A bit of a spectacular soft-shoe shuffle from the collected UK media this week as HMG backed down in the face of wide back-bench unrest from planned cuts in the Welfare Bill.
It has long been an article of faith in these quarters that language is important, and it has been both interesting and instructive to see the language used around Keir Starmer's maneuvering in the face of concerted opposition from a wide swathe of the PLP.
What has also been somewhat telling is how the story has been framed, and how the framing has changed, but I'll come onto that in a moment
The language around the change has been hyperbolic. He has "caved in" it's a "humiliating climbdown", he's "lost all credibility". The story is of a weak and craven man, humbled by a wee bit of opposition, feeble, falling at the first fence. All talk is of "U-turns", as if there coukd be nothing worse.
Let's reframe the story another way: "after listening to differing opinions, the Government has changed its mind."
Ask yourself this: if you went through your life without taking any advice on board, how far would you have got? Yet for the UK media, it is the mark of a "strong" politicians that they stick to their guns and force their agenda through, however misguided it proves to be. Boris Johnson simply removed dissenting voices from his party, and look how that's turned out, a rump Conservative party cannibalised by Reform and the Liberal Democrats. This has been a Tory problem ever since the days of Heath, it is better to be a "conviction politician" and forge ahead regardless, than it is to admit that you might have been wrong, and change tack.
Ask the ghost of Margaret Thatcher how that one turned out for her when she insisted on ramming the Poll Tax through. On the other side, observe how Blair's messianic zeal for the Iraq war trashed his government, his reputation, and the Labour party's chances for a decade plus (and, by opening the door for Cameron and Osborne, the country). Conviction is not always a good thing. There's nothing wrong with changing your mind.
For Starmer, of course, no outcomes would be a good one in the eyes of the press. They were all in on the bill as an agent of division within the Labour Party, but now that the concessions seem to have largely headed those problems off, they've switched seamlessly as to how this will now cost the taxpayer, how taxes will have to rise.
Where the reporting is disingenuous is that this was never made explicit in the first place. The media is largely complicit in the general public's belief that all public services should have more spent on them, but this will somehow be funded by magic. Theresa May's jibe about the "Magic money tree" was one of the more credible things she said. The money's got to come from somewhere. All right wing media is pro tax cuts, and it's all pro benefits cuts, until they're cut. It's dishonest.
Admittedly, it would help Labour's economic case if they hadn't announced buying a load of shiny jets in the same week, but the fact remains that the welfare budget is spiralling. You can argue about the rights and wrongs, and for what it's worth I'm not on HMGs side on this, I thought the original iteration of the bill heartless and Gradgrindian, and I'm glad it's been fought, but we need to have a grown up conversation in this country about exactly where we expect the money to come from.
And you won't get that from the papers, sadly.
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