The flagship policy would transform the UK. If only this government could deliver it
There are transformative moments in politics when the opposition gets gifted the political agenda. In the 1970s, it was the power of trade unions and inflation that gave the Tories control of the narrative, just as after 2008, it was the aftermath of the financial crisis. Today, Covid and Brexit have combined to make the condition of the people the number one political issue. The question of how to react to this threatens to overwhelm a Tory party that is divided between its libertarian wing and its one-nation advocates and whose leader is self-evidently unfit for high office.
It is a new transformative moment. The news last week that January inflation hit a 30-year high of 5.5% to produce the biggest cost of living squeeze for 60 years is the backdrop to a mounting social crisis. The pressure is reflected in a falling birth rate and stagnating, even declining life expectancy, desperately unfair life chances, disempowerment, justified post-Brexit economic pessimism and social neglect, all alongside phenomenal private wealth. Labour, for the first time in 15 years, has the chance to command the agenda and do to its opponents what was once done to it.
