Labour is a very poor opposition at the moment, and no amount of money could fix that. But the government is currently pursuing a policy that seems intended to weaken even decent oppositions. In the Autumn Statement, George Osborne announced a 19 per cent cut to Short money, which is the state funding for political parties to be able to do their job of representing the millions of voters who want them in parliament.
The 19 per cent cut is in line the reductions made to unprotected spending departments in the spending review, and is quite easy for ministers to defend, because they can talk about reducing the cost of politics, and voters like that idea.
Naturally, the opposition parties involved don’t like the idea, and have been complaining about it. They obviously have an interest in ensuring that they get as much money as possible, but what’s interesting is that privately their concerns are shared by a number of Tory ministers who remember what it’s like to be in opposition.
The reason opposition parties need Short money is that it helps them fund the research activities that help them scrutinise the government, thereby helping them perform their constitutional duty. Labour isn’t really doing much of that at the moment anyway, but if it wants to in the future, it will find it even harder to manage with even smaller resources.
Former opposition frontbenchers in the Tories remember how hard it is to produce research and briefings without the might of the Civil Service helping you out, and worry that one day in the future they might find themselves back in opposition and suffering as a result of their own cuts. They’re not particularly worried, of course, as most Tories assume that their party will now be in government until at least 2025 because of the weakness of Labour.
What is more worrying for some of the higher-minded Cabinet ministers is that while a weak opposition makes life feel comfortable when you’re in government, it’s not all that good for government. It’s like deliberately hiring a rubbish personal trainer who can’t be bothered to order you to continue doing squats: comfortable at first, but not that good at targeting flab. Opposition parties should be the flints that governments spark off, and some ministers worry that they will end up with worse policies if they weaken their opposition financially.
For the time being, the main public opposition to the cut comes from former ministers like David Davis, who says that ‘anyone with a sense of fairness will see that this is the wrong thing to do’. It is, I understand, more of a Treasury initiative than anything much to do with Number 10, and other minsters don’t currently think Short money is a big enough problem to lose political capital with Osborne over.
But what could happen instead is that if the Tories do go ahead with the 19 per cent cut, they’ll find Labour and other opposition parties start throwing the ‘reducing the cost of politics’ argument back in their faces with parliamentary questions, Freedom of Information requests and tips to newspapers about the number of special advisers the party now has in government, and the number of former party officials who are working in departmental press offices, for instance. My sources in other parties threaten a guerrilla offensive against the Short money cut. But perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the things that will make this offensive less powerful is that currently Labour is in such a weak state that it struggles to oppose anything.
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