Jeremy Corbyn has launched Labour’s local election campaign today with the promise that his party will stand up to the government, and the claim that it is being effective in doing so. He said:
‘Now, being in Opposition is never easy, I think we all know that. But Labour in Westminster has proved you can still have influence and you can still make a difference. it was by speaking out and standing up with people with disabilities that we shamed the government into abandoning their disgraceful cuts to personal independence payments.
‘But we’re not done yet. We will continue the campaign to stop the cuts to disabled people’s ESA that is still there as a proposal in the Budget. This week, around 3 million families including thousands in Harlow, would have lost over a thousand pounds a year in working tax credits. But, by campaigning around the country, and by our votes in Parliament, Labour forced the Tories to scrap those cuts and they are not now going ahead. And we continue to campaign to stop their cuts in universal credits. The cuts being inflicted on working families, disabled people and the failure to stand up for communities across Britain are a political choice, not an economic necessity.’
These claims in themselves are highly dubious. Labour did do some good groundwork on the disability benefits cuts, and it also produced figures very quickly on the tax credit cuts after they were announced in the emergency budget (not something Corbyn can claim credit for, as he was not leader at the time). But it was pressure from Tory MPs and the media that led to both climbdowns, not Labour specifically. Essentially, Corbyn is taking credit for things that would have happened had he decided to spend the past few months fasting in the desert, rather than turning up to the Commons, which makes him the John Terry of British politics, turning up when the prizes are being handed out, even though he wasn’t on the pitch when any of the winning goals were scored.
But tactically this is interesting, because it suggests that the Labour leadership may be making the same mistake that Ed Miliband’s team made during the 2012 omnishambles, which was to assume that the government was always going to be in a number of messes, and that therefore voters would always think Labour would be a better bet. The mistake that many in Team Miliband now admit they made was to think that this therefore meant they didn’t need to worry that much about what Labour actually had to say to votes, just so long as it could benefit from Tory messes. Given governments don’t have consistently terrible times, and given voters change their focus from being grouchy with the current government in the mid-term to considering which party they can really trust when it comes to a general election, making the same mistake twice will be costly.
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