KEIR STARMER and his supporters in the press have been keen in the last few weeks, for obvious reasons, to stress how a Labour government will change lives dramatically, with Rafael Behr in the Guardian convinced there is abundant “available evidence” suggesting Starmer will be a “transformative Labour Prime Minister.”

While there are hints of improvements for workers in Rayner’s package of reforms, sadly there is far more evidence to indicate change will be minimal.
 
Does the party’s kowtowing to the banks and big business really suggest things will be better for the average worker earning less than average wages and struggling to make ends meet?

Labour hasn’t even suggested windfall taxes on the massive profits banks made during the inflation crisis by immediately raising interest rates for borrowers when the Bank of England increased the base rate but kept rates low for savers.

No calls for the Financial Conduct Authority to investigate this exploitative behaviour either, which suggests there will be no change from Jeremy Hunt’s advice to the FCA back in February that regulation should be secondary to international competitiveness and the need for growth. Protecting customers from exploitation, one would have thought, would be a priority for a Labour government so intent on “change.”
 
Then there’s the small matter of bankers’ bonuses. In 2022, Labour politicians were united in their fury at the Tories lifting the cap. The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, said that it “tells us everything we need to know about the priorities of this out-of-touch government,” a speech echoed by Reeves herself.

Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, said that getting rid of the bonus cap, “when it will not have any impact on 99.9 per cent of people in this country” is “incoherent,” and “not the way to grow this economy for the benefit of everyone.” Labour’s U-turn on bonuses this year hardly looks like a harbinger of transformative change for anyone but the already rich.
 
Neither does the very strange reliance on the growth of the economy resulting in the increased wealth being shared with the working population. With very few exceptions, and certainly not to any degree which can be described as “transformative,” history tells us such belief in right-wing economic theories like this “trickle-down” one to be totally mistaken.

When companies make profits the majority of the new money goes to bosses and shareholders, and as in Britain over the last decade, very little gets spent on long-term investment and training, and even less on improving workers’ lives and increasing their pay. The refusal by Starmer and Reeves to support a £15 minimum wage means companies won’t be obliged to pay workers much more than they pay now.
 
In the opinion of JP Morgan’s head of global strategy, a majority victory for Labour in the election will “benefit banks, builders and supermarkets.” Well, that’s alright then.

Presumably, builders will carry on in the usual fashion of building insufficient affordable homes in their expensive way, while supermarkets will continue to confound shoppers with their price variations, poor labelling and packaging and unnecessarily high fuel prices.

We know what the banks will do. The lack of comment from Labour about “greedflation,” companies raising their profit margins, thereby accentuating the inflation crisis, when the Bank of England was yet again blaming wage increases for inflation, and raising interest rates to make us all poorer, was deafening.

No evidence for future transformation under Starmer from his comments on child poverty either. When experts reckon around £2.5bn is required to discard the two-child benefit cap and end child poverty, his remark about that only being possible in an “ideal world” speaks volumes about his priorities and lack of ambition.

With the richest 1 per cent in Britain owning 36.5 per cent of all financial assets with a value of £1.8 trillion, and most of the CEOs of the top companies earning in excess of a hundred times the average amount earned by their employees, it’s difficult to understand why a Labour government can’t see its way to raising a few billion to end this disgraceful situation. Still “intensely relaxed” about the rich amassing even more wealth, it would seem.
 
Ending the huge inequity in this country, even attempting to do so, would be worthy of the description “transformative,” but as the actual word “inequality” only appeared once in Labour’s very modest manifesto, it doesn’t look like that’s a priority either.

Labour, in name only now, is being driven by New Labour politicians who have never been intent on creating a more equitable society. The 1997 manifesto, however, did at least introduce the slogan of “for the many, not the few,” and referred to it frequently, while Blair’s cabinet included a few independent-minded radicals, unlike the one chosen by Starmer.

With the tax gap running at around £40bn annually, one would expect tackling this with a large investment of extra staff at HMRC would be a major source of much-needed revenue to fund our ailing public services.

The lack of ambition on tackling tax avoidance is obvious; Labour’s aim to raise a net £700 million in 2025-26, rising to £5.1 billion a year by the end of the parliament, when around £200bn will have been avoided, is ridiculous.

The tax gap will still be £35bn. Creating a tax avoidance advisory committee sounded promising, but as it included Sir Edward Troup, someone who believes taxation to be “legalised extortion,” it was never going to transform anything.

Perhaps better things might be expected from the way Labour intends to clean up politics? Certainly, Starmer has been harping on about restoring trust and integrity to British politics enough to suggest we can at least take this seriously.

“Beefing up the restraints on people moving from roles in government to employment by commercial interests” is to be welcomed, but Starmer and his advisers clearly don’t understand what the rest of us see as “sleaze.”

Suspicions are inevitably aroused when we hear of MPs accepting freebies and donations, especially when only the ones costing over £300 have to be declared. It doesn’t help when the party leader is leading the way on this.

With his £16,000 worth of “free” clothes,” and known to have accepted concert and match tickets, as well as hospitality worth £3,716 to watch the Epsom Derby last year at a time when he should have been planning legislation to ban all such enticement, Starmer cannot see anything wrong with his behaviour. He hasn’t broken any rules, he claims, and obviously has no plans to change them.

Making it worse is the fact that the Labour Party has taken £400,000 in donations since 2020 from the gambling industry, when stricter betting regulation should have figured prominently in Labour’s manifesto.
 
Whether the new government will do anything about MPs having second jobs, employing members of their families, or renting out owned property while claiming expenses for a tenancy in London is a moot point.

On the subject of expenses, it was found last year that the chancellor-to-be, Rachel Reeves, was one of the 12 MPs who used parliamentary expenses to claim for professional accountancy advice to help with tax returns.

One would have thought more transparency regarding MPs’ tax records, something which would prove some sort of integrity, was a no-brainer, but apparently not. No transformation is likely on the ethical horizon.
 
Not too many reasons for optimism, then, and certainly no likelihood of any transformative policies heading our way anytime soon. At a time when the Tories will be looking towards Farage and moving even further to the right, it’s crucial Labour doesn’t move in the same way to fill the void.

With the threat from the far right growing, transformative policies have never been more necessary. Starmer and co need to reflect very seriously on why, with such a low turnout, Labour only managed to attract 35 per cent of the votes.