I’m a Labour supporter. But Labour’s message on the economy is unclear.
Ed Balls is today saying he’s written to his would-be cabinet colleagues to warn them that their departments will face cuts every year until Labour fulfils its promise to eliminate the deficit.
And yet, since the Autumn Statement, Ed has been denouncing the Tory spending plans as unworkable, dishonest and ‘colossal’. A return to the 1930s. A country you wouldn’t want to live in.
In short, Labour wants to appear as determined as the Tories to eliminate deficit, whilst branding Tory cuts as ‘extreme’.
This is not an illogical position. With growth (and more tax receipts) the deficit can be reduced with less harsh cuts. Securing growth is, and always has been, the issue.
I prefer centre-left thinking on this, because the Tories are dogmatic in their focus on the supply side, and the supply side can push us out of recession the same way pushing a dog through a cat-flap by its tail works: not at all. We need pounds-in-pockets demand in our economy before any right-minded investor will invest, and supply-side efficiencies cut demand rather than stimulating it.
But that is too complex to explain. So meanwhile the broad messaging needs to be clearer. At the moment it comes across as, “We are as brutal as them on the deficit – but they are wild-eyed extremists.”
That’s as clear as mud. In a game where clarity is all.