Ignore Musk, ignore the critics – you’ll feel the benefit of Labour’s policies in your pocket before long | Polly Toynbee

1 day ago 3

Look up, despite the bleak midwinter, the flu crisis and this dismal mood of political cynicism. Despite, too, the daily doom that pumps out of the most hostile media any new government ever faced, savaging whatever Labour does in extravagant language borrowed from Elon Musk. Good grief, the ever-rightward travelling Times just published a leader praising Musk’s wild attacks on Keir Starmer, subheaded “His fundamental critique is correct”. Monday’s tweet from Musk was “Prison for Starmer”.

Other blasts of bare-knuckle nonsense include the Mail on Sunday’s “bombshell” front-page news saying: “Keir Starmer will be out of No 10 within a year, poll predicts”. Read further to find that 30% of those polled plan to vote Labour in the next election, compared with 23% for the Tories and 22% for Reform. That’s not good, but it’s not yet a crisis, not least because Kemi Badenoch’s Tory unelectables are capsizing in the backwash of Faragism. Labour looks pretty solid in comparison: despite the unpopular winter fuel means-testing, it is closer to voters on key issues, as VAT on private schools is hugely popular, and twice as many think the budget’s tax rises were “necessary” as not.

Hard though it is to make the weather with serious policy plans against force-nine gales, Starmer and his cabinet look to be holding their collective nerve. They are right to do so. Of course there are unknowable Trump hurricanes ahead, but look closely and the auguries for this year are better than you might think.

The Financial Times’s recent survey of more than 600 leading economists concludes with a summarising leader: “Britain’s economic gloom is overdone,” it says. The outlook is “robust” compared with that of our EU neighbours, the UK’s service exports “less exposed to US tariffs”, while strong parliamentary stability is “another positive for investors” against volatility elsewhere. “Private sector investment has picked up”, and “Wall Street banks and fund managers are more upbeat about British equities”. It says this year’s planning freedoms will speed up infrastructure and “raise economic forecasts further” as big public projects “help whet the appetite of businesses”. But “widespread pessimism” underplays Britain’s strengths in “financial and professional services, university education, life sciences, creative industries and advanced technologies”.

This buoyant analysis may impress few until real growth reaches people’s pockets. But here is the view of a powerful arbiter with international reach, concluding that “Britain’s negative national mood seems excessive”. Beware “bad economic vibes” becoming a “self-reinforcing downward spiral”. As I say, look up!

Nigel Farage looms menacingly. The news cycle seems transfixed by him and his US frenemies. The Reform party leader commands outrageous coverage just by sheer force of entertainment. But my guess is that his tendency to say whatever he wants alienates too many for him to get near actual power. Badenoch’s tussles with him will be an ongoing spectator sport, but they are unlikely to reattract and reinvigorate traditional Tories. Their party is hooked on culture war combat: over net zero, over Brexit betrayals, over immigration and asylum. Its titans compete to mouth provocations. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick’s abuse of Pakistani-heritage Britons as “people of an alien culture” goes unrebuked by the party leadership, because he is no outlier; this is their currency. May’s local elections will, as ever, liberate everyone’s free expression to voice an opinion through their votes. The Liberal Democrats and the Greens will surf a wave of likable policies. But the general election is far away. May results will be no more accurate a predictor than a Ouija board.

The terrain is unforgiving, but Labour’s spades are now in the ground. Yesterday a promise of practical NHS plans for speeding up appointments: with direct referrals to seven-day local hubs for scans, and the separation of elective surgery units so that daily pressures don’t slow work on the backlog. “A million pointless appointments” will be abolished. Wednesday’s wellbeing and schools bill will mean breakfast clubs, proven to speed young children’s developmental progress, will be rolled out from April. There will be new flexibility for teachers’ working weeks to address their exodus. A universal register will seek to prevent home-schooled children vanishing from public view, following the murder of 10-year-old Sara Sharif. Primary schools are already bidding to open much-needed new nurseries, the firm priority of Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities.

Expect literal spades in the ground too for energy, housing, repairs to schools and hospitals and potholes. The slow, dull work of government does change lives. The renters’ bill abolishing no-fault evictions brings security to tenants. The minimum wage will rise significantly in April by 6.7% for 3 million people, bringing forward new rights for workers in the gig economy. Starmer will join the EU summit in February to try easing trade and travel barriers: UK voters welcome the EU’s demand for a youth mobility scheme. We wait, impatiently, for the child poverty policy promised this spring. And the assisted dying bill returns for final votes with strong public support. So the more wildly Musk tweets that “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”, the more likely people are to feel relieved that they live under a sane government.

All this is action that people want. Yet, as Joe Biden proved, that’s never enough without touching the public’s heart. Shorn of narrative, these acts can look random, almost accidental.

Starmer and the cabinet are driven by social democratic intent, yet restrain their language, even though proof of their beliefs is right there in the Treasury’s budget red book: a steep distributional graph where the bottom decile gains 4% and the top decile loses 1% in tax and services. That’s a portrait of social democratic decision-making.

But it is just a graph: it will mean little until Starmer turns it into a vision of fairness that all can see. Politics is achievement, but it is also the art of raising people’s sights towards the horizon you are heading for. The FT lifts the pessimism, now Starmer needs to paint his future landscape in primary colours. Look up!