Who fancies a festive recreation of Labour or Liz?
The principles are fairly easy – I will set out some quotes and also you guess whether or not they got here from a member of the present tax-raising and employees’ rights enhancing Labour administration or from the right-wing scourge of the anti-growth coalition and former prime minister Liz Truss.
So put down your turkey sandwiches, off we go:
1. “We are rolling up our sleeves and removing red tape”
2. “A red tape bonfire will encourage business investment and boost growth”
3. “[Regulation of financial services] has gone too far”
4. “Where [regulation] is stopping us building… then mark my words – we will get rid of it”
5. “We needed to stop drifting in the direction of… more regulation, which was causing sluggish growth”
That is your lot. Suppose you have obtained all of them? Nicely, listed here are the solutions.
Numbers 1, 3 and 4 are Labour, whereas 2 and 5 are Liz Truss.
Okay, Trivial Pursuit this might not be. However there is a not-so-subtle level I am making an attempt to sketch out right here.
Most of the noises the present authorities is making on development and regulation usually are not so totally different to those that emanated from our shortest ever serving prime minister – a politician most within the Labour Occasion view because the antithesis of every thing this administration stands for.
We see it once more in Sir Keir Starmer’s Christmas Eve letter to regulators setting a mid-January deadline for them to place ahead concepts for eradicating “barriers to growth”.
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None of this could come as a lot of a shock.
Altering the foundations to encourage a extra pro-business surroundings is likely one of the few levers the prime minister can pull to attempt to increase the UK’s sluggish development fee.
However one particular person’s “barrier to growth” might be another person’s “essential safeguard”.
5:07
October: PM’s pledge to scrap crimson tape
For instance, marketing campaign teams have already referred to as for the “Growth Duty” within the mandate of the water regulator to get replaced with one thing centered extra on the surroundings.
That is on prime of present criticism OFWAT has confronted for taking too delicate an strategy to the administration of personal water firms.
There’s concern over within the monetary companies sector too.
Politics Hub Quiz:Check your political data within the quiz of 2024
Earlier this month, 50 economists and coverage specialists wrote to the chancellor warning about her plans for deregulation.
Companies will doubtless give all this all a hotter reception although.
However even that will likely be set in opposition to wider concern over the monetary pressure being placed on corporations by the massive tax rises within the finances.
The timescales related to regulatory reform means it is going to doubtless take years earlier than we will take a dependable studying of whether or not any measures introduced by Labour are literally boosting development.
For Sir Keir Starmer, the hazard is that he is unable to reconcile the political and financial contradictions in his wider coverage platform.
Are you able to be pro-growth whereas elevating taxes? Can you chop regulation however nonetheless shield employees and the surroundings? Or put extra merely, are you able to be each Labour and Liz?