52 weeks certainly is a long time in politics

Next week marks a year since Labour came to power. 

Political anniversaries provide a highly convenient hook to hang a story on, so I’m going to get in slightly early with my reflections before the inevitable inundation of analysis. 

Last year Labour promised voters “Change”. As campaign messages go, it was as unspecific as it gets but perhaps this was by design, allowing the government claim future victory regardless of the direction of policy. 

In 1997 Blair’s New Labour election win was helped along by a pledge card, which laid out five key policy priorities from the manifesto. They were to: cut class sizes to 30 or under for five, six, and seven-year-olds; fast-track punishment for young offenders; cut NHS waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000 patients; get 250,000 under-25s off benefits and into work (by using money from a windfall tax on privatised utilities); promise no rise in tax rates (cut VAT on heating to 5% and inflation and interest rates as low as possible). 

This pledge card approach was so successful it has been used in one form or another for Labour campaigning ever since. I actually thought had been killed off after Ed Miliband printed his on a limestone plinth in 2015, before losing 26 seats on polling day, but apparently the concept lives on! 

I completely missed it at the time, but Keir Starmer’s version was called “My first steps for change”, which sounds rather like a guide to potty training policy makers, but these included: deliver economic stability; cut NHS waiting times; launch a new Border Security Command; set up Great British Energy; recruit 6,500 new teachers.

Both Border Security Command and Great British Energy have been set up so that is two out of six that can be easily pointed at. 

But the overall approach of the government of the past 12 months seems to have been to push ahead announcing policy changes which have proven popular in focus groups, then reign them back so they still appeal to the values of  ‘traditional’ Labour voters all whilst keeping onboard  those supporters who are thinking about backing Reform. Labour may be saying they are not trying to out-Farage Farage, this is not how it appears.

The phrase U-turn has been widely used (though perhaps they are more like U-changes these days) and we have seen reversals on the decisions to cut winter fuel payments and, effectively, the issuance of North Sea oil and gas licences by revising the guidance on how the environmental impacts of proposed projects should be assessed. There has also been an increase in the defence budget by 5% and changes to the green levy in the industrial strategy, that leaves a potentially sizeable shortfall at the exchequer. 

Then on Labour’s immediate horizon is a potential rebellion on welfare reform (Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill), with 126 Labour MPs announcing that they would vote against the Bill. And, beyond that, I expect they will be drawing back on proposals to changes to inheritance tax policy. Both these proposals have been very unpopular, feel very poorly thought out, and certainly not reflective of the kind of changes most Labour voters were looking for. 

The recent local elections did not go well for Labour and a YouGov poll released today, suggests that Reform would win the most seats of any party if a general election was held this year, with Labour having less than half the seats it won in 2024. 

So who to blame? As I write, it looks likely that Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, will have a new job title soon, as pressure continues to mount for Downing Steet ‘regime change’. 

At the planning stage of last year’s election campaign, I very much doubt their own ‘regime’ was ever on the long-list of the kind of ‘Change’ Labour was getting ready to potentially deliver.         

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/52437-first-yougov-mrp-since-2024-election-shows-a-hung-parliament-with-reform-uk-as-largest-party