iNews Weekend

Sunak has gifted Labour a £46bn attack line

- Isabel Hardman @IsabelHard­man

The latest incarnatio­n of Rishi Sunak – national insurance-abolishing Rishi, in case you hadn’t kept pace – is a real gift to Labour. Sir Keir Starmer’s party has spent much of the week attacking the Conservati­ves’ long-term ambition to get rid of what the Prime Minister now calls a “double taxation”.

In a question-and-answer session with Daily Mirror readers, the Labour leader talked about it being a “£46bn unfunded commitment”, adding: “You might have thought after the Liz Truss experiment that Rishi Sunak would have got the message about how unfunded commitment­s are not a good idea.” Similarly, in between giving a long, earnest speech about her economic philosophy, the shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was busily attacking the “£46bn Tory black hole” in the Commons, and other colleagues, including the shadow Work and

Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, have launched similar criticisms.

It is a striking attack line for the Labour Party, and one in a series of assaults on traditiona­lly Tory issues that underlines the confidence of the Opposition’s operation.

In previous years, Labour frontbench­ers would not have dared to go near tax policy, for instance, for fear that they might be branded the party of high taxes. That crown now surely rests on Conservati­ve heads, given that they have presided over a record-breaking tax burden themselves.

But Labour has been attacking on national insurance (NI) ever since Boris Johnson’s government put that tax up to fund the NHS and social care.

The current “black hole” is, of course, entirely notional: it refers to a long-term ambition to abolish NI, rather than any current concrete policy. But given that Sunak allies are now pointing to his ambitions for NI as one of the key features of his leadership abilities, it is probably not an unfair attack: the abolition pledge may well be in the Conservati­ve manifesto.

It used to be the case that the Tories were the better political astronomer­s: they would identify Labour spending black holes whether the party was in opposition or government. They even thought that the NI abolition would make life difficult for Starmer’s party. Similarly, Labour used to run away from immigratio­n as a topic. It famously promised “controls on immigratio­n” in its 2015 election campaign, and the mugs with that pledge emblazoned on them became political collector’s items after a huge internal party row. (As it happens, they were only printed because someone in Labour HQ thought it would attract more attention if the party produced pledge mugs for everything else but left immigratio­n off the order.)

For years after that, Labour had a tortured approach to talking about immigratio­n: largely it tried to avoid the topic. But in November, Starmer went on the attack on “stop the boats” at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs). It was a notable moment at the time, and the Labour leader has made the Rwanda deportatio­n policy a regular theme of his Wednesday clashes with Sunak, even though that allows the Prime Minister to accuse him of being on the side of people smugglers.

It is a stark contrast from the way Labour leaders would previously attack the Tories on issues that were a comfort blanket for the left, such as the NHS. I have sat through countless PMQs over the past 14 years where a Labour leader has complained about NHS funding, and the two leaders have then spent the ensuing questions trading meaningles­s statistics about the number of nurses here and the increase in medical school places there.

Now, you are more likely to hear Labour criticisin­g the NHS itself, with the shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, picking fights with the health service over whether it caters more for patients or the system itself, and with doctors over his plans to reform the way they work, too.

So the party’s policy attack operation has increased hugely in confidence. But what is still missing is its policy appeal. Those with enough grey hairs to remember the last Labour government still think Starmer is being too cautious about what Labour itself stands for: he and Reeves are taking an approach that is largely focused on reassuring voters that it is OK to vote for them, rather than giving voters a particular reason to be excited about Labour. Some senior figures think that is not enough. Similarly, those involved in the Tory election planning think the actual campaign will be transforma­tive for them as they will zoom in heavily on the Labour leader and, in the words of one involved, “point out just how rubbish Starmer is”.

Whether voters notice, of course, is more down to whether the Tories themselves are any less rubbish and in a mess than they are at the moment – something Labour is currently very good at exploiting.

In the past, Labour would not have gone near tax policy

Isabel Hardman is the assistant editor of ‘The Spectator’ magazine

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