One of a series of spectacular own goals by Labour. And yes, I voted for them.

I agree that this or something like it is what the policy should have been in the first place.

I still don't know what this government is for, honestly. I know what they're against, sometimes, and who they're not, but not who they are. Who can remember the Five Missions (was it six? I forget)?

The worst own goal remains the pledge not to touch general taxation. They compounded it by not using the obviously changed world to run a narrative around difference circumstances requiring different approaches (and therefore we'll raise taxes, or broaden their scope, even though we said we wouldn't). That would have been sellable a) anyway and b) while Badenoch remains, because she's so utterly useless. They've squandered the "free hit" they had in their first year and their big policies contradict each other. Are we still going for growth? A lot of policies row against that. Net Zero? Similar. And so on.

It's always easy to point out what's going wrong under any government as plenty always is. That's the nature of the beast. But Labour's issue is that it's genuinely hard to build a narrative that things are better now. They've still got four years to do that, but they need to stop trying to out-Reform Reform, which they'll never manage, and start deciding who they are and what they're for and get on with delivering something driven from that.

Posted By: Old Man on June 9th 2025 at 13:34:01

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