It may be that they are, in fact, crazy enough to do it. If, as increasingly seems likely, the Conservatives pass the health and social care bill into law, despite opposition from the general public, the overwhelming majority of the medical profession, the Liberal Democrats and large sections of their own party, they will have passed into law an act that will have ramifications on healthcare policy in this country for decades. That illustrates a broader challenge for the Labour party in the second half of the parliament; how to move from policy-by-policy opposition to the government to a credible offer for 2015.
So far, our policies have been almost entirely reactive; opposing the government on fees, opposing the government on welfare reform, opposing the scope and speed of deficit reduction, and opposing the health and social care bill. In some areas, that has secured Labour real political victories, but they have been accompanied by policy defeats. Our unspoken rallying cry since the general election has been ‘back to 2010’, something which may seem tempting in 2015, but also won’t be possible. And while voters may seem temporarily attracted to political offers that appeal to their wildest dreams, ultimately, parties are rewarded for articulating problems that speak to reality, not fantasy.
On fees, we opposed the abolition of the teaching grant and the move to fees of £9,000. But we lost the vote. What is our stance now? A restoration of the teaching grant and a reduction in the size of the cap to £6,000? An abolition of the fees model and a movement to a graduate tax? Without further detailing which cuts we would keep and which we would end, our stance on fees is incoherent, while, for all the success that Labour peers have had in amending the welfare reform bill, the bulk of the bill will make it onto the statute book. Iain Duncan Smith’s universal credit is uncosted and may well be unworkable; but it will be the next government that has to implement it. Labour’s stance on benefit reform can no longer be defined purely in opposition to what the government is doing now; it has to move to explaining what we will do in the future.
This is why Ed Balls is right to say that we can’t commit to reversing the Conservatives’ cuts after the next election. The truth is that the economy now is crying out for fiscal stimulus and a more modest deficit reduction strategy. However, the years of austerity will change the economic situation. Today’s medicine may no longer work or may no longer be practicable. But our tone on the deficit has been confused; we have to develop a clearer vision of what our offer to hard-pressed families, struggling graduates, and pensioners feeling the squeeze would actually be. Implementing 2010’s fiscal solutions in 2015 won’t work, but we have to have a clearer way of communicating what we’ll do differently in 2015.
As with the rest of the government’s policies, the same holds true for the health and social care bill. By 2015, the bill will have been in effect for almost half a decade by that point, and unpicking its consequences wholesale could be almost as costly and damaging to patient care as the bill itself. While we would move healthcare policy in a markedly different direction of travel to that pursued by the Conservatives, we wouldn’t be able to return to the health service of 2011. The challenge on healthcare, then, will be to show how we can improve a health service that will have been broken and damaged by the health and social care bill. That requires us not just to return to our core values and to work out how best to achieve them after Tory vandalism of the public services and the British economy has done its work, but also how best to communicate them. That is how we move from opportunistic opposition to credible government.
—————————————————————————————
Stephen Bush is a member of Progress, works as a copywriter, and writes at adangerousnotion.wordpress.com
—————————————————————————————