SIR KEIR STARMER HAS SOME ambitious objectives for when he takes power: he wants to bring back sustained economic growth, achieve net zero by 2030, restore public services, and devolve power to local government.
It would be wrong to fault Labour for aiming high when fiddling around the edges is unlikely to save Britain from its current discontents. But what is less defensible is the lack of specificity. The goals are extremely lofty but there is little sign, with such a small and modest pile of policy proposals (its uninspiring economic policy can be summed up by the coinage “Securonomics”), that Labour is prepared to will the means to its desired ends.
Labour’s lack of a plan may be a canny recognition that it is folly to go into an election making spending commitments that can be torn apart by the other side. The focus upon “fully costed” policies reflects a Labour Party still traumatised by years of having to defend itself from charges of being fiscally
