The winter chill has come early for the government. Their wide but thin victory in the summer has meant a very short honeymoon with the voters. Of course, we live in volatile times and people’s patience and attention spans are short at the best of times. These are not the best of times with poor economic news at home, a sleazy government about to take office in America, and war clouds building.
Labour deserves longer than their critics are giving them to sort things out and put their stamp on the economy. However, the fact that inflation is rising again, and the third quarter growth rate was next to flat was on Labour’s watch and the start has not been great.
The perks for ministers’ scandal which accompanied the cut in winter fuel payments was badly handled. The long gloomy build up to the budget affected business optimism, and the budget itself has had employers and farmers in open protest. The current rail service across the North and down to London continues to be a disgrace with a big question mark over Andy Burham’s HS2 lite with the government finally pulling the plug on HS2 to Crewe.
As we said on the Downtown podcast this week, there is no vision for business to understand. Sporadic announcements are made by different ministers. After the Sue Gray debacle, James Lyons, a former top man at the Mirror, Sunday Times and NHS comms unit was brought in to sort out all this stuff. He has made little difference in his two months in the job.
It is no surprise that Labour (27%) are one point ahead of the Tories (26%) in the latest opinion polls with Reform UK on 20%. No party breaks the 30% barrier. It shows the voters are divided and unimpressed. It is true the cry has been for long term planning and investment and the government’s big gamble is that this will start to show in the middle of the parliament. However, in the meantime we need a more professional approach to telling the story of what the Starmer/Reeves project is all about.
