Labour has announced some cost of living policies that treat voters as children. Rather than any significant economic strategy for real change, the ruling party is offering voters temporary gimmicks like no import tariffs on chocolate and biscuits for the summer.
Instead, Labour could deliver cost price essentials such as water, energy and telecomms to significantly reduce costs for every person and business.
Labour — The gimmicks
It’s almost laughable. This is the Groupon administration. As well as cutting costs for supermarkets on trivial items, the ruling party is cutting VAT on summer days out for families to 5% from 20%.
The temporary tax cut is from 25 June to 1 September.
Labour says it only ‘expects’ companies running supermarkets not to simply keep the reduced tariff gains. The same seems to be true of the reduced VAT gains on theme parks, zoos and other days out. Companies could just pocket the cost decrease and keep prices the same.
The policies show an affront to democracy
The way Labour is conducting the policies show a further entrenchment of corporatism. The government is proposing policies to supermarkets that the corporations can choose whether or not to accept. Indeed, corporations rejected a proposal on price controls on food staples.
That’s opposed to Labour actually regulating the economy for the public good. That said, it would be easier to do so if the ruling party was working off a democratically-backed manifesto instead of just doing whatever once in government.
“Shield workers”
The secretary general of the TUC, Paul Nowak, told the Guardian Labour needs to be “bolder” than its summer policies:
Any practical steps to help families with the cost of living crisis are a good thing, but we’ve barely begun to experience the economic fallout of the Iran war – and the threat to living standards is going to grow as the war drags on. The government will need to be bolder to shield workers and households from Trump’s illegal war.
Indeed, the huge profits made by corporate middlemen and utilities shows the ‘cost of living crisis’ is manufactured. Labour could do more.
Featured image via Stefan Rousseau-Pool/Getty Images
By James Wright
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