The policyless party

Thomas Coughlan writes:

There’s a joke going around the UK at the moment about soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s 2024 election campaign.

“Britain is broken,” the slogan goes, “let’s do nothing about it”.

The soon to be former will be correct. Will happen soon after the May local elections.

You’ll know by now Labour is running a “small target” strategy of little policy and therefore giving the coalition as little space as possible on which to attack it. 

The thin policy slate has begun to get Labour into testy scraps during its regular sitting week media stand-ups, in which press gallery journalists from several outlets have decided the party has crossed the invisible threshold that marks the point at which it is no longer tenable to offer critique without proposing at least some solutions. 

The lack of ideas is becoming a liability. MPs with nothing to talk about risk saying things they don’t really mean.

It’s one thing to have no policy two years out from an election. It’s another to have nothing a few months out.

Labour MPs are an academic bunch (sometimes to a fault), and they have plenty of ideas. They’re just afraid to show them.

Not brain dead, but brain scared. Labour’s problem is that on the outside, brain scared looks an awful lot like brain death.

Brain scared – I like it.

It’s weighing reinstating a form of its interest deductions ban, but with the country, particularly Auckland, in the midst of a multi-year property crash, the electorate’s appetite for taxes to whack depressed prices even lower is limited – particularly if Labour decides to lift the council rates cap, a policy desired by Labour-friendly local government, but which will blow a double-digit sized hole in Labour’s affordability message no number of free GP visits can fix.

I’d love Labour to campaign on allowing more 20% rates increases.

The post The policyless party first appeared on Kiwiblog.