One of the hardest tasks of any opposition is to gain the trust and credibility to run the economy. After what happened over the last few years, Labour have an enormous credibility gap.
Ed Balls’ decision to oppose any measure to deal with the deficit has reduced Labour’s economic credibility still further. So too has the two Eds’ decision to make attacks based on mis-truths, like denying there was a structural deficit before the election; or attacking the coalition for cutting bank taxes, when it is actually putting them up; and like backing another bonus tax, despite opposing it at the election, and despite Alistair Darling’s careful explanation of why it won’t work.
This left-wing tub-thumping may please the Labour base, but it doesn’t wash with the public. Perhaps that’s why on the key measure of who is to blame for the cuts, Labour is rightly blamed by just as big a proportion of the population as they were last summer.
But what’s this? It turns out that, alongside Blair and Mandelson, there is someone else in Labour who understands this and is prepared to say so.
Last night, answering questions after his speech on the future of Labour, David Miliband said:
“We’ve got to speak credibly about how we ended up in the current position… we’ve got to have a credible analysis of what went wrong as well as credible plans for what to do instead.”
David Miliband is right that Labour have no credible explanation of why they left such a mess, and have no credible plan to clear it up. Maybe he should tell his brother?
Matthew Hancock is the Conservative MP for West Suffolk
Comments