What was labour doing for 14 years? | thearticle

In every interview when a Labour minister is challenged about some intractable area of policy the response is always the same. We have been in opposition for fourteen years. Whether it’s

immigration, education, the health service, mental health care, it’s the same old song. What interviewers never ask in reply is: But didn’t you have fourteen years to think about policies?

What did you do in all that time? Surely you spoke to think tanks, academics and policy advisers during a decade and a half? Admittedly, much of that time was wasted on Corbyn and his cranky

followers. But both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister served in the Shadow Cabinet for four years during that time. John Healey (now Defence Secretary), Andrew Gwynne (now

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention ) and Luke Pollard ( Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces ) all served during at least some of

the Corbyn years.   And what was the point of hiring Sue Gray, Downing Street Chief of Staff and formerly Second Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office? Surely she knew better than anyone

that you must hit the ground running with policies you have been preparing in Opposition for over a decade? Perhaps not better than anyone. Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper know a thing or two

about being in government. Miliband served in Gordon Brown’s government from 2007-10 and Cooper served, first under Blair, then Brown, for thirteen years. They surely knew how difficult it

is when you’re in government, and crises come at you thick and fast. Interviewers on the Today programme and Newsnight want answers quickly, so get your policies in place. There are

certainly plenty of crises. Riots in some of our worst-off cities, universities facing bankruptcy, a rising shortage of teachers, searing indictments of mental health authorities and the

Metropolitan Police, war in Gaza and Ukraine.  So where are the policies? There are, admittedly, pay rises for teachers, junior doctors and train drivers and cuts in the winter fuel

allowance for old age pensioners. But when Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, was asked last week by Justin Webb about the cash crisis facing our universities and the social

inequality facing schoolchildren on the day of their A-Level results, she floundered. She didn’t have answers which she might have prepared during her three years as Shadow Secretary of

State for Education from 2021-24. Instead, she simply blamed the Tories. Of course, there is much to blame successive Conservative governments for, but shouldn’t she have been working on

exactly these questions while in Opposition? What was she doing for three years? Everyone interested in education could see the current university funding crisis coming for years. It was one

of Blair’s most woeful legacies. Similarly, it is no surprise that, while 70% of schoolchildren in Wimbledon manage to get to university, just 17% do so in Barrow-in-Furness. Shouldn’t that

attainment gap have been in her in-tray in 2021, never mind 2024? Worse still, where are Yvette Cooper’s clearly thought-out policies to deal with immigration, rising crime rates and

outbreaks of civil disorder of the kind we have seen in the past weeks? Has the new Home Secretary got radical new plans for dealing with the problems facing British multiculturalism, based

on meetings she must have had with her opposite numbers in France, Germany and Italy, who are all wrestling with almost exactly the same issues? David Lammy also served under Gordon Brown

and for four years was in Sir Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet, including almost three years as Shadow Foreign Secretary. What did he learn about the Middle East since 2021 that prepared him

for the huge foreign policy problems he has inherited since the Election? Apart, that is, from hiring the disgraced ex-President of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, to work on

international development at the Foreign Office. Baroness Shafik was forced to step down after just 13 months in office. It was left to the New York police to deal with the violent and

anti-Semitic protests that had terrorised Jewish students at Columbia since October 7 last year. Winston Churchill famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It was one of his

less sensible remarks. Crises come out of the blue and it’s hard to prepare for them. One of Rachel Reeves’s most foolish policy announcements was to claim that Britain’s economic problems

would be solved by growth. Really? Perhaps that’s what Gordon Brown hoped for till the economic crisis of 2008 blew his plans away and haunted his successors, David Cameron and George

Osborne, for the duration of their time in government. Or perhaps that’s what consecutive Conservative Prime Ministers hoped for before Covid and Ukraine. To quote a possibly apocryphal

reply by another Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan: “Events, dear boy, events.” In other words, manage incidents before they become full-blown crises and the media is hounding

you 24/7. That’s why ministers age the way they do. Compare photos of Brown and Blair in 1997 with how they looked in 2010. What Churchill should have said is, “Never let fourteen years in

opposition go to waste.” And yet that’s exactly what Starmer and his team seem to have done. They could see numerous Tory ministers scrambling to deal with one huge crisis after another, one

policy blunder replacing the one before. And they must have thought: that will never be us. But how have they prepared? There is little sign of any preparation at all. All those civil

servants who were thrilled to see a new Labour government don’t seem to have advised them when they were in Opposition, checking how their plans for office, which everyone knew would come,

were getting along. With hindsight it looks as if Labour were too busy poring over the polls when they should have been focusing on the policies they would announce straight after the

inevitable victory on 7 July. This too was predictable. Throughout the six-week election campaign, leading figures in the Shadow Cabinet were asked, again and again, how they would deal with

this or that issue. Alarmingly, answers were there none. But no one seemed too bothered, because so many programme presenters and producers wanted a Labour victory and cut the leadership

extraordinary amounts of slack — with a few honourable exceptions, notably Nick Ferrari at LBC. Now these Shadow Ministers are in office and the honeymoon is over. Eventually, the questions

will get sharper. Saying “We were in opposition for fourteen years” won’t cut it. One day, even on BBC News, someone is going to say, “But, minister, what were you doing for all those years

in opposition?” And then, the questions won’t be about predictable issues such as A-Level results or small boats — they will be about some huge, unprecedented crisis that no one saw coming.

The next pandemic, perhaps, or the next big international crisis. Bridget Phillipson may think she was given a hard time by Justin Webb last week, when she was asked five times who would pay

for the bumper pay rise deal for train drivers but failed to answer the question, or when she fumbled for an answer when asked why the Government can find the money for ASLEF’s new pay

deal, yet can’t pay the fuel allowance for most pensioners. But one day, and it may even be very soon, that interview will seem like a Teddy Bear’s Picnic by comparison with what will be

coming down the highway. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now

more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation._