The Reform plan, or any of their announcements, is not about that thing in itself. It’s about identity. Quite why Labour don’t see this is baffling. When Reform talk about pints, they are not REALLY talking just about pints. The downturn in drinking alcohol amongst young people is clear and not changing. A couple of pennies off a pint is not going to tempt them back into a pub.
Reform will know this. They are not talking about that, or indeed to younger people. Reform are talking about some sense of British (English) identity. It is an identity that means standing in a pub drinking British ale, making as many off-colour remarks as you fancy because you’re not allowed to say anything any more and only Reform are the straight shooters who don’t get cowed by liberal elites who don’t listen. It’s those others, those who are at it, on the make, spongers, coming in and taking what isn’t theirs who are to blame.
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Whether through intention or simple failure to accept this, and instead attempting (valiantly) to attack the numbers, Labour keep getting left behind and also looking out-played. Each time they try to counter a message, they have the air of somebody arriving at the party when its already wrapping up. They respond rather than lead.
So it is, for example, that Rachel Reeves says she needs to increase revenue from student loans to pay for the NHS. Nobody can argue that the NHS needs help, but hammering young people who are the future of the nation is hardly the way. Her argument, with an eye on Reform voters, is that it’s unfair to expect taxpayers to pay for something that they’re never going to benefit from, is bogus and wrongheaded – as if the students don’t have parents and grandparents who want to see them prosper, or that students are all happily upper-middle class and insulated from the reality of hardship.
Or that those on final salary public service pensions aren’t supported by the payments of people who’ll never see the benefit. People aren’t mugs. They sense a government following rather than leading.
Reform, as it happens, have a good point about lack of investment in left-behind high streets, delivered though it is through the pub prism. If the government really wanted to do something and show they were leading not following, they could develop a huge and bold policy to regenerate. Travel to the blighted areas, listen to the locals – properly – and have a national strategy for positive change that bubbles up positively from the grassroots. Community and ownership will help things prosper.
And when it comes to poverty, especially child poverty, all of Labour’s good noises and intentions will only really count, as John Bird writes this week, if there are measurable targets they’re held to. Otherwise, it’s just air.
Who wouldn’t drink to that?
Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on X.
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