Latest news with #securonomics
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
In search of Labour's ‘working people' – the paradox at the heart of Keir Starmer's first year in power
It's one year since Keir Starmer led the Labour party to a landslide victory. Starmer's manifesto, 'Change' had proposed 'securonomics' as a solution to the UK's many crises. This was sold as a way of ensuring 'sustained economic growth as the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people'. The document mentioned 'working people' a total of 21 times. It was clear this demographic had been identified as the key target beneficiary of 'securonomics', otherwise referred to as 'the plan for change'. But there is a paradox at the heart of the proposal to deliver 'change' to 'working people' – one that helps explain the chaos of Labour's first year in government. By obsessively pitting this demographic against 'non-working people', Labour is in fact not promising any real change at all. Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK's latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. One of the key premises of Labour's securonomics is that growth must precede any significant investment. 'Working people's' priorities are therefore presented as being in line with that of a fiscally responsible state. In the autumn budget, there was a pledge to 'fix the foundations of the economy and deliver change by protecting working people'. To do this, the chancellor needed to fix a 'black hole' of £22 billion in government finances. The refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap, alongside 'reforming the state to ensure […] welfare spending is targeted towards those that need it the most', was framed as 'putting more money in working people's pockets'. There has, meanwhile, been a continued emphasis on encouraging those on benefits back to work. Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being up for our weekly , delivered every Friday. Besides the clear deepening of inequality wrought by similar reforms in the past, welfare cuts make no sense on an economic or societal level. They undermine the economy, and the consequences put additional pressure on already underfunded social services. As highlighted by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), such cuts fail to deliver the promised behavioural change to force people into work. People instead become more focused on day-to-day survival. Despite the government's last ditch climbdown to save its flagship welfare reform policy its cuts are still forecast to push more than 150,000 people into poverty Such reforms carried out in the name of 'working people' perpetuate a pernicious myth of us v them. Not only are people in work also affected by these cuts but people's lives – including their jobs, income, family situations, and health – shift regularly, making the 'strivers v skivers' divide both simplistic and inaccurate. Even 'secure borders' and 'smashing the criminal gangs' were positioned as 'grown up politics back in the service of working people'. This association of working people with anti-immigrant attitudes links to a broader homogenisation of 'working people' as both 'patriotic' and in search of 'security'. 'Fixing the foundations' has been depicted in several social media posts as a patriotic act via use of the Union Jack. Meanwhile, stage-managed photoshoots of Starmer in factories with people wearing hard hats and hi-visibility jackets give a clear impression of the types of manufacturing jobs the government believes 'working people' carry out. This gives an impressions that belies the reality of modern Britain – and an economy that is dominated by the service sector,, not manufacturing or building. While Starmer framed his 'plan for change' as a break with previous administrations, his 'working people' narrative betrays this claim as anything but. The idea that the deserving 'working people' are different and separate from people who don't (or can't) work has been deployed by government after government to justify austerity and cuts to services. It has always been useful to separate the 'scroungers from the strivers' and there is no sign of Labour changing course. The term 'working people' also builds on a previous trope of the 'hard-working family'. While initially coined by New Labour, this term has roots in Margaret Thatcher's idea of the family, rather than the state, as the locus of welfare. It was not for the state to take care of you but your own kin. Like 'working people' now, 'hard-working families' were those who played by the rules and knuckled down to earn a living. Previous Conservative administrations have depicted 'hard-working families' as burdened by the unemployed, the poor, the sick and disabled and immigrants. Add to this, the signalling continues to imply that the 'authentic' working class of Britain are solely white – sometimes also male – and typically older, manual labourers, who are assumed to hold socially conservative views. This is another divide-and-rule trope which neglects the reality of the multiracial and multiethnic composition of the working classes. In light of all this, any real 'change' promised in Labour's manifesto has been betrayed by a continuity with tired and damaging tropes of deserving and undeserving people. This is contributing to the sense, a year in, that this Labour government is merely repeating past government failures rather than striking out in a new direction. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. George Newth works for University of Bath and is a member of the Green Party
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
In search of Labour's ‘working people' – the paradox at the heart of Keir Starmer's first year in power
It's one year since Keir Starmer led the Labour party to a landslide victory. Starmer's manifesto, 'Change' had proposed 'securonomics' as a solution to the UK's many crises. This was sold as a way of ensuring 'sustained economic growth as the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people'. The document mentioned 'working people' a total of 21 times. It was clear this demographic had been identified as the key target beneficiary of 'securonomics', otherwise referred to as 'the plan for change'. But there is a paradox at the heart of the proposal to deliver 'change' to 'working people' – one that helps explain the chaos of Labour's first year in government. By obsessively pitting this demographic against 'non-working people', Labour is in fact not promising any real change at all. Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK's latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. One of the key premises of Labour's securonomics is that growth must precede any significant investment. 'Working people's' priorities are therefore presented as being in line with that of a fiscally responsible state. In the autumn budget, there was a pledge to 'fix the foundations of the economy and deliver change by protecting working people'. To do this, the chancellor needed to fix a 'black hole' of £22 billion in government finances. The refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap, alongside 'reforming the state to ensure […] welfare spending is targeted towards those that need it the most', was framed as 'putting more money in working people's pockets'. There has, meanwhile, been a continued emphasis on encouraging those on benefits back to work. Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being up for our weekly , delivered every Friday. Besides the clear deepening of inequality wrought by similar reforms in the past, welfare cuts make no sense on an economic or societal level. They undermine the economy, and the consequences put additional pressure on already underfunded social services. As highlighted by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), such cuts fail to deliver the promised behavioural change to force people into work. People instead become more focused on day-to-day survival. Despite the government's last ditch climbdown to save its flagship welfare reform policy its cuts are still forecast to push more than 150,000 people into poverty Such reforms carried out in the name of 'working people' perpetuate a pernicious myth of us v them. Not only are people in work also affected by these cuts but people's lives – including their jobs, income, family situations, and health – shift regularly, making the 'strivers v skivers' divide both simplistic and inaccurate. Even 'secure borders' and 'smashing the criminal gangs' were positioned as 'grown up politics back in the service of working people'. This association of working people with anti-immigrant attitudes links to a broader homogenisation of 'working people' as both 'patriotic' and in search of 'security'. 'Fixing the foundations' has been depicted in several social media posts as a patriotic act via use of the Union Jack. Meanwhile, stage-managed photoshoots of Starmer in factories with people wearing hard hats and hi-visibility jackets give a clear impression of the types of manufacturing jobs the government believes 'working people' carry out. This gives an impressions that belies the reality of modern Britain – and an economy that is dominated by the service sector,, not manufacturing or building. While Starmer framed his 'plan for change' as a break with previous administrations, his 'working people' narrative betrays this claim as anything but. The idea that the deserving 'working people' are different and separate from people who don't (or can't) work has been deployed by government after government to justify austerity and cuts to services. It has always been useful to separate the 'scroungers from the strivers' and there is no sign of Labour changing course. The term 'working people' also builds on a previous trope of the 'hard-working family'. While initially coined by New Labour, this term has roots in Margaret Thatcher's idea of the family, rather than the state, as the locus of welfare. It was not for the state to take care of you but your own kin. Like 'working people' now, 'hard-working families' were those who played by the rules and knuckled down to earn a living. Previous Conservative administrations have depicted 'hard-working families' as burdened by the unemployed, the poor, the sick and disabled and immigrants. Add to this, the signalling continues to imply that the 'authentic' working class of Britain are solely white – sometimes also male – and typically older, manual labourers, who are assumed to hold socially conservative views. This is another divide-and-rule trope which neglects the reality of the multiracial and multiethnic composition of the working classes. In light of all this, any real 'change' promised in Labour's manifesto has been betrayed by a continuity with tired and damaging tropes of deserving and undeserving people. This is contributing to the sense, a year in, that this Labour government is merely repeating past government failures rather than striking out in a new direction. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. George Newth works for University of Bath and is a member of the Green Party
The Guardian
23-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
As Starmer unveils his 10-year plan, here's my advice: don't fall into the Joe Biden trap
Everyone in Westminster loves American politics. They – or, I should say, we – were raised on a diet of The West Wing and closely follow the twists and turns inside the Beltway coming from American media. This obsession has an effect on the real world: what happens in the US shapes British politics. Long ago this was seen in the parallels between Bill Clinton and Tony Blair's 'third way'; and this time last year Keir Starmer's Labour party was looking to Joe Biden's Democrats. Biden went all-in on reforming the US economy. Through the Chips and Science, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs and Inflation Reduction acts, he spent billions hoping to build more at home, boost growth and grow wages. It worked. Public investment led to more than $1tn (£750bn) of private sector spending, and real wages grew by $4,000 a person, with more for the worst off. Even with the pandemic, economic growth averaged 3% a year under Biden. This is an economy the Labour government would die for and is one of the reasons it embraced its own version of Biden's plans. The industrial strategy released today is the most concrete expression of Labour's 'securonomics' that it has given in government, after Rachel Reeves unveiled the strategy in Washington in opposition. But for all Biden's economic success, the Democrats did not win the election in 2024. Immediately commentators turned on the former president's economic platform, arguing that long-term reform was a waste of time. Only one thing mattered when it came to votes: the price of eggs. Labour hasn't jettisoned its industrial strategy based on Biden's loss, despite many urging it to. But for the strategy to be successful and to last the 10 years that Labour intends it to (not the three years that the Inflation Reduction Act did) the government will need to learn from Biden's mistakes. To understand how, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), where I work, spoke to more than 40 people in Washington, including many former senior White House officials. Here are two key lessons. First, long-term reform is crucial but will always be slow. Expecting it to win votes now is a recipe for disaster. One former official put it this way: 'Industrial policy achieved its goals … but nobody cares, we delivered on stuff they didn't care about.' The problem was that even in the White House there wasn't agreement on the purpose of industrial policy. While those running the policy were trying to make long-lasting clean energy investments, it was sold to the Democratic party as the way to beat Trump. The interim effect was the same – money went to predominantly Republican districts (more because of their cheaper labour than a deliberate strategy). But building a factory, hiring people and eventually building things is a decade-long project. As one official said: '[Industrial policy] wasn't going to transform the map in two years after 50 years of deindustrialisation.' While Labour is explicit that this is a 10-year growth strategy, it can speed things up – planning reform will help. It must also address Britain's workforce shortages now, not just think about skill development in the future. Rebuilding capability inside government is also vital. The US government was engaging for the first time in facilitating the production of new, rapidly developing technologies such as clean hydrogen. Creating policies such as the hydrogen tax credit takes time and expertise. Officials in the British government are going to need to get to grips with the intricacies of 37 new high-potential subsectors. The second lesson: to give long-term policies the space to succeed, governments need a short-term economic improvement to people's lives. This is crucial: battery manufacturing projects are now being cancelled across the US because Democrats didn't win a second term to protect them. Biden's team had wanted a broader economic story that spoke to inflation. But things that would actually help – cheaper childcare or tax provisions for working-class Americans – were cut out of legislation by the Senate. This was at a time when Covid-era support was expiring. Defending the imperfect Inflation Reduction Act and championing investments rang hollow with the public, who wanted to hear about prices coming down. Labour has space to address this. The IPPR has conducted polling that tells us energy prices easily top every other economic issue as the public's economic priority. Of those surveyed, 47% said they would prefer the government to focus on lower costs even if this meant stagnant wages (something the British public is well used to), as opposed to 12% who would take a wage rise even if costs went up too. A final point is that the world is much bigger than the US and there are lessons to be learned elsewhere. In Spain, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has overseen investment of €163bn (£140bn) in the green transition – but rather than relying solely on this, his government has also acted on the rising cost of housing by capping rent increases. Anthony Albanese last month won a second term in Australia for the Labor party for similar reasons. His AUS$22.7bn (£10.8bn) investment in a future made in Australia – predominantly in clean energy – came with energy bill relief, rent assistance and cheaper medicines. So rather than sitting down for another rewatch of The West Wing, perhaps it would be a better strategy to examine how similar-sized countries elsewhere have given themselves the chance to make long-term industrial strategies work. Sam Alvis is associate director at IPPR and a former political adviser to the Labour party Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Can securonomics and green book overhaul help Rachel Reeves steer UK towards growth?
Rachel Reeves was clearly keen to get back in the political driver's seat on Wednesday, as she promised £15.6bn in transport investment at a Rochdale bus factory. It was a downpayment on the £113bn in additional investment (over and above Tory plans) that she will lay out in next week's spending review. And it came in a speech that was heavily focused on stimulating economies outside London and the south-east to tackle the longstanding issue in the UK of 'growth created in too few places, and too few people feeling the benefits'. Reeves promised to publish an overhaul of the Treasury's 'green book' next week – the rules that govern how public investment plans are judged. This is expected to help tip the balance of the argument in future against endlessly shovelling more resources into the capital and the south. She also revived her own notion of 'securonomics' (government policy aimed at protecting households from economic shocks) by shoring up national resilience – including most recently, she said, intervening to take control of British Steel. This felt like a shift of emphasis from Reeves's 'further and faster' growth speech back in January. She did highlight the importance of investment then, but also leaned much more heavily on deregulation – including rolling back environmental protections – and focused on the distinctly southern Oxford-Cambridge arc. Since then, Labour has suffered a bruising set of local election results, leaking support to Reform in many former industrial constituencies it sorely wants to hold on to at the next general election. Reeves wants to show Labour MPs she has a theory of growth that embraces these areas and is willing to take on Treasury orthodoxy to do so, hence that radical rewrite of the green book. She is also keen not to be remembered solely for the typical chancellor's role of holding the purse strings. 'I didn't come into politics because I care passionately about fiscal rules,' Reeves told her audience of bored-looking bus workers (a contrast with Tory predecessor Philip Hammond, who when asked to give one word to describe himself said 'fiscal'). Yet the most headline-grabbing aspect of the speech – the confirmation that the winter fuel allowance cut will be partially reversed – underlined what scant hope Reeves has of not spending the next few months ahead of the autumn budget answering tricky questions about tax and spend. Given the cut was justified as an urgent money-raising measure to help fill what Reeves identified as a £22bn black hole, she will have to explain how the gap will now be filled (reversing the cut in full would cost £1.5bn a year). The Treasury continues to insist that will not happen until the autumn; cue several months of wearying speculation. Meanwhile, Downing Street is fighting a rearguard action from MPs over £5bn of disability benefit cuts and facing pressure over child poverty, which Reeves rightly described as a 'moral mission'. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The chancellor sought to shut down one avenue of speculation in her speech, insisting she has no intention of loosening her fiscal rules, in particular the stricture that day-to-day spending must be matched with taxation. Critics have attacked this rule as too tight, given the cash-starved state of public services and myriad other challenges faced by the UK, but Reeves insisted it was 'the sound economic choice,' as well as being fair to future generations. Reeves also insisted the rules were not 'self-imposed' but just reflected the economic reality that the UK cannot go on borrowing endlessly without a Liz Truss-style market crisis. And in a speech that seemed deliberately more personal than the tarmac-and-deregulation mood of January, she acknowledged that she has had to say no to some things she would have sorely liked to do. Yet the inevitable headlines next week about tight departmental spending settlements outside health and defence, alongside the winter fuel debacle, are only likely to amplify the nagging concerns of some Labour backbenchers about what they see as the price of Reeves's prudence.
