The Tories must be clear we can’t afford Labour’s spending splurge
With Brexit and a vast national debt, Mrs May needs to bash Mr Corbyn’s fast-track to bankruptcy
Do you remember the last general election? It would be hard not to, since it was just two short years ago, but it feels like another era. One of the big moments of the 2015 campaign happened during a televised Question Time event involving the party leaders. Ed Miliband was asked by a member of the audience whether he thought Labour had spent too much while in office between 1997 and 2010. “No, I don’t,” he replied.
He added: “I know you may not agree with that, but let me just say very clearly – there are schools that have been rebuilt in our country, there are hospitals that have been rebuilt… That wouldn’t have happened.”
Leave aside the fact that those schools and hospitals were built through PFI schemes and are being paid off over a period of 25 years, Mr Miliband’s answer drew an incredulous response. Here was proof that Labour simply could not be trusted with the economy, because they would always want to spend and tax more and hang the consequences. Moreover, this was not just a tired old Tory mantra: it was what the voters thought. When Mr Miliband was jeered by the audience, it felt as if the country understood the need for austerity and for living within its means.
Yet watching Monday night’s so-called TV “clash” between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, you could be forgiven for wondering whatever happened to that outbreak of good sense. The questions from the audience were mostly concerned with which leader could offer most free stuff or boost spending on police, health, social care and the rest. Those from the interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, focused on the personal qualities of the two leaders and why they had changed their minds about terrorism or Brexit.
Where was the economy in all this? I appreciate that the Prime Minister ostensibly triggered this election hoping to strengthen her hand in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations. But the campaign has ranged far beyond Brexit and almost become a bidding war for more public spending on both sides, but especially on Labour’s.
Mr Corbyn’s hapless failure yesterday to remember the cost of his party’s pledge to extend the hours of free care for 1.3 million children was the latest manifestation of this carelessness with public money. I suppose that when you are planning to renationalise the public utilities at vast expense and spend another £50 billion on public services, higher pay and benefits, another billion here or there is a mere bagatelle.
But the Conservatives are strangely reluctant to expose this profligacy. For a few days after their manifesto was published they began to develop the argument that there are things the government can no longer do because they are unaffordable. Care for a growing number of elderly people cannot be sustained in the long run by a dwindling band of taxpayers. In particular, a ceiling on costs was considered unfeasible. Now, it is to be reinstated.
At least the Conservatives have partially grasped the nettle with the proposed means-testing of the winter heating allowance; and their funding of extra free childcare is limited to struggling parents, whereas Labour’s is universal and will be paid whatever the circumstances. In his calamitous radio interview, Mr Corbyn was honest enough to concede that this would “cost a lot”, even if he could not say how much. But the Tory response was to play the man, not the ball.
Mrs May was on her feet an hour or two later attacking the Labour leader as weak but declining to tackle her opponent’s improvidence head on. Why not? The obvious reason for this reticence is that free things are popular and if you are promising help for those “struggling to get by” they might think you don’t mean it and not vote for you but the chap who does. After all, who doesn’t want someone else to fork out for their medical treatment, social care, heating bills, child minder, school meals – the list goes on. There is no point vying with Labour over who can offer the most free stuff, because they will always win.
What the Tories need to say, loud and clear, is that we simply can’t afford it; and if we want to spend more on health and care then different ways of funding them need to be found and honestly debated. Yet this is going to be harder to argue now that Mrs May and her team are trying to pull the party away from the low-tax, small government, free-market policies that have held sway (up to a point) for 30 years and reinstate a more paternalist form of Conservatism. This is fraught with danger; for while Brexit is the biggest immediate challenge facing the country, the uncertainties ahead make it even more important, not less, that we keep a tight control on borrowing and rising indebtedness.
Although the fiscal restraints were loosened to accommodate the anticipated shocks of the EU vote, this is not a green light for a spending splurge. Even under Tony Blair, a centrist, Labour was reckless and imprudent. Under Mr Corbyn and John Mcdonnell – for whom state control, big government and high taxes are articles of faith – the deficit will rocket.
Although borrowing remains higher than the targets set by George Osborne, the Tories have a good story to tell. The deficit is back to around 3 per cent of GDP, the economy is growing and the UK is better than most at creating jobs. More than that, inequality has actually been falling in Britain, not that you would know it from this election.
Yet the Tories are likely to use the final week of the campaign to highlight the danger of letting Mr Corbyn into No 10 at such a crucial moment in the country’s history (even if that prospect has only arisen because we are having an election when one was not needed).
This Corbyn-bashing may be a strong line of attack, but its impact is diminishing, especially among the young and women voters. So we need to hear more about the principal reason Labour should not be allowed back into power: it would bankrupt the country. The national debt has quintupled in the past 20 years to more than £1.7 trillion and costs £50 billion a year to service – more than we spend on defence. We need politicians who are brave enough to tell voters that the party is over.