The big take-away from the local election results is how disappointing Labour is proving. Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves promised change and growth and have so far delivered neither.
That has left the door open for minority parties such as Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats to make hay.
Listening to Ellie Reeves, Labour chairman and sister of the Chancellor, defend Labour’s ten months in power was like being forced to hear scratchy vinyl.
More hospital appointments? I suggest she visits accident and emergency at Kingston Hospital in London, one of the better NHS outlets, on a Friday evening.
Taking credit for three interest rate cuts when that is the responsibility of an independent Bank of England is Trump-like in its ignorance.
It is disingenuous to tell pensioners and the disabled that they are somehow better off because of the triple-lock when the winter fuel allowance has been axed and the freeze on allowances means more retirees will become taxpayers.
Naive: Putting on hard hats and visiting building sites and factories is not an expansion policy
It is a nonsense to suggest Reform’s policies for the NHS are a terrible mistake because Nigel Farage raises the question of social market insurance.
That’s the way they do it in France, Germany, Spain, Israel and other places that generally deliver better care.
Kicking social care, an issue at the top of the Lib Dem agenda, into the long grass for a decade (as the Treasury would like) should never be an option. An automatic enrolment funding model would be the single best way of easing pressure in A&E and hospital wards.
What is particularly galling is paralysis on growth. Putting on hard hats and visiting building sites and factories is not an expansion policy. It is extraordinary that a party which waffles on about working people still has no industrial strategy.
Net Zero zealotry means backing the import of solar panels from China, opposing gas and coking coal – while piling money into blast furnaces at British Steel.
Starmer and Reeves should listen to the Norwegians who view drilling in the North Sea as boosting national wealth and creating the resources for a greener future.
Housebuilding is a noble cause but planning reforms will neither deliver the 1.5m homes promised in this Parliament nor drive productivity and growth.
That requires a laser focus on what the UK does well. Personally, I think it is a mistake for Richard Gnodde, the Goldman Sachs chief executive in London, to head to Milan. He should stay in Britain, which has given him so much, and pay tax.
Nevertheless, adopting revenue policies which drive wealth and entrepreneurs overseas is a blunder. The UK cannot afford to lose a principal rainmaker.
Britain’s greatest richness is intellectual capital. Donald Trump’s attack on funding for America’s great research universities is a wonderful opportunity to bring the brainpower here.
Instead, we turn it away. AstraZeneca’s effort to bolster the UK’s role as a leader in vaccines was rejected. Both it and GSK are doubling down on research and development (R&D) and production in the US. At the heart of Britain’s productivity problem is failure to bolster R&D spend, allowances and training so that we are on a par with best in class.
Labour still has time to turn the tanker. But with the current naive economic and business team in charge, light years away from the knowledge base of Canada’s new prime minister Mark Carney, no one should hold their breath.
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