Work has given up their growth mission

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In retrospective, the budget Rachel Reeves gave last fall was almost a crime of firing. The Chancellor of the British Exchequer was warned not to be a large amount of the fiscal burden in business. She was told that super-rich people did not bother to move their affairs elsewhere. But I knew it better and of course no.

A couple of things have saved her. First, a change from Finance Minister could have communicated the panic to frightened investors, even if his own loan had made much of the sensation. Second, there are more than 400 labor deputies that would be worse at work. By default, Reeves survives.

In balance, this is correct. But at least we can leave the claim now that Labour wants economic growth above all? This was the line of the party before and after the victory of the landslide elections last summer. You feel it less and less as time goes by. The data, which show a weakening labor market, among other problems, make usual mockery of that. So do the Government’s own actions.

This week, sir Keir Starmer announced a plan to reduce immigration. Some of them are wise. The problem is that it involves another round of burdens for employers, which already have an increase in national insurance costs. In other words, growth is the government number 1 priority, but it is also beating Nigel Farage.

Last month, Tony Blair warned about the economic cost of Carbon emissions goals in Britain. Downing Street scolded the former Prime Minister without establishing himself. In other words, growth is the government number 1 priority, but it is also clean.

Soon, in which it can decrease as its worst judgment, Labor will launch a lot of additional regulations on business, apart from those related to migration. Unlike tax hikes, which were made with some really bleak public finances, there is not even an express need for the added red tape. That is, growth is the priority of government number 1, but it is also that the unions are sweet.

This is a government with half a dozen priorities number one. If growth is no longer paramount, the problem is not to start and re -lie to the nation. Each meant what was called at that time. Like all parties that spend a lot of time out of power, work “only” underestimated government compensation.

No, the fault adheres to those who have never taken these people in their word. I have not seen a governing government less examined than that of Starmer. The labor never chose short -term growth political Pressures or their favored stakeholders, at least not when the times of crisis came. Because conservatives usually govern for so long and unfortunately, it is understandable that the cultural defects typical of the work will never be fixed in the national mind. The main one is an incomprehension of life outside the public sector, the union movement and the world at the time. The number of businesses living on small margins, which will erase the Ni Rise, was really a news even for the most important pieces of the Labour Center-Center.

In the end, British politics is a selection of consoles for stagnant life standards. National sovereignty and not built field? That is why conservative vote. A better funded public sector and a sacrosant climate agenda? The work offers these balls. Even the renovation of the “Pro-Negoci” of the United Kingdom really sells migration and other cultural causes.

At some point, we must conclude that voters want it. His “revealed” preference for things different from growth is not unique for Britain. Look at most of Western Europe. I could even buy a social peace that we will not realize until it disappeared. (The US has been a phenomenon of growth, with little benefit to its policy.) But at least we look clear. This government should be the last to promise to put growth first without arousing a national laughter.

Stagnation forever, then? Well, there is a trace of hope. Starmer often comes to the right place, late. He removed Jeremy Corbyn from the labor movement, after he has been campaigning for several years to turn it into Prime Minister. About gender and other cultural issues, is arranged these days challenge The hard left, now that he is losing anyway. During the time of the peak of awakening, you could not find it with a light of light.

Let me predict another conversion of eleven hours. Near the end of this parliament, which promises to be an economic flop, Starmer will make drastic reforms to improve growth. These will include some or all of the following: a clean zero softening, a deep step towards the EU, a change of taxes to return to mobile wealth in Britain, a number of exemptions from the new laws of the workplace, and even a quiet defeat of the same immigration sidewalks that he has just announced.

These policies could excite enough animals to see the work during the next election. Or, as I have suspected from before Starmer was elected, this is only one of those pockets in history when a significant change in public sentiment approaches, but it does not yet come. At present, the most leader can do is prepare the ground. The first revolts of Thatcherism occurred under the labor government that preceded it. Much of what we think when Reaganite started under Jimmy Carter. Starmer plays this kind of historical role written everywhere. It can still put economic growth above all, but too late for him and for a lost generation of his compatriots.

Janan.ganeh@ft.com