The rationale apparently being offered by Labour’s spin doctors for the government’s latest U-turn is certainly colourful, but doesn’t inspire much confidence. The decision to scrap a compulsory digital ID scheme for employment checks is said to be akin to “scraping the barnacles off the boat”.
The phrase is commonly attributed in this political context to the Conservative strategist Sir Lynton Crosby. It means that for a party to proceed smoothly and with maximum efficiency to electoral success, it needs to discard all kinds of extraneous commitments, distractions, and negative factors that may have encrusted themselves onto its image over time and thus spoilt its appeal.
The logical conclusion in this case, however, is that a policy that the prime minister sought so proudly to associate himself with only weeks ago now has to be disposed of because no one wants it or believes it will work.
Digital ID was supposed to be proudly plonked on the prow of HMS Labour as an invigorating, hydrodynamic symbol of “national renewal”. It has instead been likened by the government’s own apparatchiks to a stubborn, unwanted, useless crustacean clinging to the hull of the Labour flagship and dragging it off course. The more unkind observer might suggest that it is Sir Keir Starmer who is the biggest barnacle of all.
Most of those trying to keep count mark digital ID down as the 13th U-turn in the 18 months since Labour returned to office. It has obviously become a bad habit, and there is no reason to suppose that it will be cured in the near future. Indeed, the rumours are that U-turn 14 is coming soon. The draconian plan to restrict the ancient right to trial by jury is also set to be “adjusted” in the face of disquiet within the parliamentary Labour Party.
The Starmer administration has changed its mind on everything from trans rights to child benefits to the fiscal rules. Some of the reversals have been disastrous.
A relatively modest attempt to reform social security last summer was so badly botched that it had to be pulled. This has had the lasting effect of empowering Labour backbenchers, catastrophically weakening the authority of the prime minister, and, above all, taking welfare reform off the agenda, possibly for the rest of the parliament.
Other volte-faces have been unequivocally welcome. A rethink on the Waspi women, for example, was the morally right thing to do, although it was in fact a U-turn on top of a U-turn, restoring Labour’s support whilst in opposition for restitution of the lost pensions. Equally justified was (mostly) restoring the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, along with Sir Keir personally listening to the real-life consequences for genuine family farms of the changes in inheritance tax, and acting on that information.
That, though, is not the point. The question is why the government, with its five-year mandate for “change” and a landslide majority, cannot get its policies right in the first place, win the arguments, and ensure that its own MPs will support its decisions.
The government is at the head of the sixth-largest economy in the world. It has the entire machinery of the British state at its disposal, with a total budget of about £1.3 trillion, and an almost record number of special political advisers offering their wisdom to ministers – some 42 in Downing Street alone. And yet things still go wrong. There have been too many “unforced” errors, too many gifts handed to the opposition parties. It has given rise to an impression of “chaos and confusion” – precisely what Labour was supposed to end when the “grown-ups” took over in July 2024.
Too many policies have not been properly thought through, “joined up”, or tested as to their consequences. That might be expected of an amateur populist outfit such as Reform UK – but not of a party of power, purporting to serve the nation.
It is certainly what seems to have happened with the “farms tax” and the pubs U-turn – not enough consultation, by a secretive Treasury, with other ministries, let alone with the industry groups representing those affected. The original digital ID scheme and the reforms to jury policy seem to have been poorly researched, and inadequate to solve the problems in irregular migration and the courts system. They had minimal political appeal or practical application, and, though far-reaching, were never featured in the manifesto. So how did they ever become official policy?
There are other questions. It should have been obvious to ministers and their advisers that the public would never be satisfied with anything less than a full inquiry into the grooming gangs, so why was it resisted for so long? Why were the reforms to disability and sickness benefits not properly presented to Labour MPs, and the arguments for change lost so comprehensively?
If leadership is about getting things done, then Sir Keir needs to get a grip. He is accountable. Yet he cannot be held responsible for every error made by his ministers or advisers – and certainly not for the scandals that so many have blundered into.
It is also telling that when Sir Keir has been able to act personally, with fewer party and parliamentary constraints, he has in fact proved remarkably successful – in foreign and defence matters. However, he does need to fix things. He is said to want to concentrate on the cost of living as his party faces some difficult elections in May. Given how accident-prone his administration has become, he may not be allowed to.
