Nasty and deluded, Labour is fighting a phantom menace
ACCORDING to many Left-wingers, our country is in the grip of the most Right-wing regime in living memory, headed by a
British version of Donald
Trump.
Or, as Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner, put it: “We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute pile of banana republic, vile, nasty, Etonian, posh piece of scum.”
Ms Rayner has mercifully now apologised for that horrible, semi-literate outburst, but one wonders whether she possesses the intellectual firepower to understand that in fact her assessment of the Tories under Boris Johnson as being extreme was so wide of the mark as to fail a test of basic credibility.
For the truth of it is that far from being what the previous US President approvingly dubbed “Britain Trump”, Johnson has successfully defined a new centre ground. And while his personal style may get up the noses of Leftists, many of his actual policies are these days more likely to irritate Right-wingers.
A man who once described himself as “a kind of Brexity Heseltine” is living up to that moniker by ploughing tens of billions of pounds extra into public infrastructure schemes designed to rejuvenate “left behind” towns and districts as part of his levelling-up agenda.
HIS CHANCELLOR has just produced a Budget which prioritised extra public spending – £150billion of it – over demands from the Tory Right for big early cuts in tax and a slimming down of the state. The NHS and the social care sector will benefit from a new National Insurance surcharge, while every other Whitehall spending department is also getting a real-terms budget increase to bring expenditure back in line with levels last seen under New Labour.
Even spending on foreign aid is going to be restored to 0.7 per cent of GDP.
Then there is Johnson’s radicalism on the green agenda – committing Britain to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2035 rather than 2050, despite the expense involved.
Of course, Labour and the other Left-wing parties parrot complaints that this is still not enough, but without any real conviction. It is among those of a Right-wing disposition that the biggest reservations are to be found, with those who cling to the idea that global warming is all a scam especially outraged at the prospect of being cajoled away from petrol cars and gas boilers.
On the other side of the ledger, there are major areas where the Prime Minister leans a little to the traditional Right.
He is clearly still willing to fight hard for a Brexit arrangement that fully respects British national sovereignty and further tussles with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol are looming.
He has always been strong on law and order too, backing increased use of stop and search and longer prison sentences for an array of offences.And he has no truck with Leftist attempts to trash British heritage and culture. These are all areas where his instincts go with the grain of public opinion.
ON IMMIGRATION, he offers a balanced ticket, having taken back legal control over who is permitted to come to Britain while also talking up the contribution that talented foreign nationals can make to our economy and society.
But he insists he will not pull an “uncontrolled immigration” lever to address skills shortages, preferring instead to focus on training up British workers. There is, though, an as yet unfulfilled promise to halt the flow of irregular migrants crossing the Channel on small boats.
Johnson is also a longstanding supporter of gay rights, someone who speaks up for a multi-racial Britain and appears passionate about combating class-based inequality and unequal treatment of women too.
Most of us could find something in his political prospectus to get cross about but overall it amounts to an agenda largely in tune with the public mood. Hence the Savanta ComRes poll on the Budget that gave it a 53 per cent approval rate with only 15 per cent disapproving.
Meanwhile, Labour still prefers to fight a phantom menace from the hardline Right, rather as the Tories attempted to depict Tony Blair as a closet Left-wing extremist with their “New Labour, New Danger” poster campaigns. It didn’t work and hence they lost to him three times in a row.
No doubt Johnson, like Blair before him, will one day make his own disabling mistakes in the face of difficult and unpredictable events. But until he does, the new centre ground belongs to him.
‘Johnson has successfully defined a new centre ground’