What are the lessons of 1992?

A young relative told me yesterday that after Keir Starmer reduced Labour's planned funding for green investment he will vote Green rather than Labour.  There were similar responses from Radio 5 listeners.

Last week The Spectator had an interesting article on the Green threat to Labour,  Apparently, local polling shows that the Greens are just four points behind in Bristol West, the seat of the shadow culture secretary.

In many ways I think that Labour could also lose some votes to Reform in red wall seats for rather different reasons.   Other Labour voters may stay at home and I think that turnout will be down despite the importance of the election.

Keir Starmer was caught between a rock and a hard place.   He was open to charges of fiscal irresponsibility.   The public finances are in a shocking state.   Conservative plans for public spending allow for only very small real increases when the problem of 'broken Britain' is all too evident.

Reference is quite often made to the surprise Conservative victory in 1992.  Circumstances were different and it is easy to draw the wrong lessons.

I have contributed a chapter to a forthcoming book on John Smith and my concluding paragraphs are relevant:

'One lesson that has lodged itself in the Labour Party’s collective memory has been the myth of the shadow budget.   It is thought to demonstrate that the party must be very cautious about any proposal to increase taxation.  However, the Smith legacy is more complex than that.   Reassuring the international financial community, the City of London that Labour offered a safe pair of hands ‘tended To squeeze out anything too radical or distinctive, diminishing any positive sense of what the Labour Party stood for … Labour risked being portrayed as a pale imitation of the Conservatives.’ 

Labour runs that same risk today under Keir Starmer.  Of course, any new Labour government would have a difficult economic inheritance: low growth, poor productivity and historically high levels of taxation.   It is not unreasonable to reassure business that there would be a more constructive relationship and less erratic policy-making than under Boris Johnson or Liz Truss.  However, Labour has to offer something beyond a more competent version of the Conservatives.  Policy commitments are continually being diluted.   A policy that has become emblematic of this tendency is the refusal to contemplate removing the Conservative Government’s two child benefit cap.   Potential Labour voters faced with an offer of prudence and business as usual may decide to vote for the Greens or not vote at all.'

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[ii] Stuart, John Smith, p.194.