One hundred years ago, on Christmas Eve 1923, those with wireless televisions gathered around them to hear the news , should have learned about the possible and, for many of them, alarming developments in the political life of Great Britain.
Just over two weeks ago, the Conservative Party under Stanley Baldwin lost its majority in the general election, with few feeling it. should have called. Baldwin sought a mandate for protectionist trade policies, but voters rejected the idea. Labor came second and it was possible that Liberal support would help it form a minority administration.
Four weeks later, after Baldwin's King's Speech was rejected in the House of Commons, Britain's first Labor party came to power. government led by Ramsay MacDonald.
If opinion polls are correct, next year will see the seventh Labor government in office – following the 1924s, 1929, 1945, 1964, 1974 and 1997. With the exception of that first administration (which lasted only nine months and had Philip Snowden, a Gladstonian economist, as Chancellor of the Exchequer), every Labor government has left Britain with an economy worse than what it inherited.
< img src="/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/273ee4a067bd57e8ed60fe71cc775880.jpg" /> Ramsay MacDonald's first Labor government failed due to inexperience, incompetence and bad luck. Photo: Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive
MacDonald's second administration collapsed so badly during the economic downturn of 1931 that a Conservative-dominated national coalition had to rescue the country from bankruptcy. Clement Attlee's reign ended with high taxes and currency devaluation.
The Wilson administration never recovered from the 1967 devaluation. James Callaghan's reign ended in a winter of discontent that followed Britain's near-bankruptcy and bailout by the International Monetary Fund in 1976. And Gordon Brown left office less than two years after a crash that saw financial institutions torpedoing sterling and forcing the Chancellor of the Exchequer to leave a note to his Conservative successor telling him, with commendable candor, that the money was running out.
If you detect a pattern, you will be correct. The first two Labor governments failed due to inexperience, incompetence, some bad luck and an alarming inability to cope with the realities the world threw at them during international turbulence. But the rest had something in common – the desire to aggrandize the state and finance it by redirecting resources through taxation from productive sectors of the economy to unproductive ones.
The expansion of the state meant placing an army of workers, mostly members of Labour's client groups in the trade unions, on the government payroll in highly regulated and demarcated jobs. It began to seem that public services existed more for the benefit of those who worked in them than for the taxpayers who financed them.
We don't need to wonder whether the Starmer administration will repeat these self-destructive mistakes. Some of these have indeed been perpetuated by the Conservatives since 2010 (the overcrowded public sector, of course), but others are evident in parts of the UK where Labor already holds power.
Drakeford's dreaded nanny state
Britain was reminded of what happened recently when Mark Drakeford, the Labor Party's first minister in Wales, kept his earlier promise to step down in 2024.
Indeed, it was one of the few promises Drakeford managed to keep during his unremarkable five-year tenure, although his Labor Party comrades did not admit it. Instead, they greeted the news of his departure with a mixture of sentimentality and special entreaties.
Although there was no shortage of Conservatives in Wales and elsewhere keen to highlight Drakeford's many failures, Labor leaders paid rapturous tribute and moved on.
At the time of his announcement, polls showed Drakeford's popularity was at an 18-month low, leaving him behind Rishi Sunak. Senior Labor figures in Westminster wanted him to go. One of the differences between the Labor and Conservative parties is that the former tends to pick fights in private while appearing calm in public.
In 2022, the Taxpayers' Alliance found that Drakeford had spent just under £9 million on “woke” jobs. Photo: Ben Birchall/PA
Those defending Drakeford's record say he achieved the best result Labor has ever had in a Welsh election in 2021, leaving him just one seat shy of overall majority.
However, the Labor Party has an almost tribal vote in what was once the coalfields of South Wales, giving strong support to even the most conventional leader. Drakeford also achieved considerable public fame by spending vast sums of money, largely coming from England, which contributed to his recognition.
His success was, of course, not due to improving the welfare of the people of Wales or improving the services of the Welsh state. With his party in opposition at Westminster for over a decade, Drakeford seemed determined to maintain his worst traditions and even update them to accommodate the left's latest obsessions.
In 2022, the Taxpayers' Alliance found that it had spent £8,879,479 on “woke” jobs, which it defined as those with one of the following words in their title: “equality, diversity, inclusion, wellbeing, carbon, clean” zero emissions, climate, race, LGBTQ”, sustainability, eco-friendliness. , culture or art.”
Drakeford tried to ingratiate himself with every fashion and identity politics movement he could find, using public money to do it.
He loved to interfere in people's lives, creating a formidable nanny state. In 2019 he borrowed Nicola Sturgeon's minimum alcohol pricing policy, convinced the valleys were heading towards drunken oblivion. Paradoxically, the number of alcohol-related deaths in Wales has risen every year since he began this intervention.
Seriously though, according to the Program for International Student Assessment, Welsh schools are the worst in the UK. Despite having a primary school education, which his party categorically despises, and attending two English universities, Drakeford (who, among other public sector career posts, eventually became Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University), made decisions that damaged the educational achievements of tens of thousands of Welsh schoolchildren.
One of these measures was the abolition of exam league tables. The decision came under pressure from teachers' unions to prevent the shortcomings of some of their members from being unduly exposed. Since then the slope has gone down.
In another stunt from Sturgeon's playbook, Drakeford embraced gender ideology and championed a Welsh identity system, despite the huge potential risks to women and girls. He ran the “Dignity of Menstruation” campaign, which at first absurdly refused to mention women and girls; she later condescended to work for the benefit of “women, girls and everyone who menstruates.”
“The Border Between Life and Death” “
There is an astonishing level of idleness in Wales, supported by Mr Drakeford's utopian welfare state, which is heavily subsidized by English taxpayers. In the three months to July this year, 23.2% of the principality's residents aged 16 to 64 were classified as economically inactive.
Drakeford wanted a four-day working week for public sector employees and a universal basic income, without apparent attention to where the money would come from. His interventionism sometimes bordered on authoritarianism. He has imposed 20mph speed zones across Wales, despite nearly half a million people signing a petition against them, and has attacked owners of second homes and holiday lets, ignoring the much-needed money they bring into Wales .
Nearly half a million people have signed a petition against the 20mph zones introduced by the Drakeford government. Photo: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
Inevitably, he declared that there was nothing wrong with his own second home because it was just a “chalet.” He wanted to ban teenagers from buying energy drinks, which he claimed were a “gateway” to smoking and drinking. He was also considering banning children under 16 from buying tea and coffee to “stop rising obesity rates.”
Drakeford and his colleagues hate criticism, which is admittedly not unusual among politicians. When Michael Gove highlighted the failure of education policy in Wales, he was accused of displaying “indestructible colonial attitudes”.
And education was not Drakeford's worst failure. The Welsh administration's management of the National Health Service was so poor that David Cameron, as Prime Minister, called the border with England “the line between life and death.”
More than 30,000 people in Wales have been waiting more than two years for treatment – many vacancies remain unfilled as morale in the NHS falls and many refuse to work for it; all this despite the Welsh NHS receiving £1.20 for every £1 the English service receives. There were, and still are, stories of Welsh residents turning to English hospitals for emergency care, their trust in the NHS at home had been so damaged.
Much of Drakeford's Covid policy – again like that of the Scottish National Party – seemed aimed at embarrassing the Conservative government at Westminster. His decision to introduce restrictions on Boxing Day and New Year's Day in 2021 (also copied from Sturgeon) appeared petulant, leading border residents to celebrate in English pubs and bars; he previously ordered supermarkets to close non-essential departments.
Khan loosens control of London
There are other signs of danger for the Labor government. In London, Sadiq Khan has presided over a population three times the size of Wales for almost eight years. Conditions there have deteriorated markedly since he took power in 2016, especially since the pandemic.
Violent and common crime have risen, the former by 30% since Mr Khan became mayor, and knife crime by 21% in 2023 alone. There were 12,786 knife crimes in London in March last year, more than a quarter of the total in England and Wales. Pests on the street, especially at night, or scurrying along subway platforms, are becoming more common, and litter is becoming more common.
Some West End shopping streets are shabby. Oxford Street is full of American “confectionery” rather than high-end shops. Pickpockets are legion and the Tube, for which Mr Khan shares responsibility with Transport for London, is becoming notorious.
Women's groups in particular are calling for the streets to be “reclaimed”, suggesting that Khan and his London administration have lost control over them. Khan is not known for his ostentatious support of the police, which may help explain this crime epidemic.
Under Khan's rule, social order was deeply disrupted, perhaps again due to his attitude towards the police. Recently, pro-Palestinian marches have scared Jews and made central London a no-go zone for many visitors.
When Michael Gove's personal safety was threatened by a mob at Victoria Station, Khan remained unfazed.
A longtime advocate for Palestinian rights, he did nothing to appease the Jews or unite London under his leadership. Neither he nor Sir Keir Starmer attended the recent march against antisemitism. Khan was also tolerant of Just Stop the Oil and Extinction Rebellion, despite the economic damage they caused.
This is not the only policy of his that has had a bad impact on London's economy, showing how little understanding or empathy he has for the businesses he owns. His expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), which charges older cars £12.50 a day, played a significant role in Labour's failure to win the Uxbridge by-election.
However, Khan – remains unrepentant and the Labor Party is committed to strong environmental policies, regardless of the hardship and economic damage they may cause. While campaigning for an extension to Ulez, Khan made wild claims about his opponents' links to the “far right”, claiming at one point that the Tories “don't care” about the impact of air pollution on children.
Ironically for a Labor politician, his policies hit the poorest people hardest as they tend to own older cars. He and many in his party don't seem to care that it also has major impacts on business and workers, and evidence of environmental improvements from the zone expansion is mixed to say the least.
Another economic issue. the failure was the failure to meet housing production targets. Despite £4 billion of government funding, few affordable homes have been built, seriously undermining labor mobility and productivity.
His Conservative opponent in the 2024 mayoral election, Susan Hall, calls him a “protest politician” who “embraces the worst of identity politics.” Instead of serious reflection, Khan regularly resorts to public and red herring attempts to shift the blame for his failures onto others.
During the Covid investigation, he claimed that if he had been invited to Cobra meetings, he could have saved lives in London – the only thing missing is any evidence. He shares Labour's general view that the state should intervene wherever possible in people's lives.
TFL, of which he is chairman, banned advertising for the play in the West End because it featured a Victoria sponge cake, apparently fearing it might encourage those who saw it to go home and stuff themselves senseless.
For those who may not be able to afford it, he has found £145,000 for an 'advice bus' to help people with the cost of living crisis (ironically, given his obsession with Ulez , it was a diesel bus). food).
Last year, the Greater London Assembly's Scrutiny Committee reported that a proposed diversity and inclusion budget of £700,000 had been proposed, slightly more than the £400,000 earmarked for protecting people living in “food poverty”.
The party is “prone to class politics.”
Anyone still looking for ideas about how the Labor Party might govern might also usefully study the record of the Scottish National Party. Although they are completely separate from the Labor Party, they are also left-wing. Indeed, Drakeford's desire to emulate the SNP's policies in several respects shows that the only thing separating them is whether or not to remain in the United Kingdom.
In pursuing socialist policies, the Scottish National Party ultimately failed to achieve important goals. Photo: Jane Barlow/PA
While pursuing socialist policies, the Scottish National Party ultimately failed to achieve targets on affordable housing, major infrastructure projects, and cancer treatment. and rural housing.
It has spent millions on free mobile phones for prisoners while closing schools, failing to test many survivors, expanding NHS waiting lists, overseeing a doubling of drug-related deaths and cutting the police – while taking an extra £1bn in taxes in conditions of economic growth. and disposable income lags behind England.
At its conference last October, Labor set out a range of policies – although a veteran Tory MP told me this week that “their only real policy is to appear harmless”. The party has promised to increase business investment from 10% to 11% of economic output, although how it will control business investment is anyone's guess.
The party said it would end non-resident status, which carries a term of up to 15 years. untaxed foreign income – and thereby drive many very rich people out of the country where they spend huge sums of money and employ many workers.
Labor has promised to save money in government by cutting back on ministers' use of private jets and the hiring of consultants, but made no mention of cuts to permanent government wages on which real savings could be made.
The “accelerating infrastructure” unit” will ensure that projects are delivered “on time and on budget”, despite failing to take into account possible inflation that could result from typical Labor expansion of the money supply.
The Labor Party has promised to create a state-owned energy company and provide 100% clean energy by 2030. It said there would be new cities, 300,000 houses built annually and a mortgage guarantee scheme. There will be £1.1 billion for extra NHS overtime and two million extra surgeries a year to reduce waiting lists, but there will be no mention of tackling the huge overstaffing of the NHS bureaucracy.
He proposed a “local policing guarantee” with an extra 13,000 area officers, more patrols and a “young people initiative” to halve knife crime in a decade. It all sounds purely rhetorical, as do phrases uttered by the party, such as promises to “raise trust in every police force to the highest level”, “halve the rate of violence against women and girls” and control anti-social behaviour. with the so-called “order of respect”.
In a “fairer Britain, where everyone lives well and longer”, every primary school will have “breakfast clubs” – another step in the state’s usurpation of the normal family. life—and, back to the heyday of rhetoric, “a world-class teacher in every classroom, paid by the repeal of private school tax breaks.”
As a classist, Labor will not allow such taxation of education to force many thousands of children into the public sector, raising very little money as a result – and with neither the funding for the teachers needed to teach them nor the buildings needed. place your classes.
And there are still – for now – unresolved problems. How will Labor curb migration? Or encourage entrepreneurship? Or fulfill any of its obligations if it does not plan to increase taxes (except for VAT on tuition fees, of course)? What is its nuclear strategy? Does he have a coherent policy to protect our very dangerous world? How can she benefit from Brexit – or is she secretly planning to take us back to a collapsing EU?
Only a fool would argue that the last 13 years of Tory rule have been unsatisfying. But if Sir Keir took the Drakeford-Khan approach to management – as he has yet to deny he would do – would it be any better? Really, couldn't it be worse?
This will certainly be an interesting new year in our political history, but not necessarily a happy one.
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