State-led public investment is needed to repair a decade of cuts. Labour should say so, not cleave to failed orthodoxies
The gap between the political narrative and life as experienced by the average voter is widening dramatically. The United Kingdom faces serious economic, environmental and social crises that will deepen without shifts in policy. Yet there is little sense of impending doom among the country’s politicians.
A decade of upheaval has produced not radical change, but a renewal of a failed consensus. This suits the Conservative party, which, after 13 years in power, offers the dead weight of bankrupt intellectual habits. However, Labour’s U-turn over one of its rare transformational policies, to spend £28bn a year from day one of being in office on green investment, leaves it looking pusillanimous and complacent about its poll lead.
