Lock, Stock and Both Barrels

In an unmistakable sign of the return of the Labour Party of old, Lucy Powell proposes to scrap the Triple Lock on pensions. But pensioners spend, so getting money to them during a recession is exactly right. And pensioners also vote, so messing about with their money is impolitic in the extreme. 

As for Labour's being economically to the right of the Conservatives, that has been the case since the Budget of December 1976, with only partial exceptions under Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn, both in Opposition, and neither with the support of anything more than a handful of MPs. 

In 2015, Labour "contested" a General Election on a single economic programme with both of the parties to the Austerity Coalition. But by far its best showing at the last four General Elections has been when it was both anti-austerity and pro-Brexit. Only sabotage by its pro-austerity and anti-Brexit staff kept it out of office. 

Alas, though, while even Keir Starmer has given up on reversing Brexit, the party is now well and truly back in the hands of the people who usually run it, economically well to the right of the Conservative Party at any given time. If anyone were ever going to abolish the Triple Lock, then it was always going to be them.

Of course, some of us would replace the entire benefits system, and be in no doubt that the state pension is a benefit, with the Universal Basic Income, set at a rate no lower than anyone was already receiving in benefits. Paid by the Treasury, it would make possible the abolition of the Department for Work and Pensions.

As the second lockdown is inevitable, then so is this. All that Rishi Sunak announced yesterday were further delays to the inevitable. Like people who still thought that the Iraq War had been legal, or at least waged in good faith, recalcitrant opponents of economic equality would still have the Labour Party to vote for. They would be welcome to it.

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