmer, just wait until we have a PM at odds with Labour MPs over the basics of day-to-day existence.
Remember, for example, the first sign that Starmer’s post-election halcyon days would last around a week: welfare reform. We spend £320 billion a year on welfare. Liz Kendall as work and pensions secretary proposed a paltry £5 billion of savings, but that was £5 billion too much for Labour MPs who rebelled and killed off any further prospect of reform. The idea that these same MPs would tolerate any serious (or even frivolous) reforms under Streeting would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.
Two things are immutable about the political environment in which a Labour government must now operate, no matter who is prime minister. First, Labour MPs are interested only in spending more money. Second, there is no more money. There is not even enough money to fund existing spending.
Money can be found in one of four ways. Spending cuts to existing programmes, which isn’t going to happen given the views of Labour MPs. More borrowing, which would be a catastrophic further drain on the public finances, given that we already have to spend around £111 billion a year on debt interest payments, which is 8.3 per cent of all public spending. Higher taxes, which would make the current tax burden of 35.3 per cent of GDP (projected to rise to 38.5 per cent on existing tax plans) and already the highest level since modern records began 1948, even worse. This would further kill off any prospect of the fourth possible means to raise money: growth.
This is just one set of reasons why Streeting would be a catastrophe as PM, because he would be facing a permanent fight with Labour MPs who think welfare spending is too low and markets need to be brought to heel, while Streeting grasps that the opposite is true.
Even when Tony Blair was in near total control of the Parliamentary Labour Party, having won his own election mandates, he had to battle to achieve anything (“the scars on my back”). A neo-Blairite in charge of a Miliband-esque PLP is a recipe for stasis and chaos.
Not that any of this is of more than academic interest. For all the noise and brouhaha, there is barely more chance of Streeting becoming Labour leader than of me doing so. No matter how many of his fellow MPs nominate him, remember that the same Labour members who chose Starmer to be leader only voted for him because he promised to deliver a Corbynite agenda without Corbyn – a series of policies which he swiftly dumped once in post. Streeting will doubtless sell his soul to try to win Labour members’ votes, but they will surely see through it.
Even if a Streeting premiership would be a disaster, we don’t need to spend much more time on the idea. Better to focus on the other candidates, each of whom would be able to work with Labour MPs. And thus, all of whom would be an even worse disaster for the country.
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