The first big speech by Labour shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds was highly significant for what it did not do — in that it was all about competence rather than ideology. Her speech had four main elements:
- a need for government to subsidise those hundreds of thousands of people forced into part-time working by the virus;
- a need to mount a massive national retraining programme for those whose industries are in irreversible decline;
- the imperative of avoiding debt delinquency and a default cliff edge for companies next March when their emergency Covid-19 loans from the Treasury become repayable;
- and an urgent need to avoid waste in contracts awarded by the government.
Many Tory MPs would say this is eminently sensible. In other words, Dodds — like Sir Keir Starmer — is hoping to court voters from a platform of competence rather than socialism. At least for now.
It was sort of inevitable given that — from necessity rather than choice — Johnson and Rishi Sunak have spent more public money more rapidly in the past six months than any Labour government ever.
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