Labour’s confidence tricks

There is nothing new, nor necessarily fatal, about making a poor start in government. Margaret Thatcher had a torrid first couple of years in office, set back by galloping inflation and mass unemployment, before she found her direction. Those who assume that Keir Starmer is doomed to be a one-term prime minister thanks to his plunging popularity are speaking too soon. The resignation of Louise Haigh over a historic fraud conviction will swiftly pass. The mini-scandal of freebies accepted by government ministers, which kept Fleet Street occupied over the summer, has already been largely forgotten.

Starmer is good at setting targets, rather less good at coming up with any realistic means of attaining them

The acceleration of the news cycle has presented governments with endless opportunities for embarrassment, but also means that the bad news tends to blow over much more quickly. Ministers who resign are now often back in office within a year; it is a fair bet that Haigh will not be scrubbing the floors as a volunteer at Toynbee Hall, as John Profumo was still doing many years into his long rehabilitation.

Yet as the Prime Minister attempts his first government ‘reset’, he has serious reasons to worry. The contrast with Thatcher’s poor start could not be greater. In her case she suffered the consequences of a hard-nosed economic and monetary policy which caused acute short-term pain, but that was a necessary condition to control inflation and create the calmer conditions in which enterprise could thrive. Trade union reforms and the retreat of chronically unprofitable nationalised industries caused pain and anger, but by the time she was asking voters to elect her for a second term her policies were beginning to show their worth.