With every week that passes, Sir Keir Starmer appears more and more determined to make the flip-flopper label stick.
We might have expected that a Labour leader after 13 years of Conservative government would be determined to improve workers’ rights, and to clamp down on the gig economy.
But it turns out that there is virtually nothing about the British employment market that he wants to change.
According to a report in the Financial Times, at its last policy forum the Labour Party resolved to abandon plans for a single status of “worker” that would bring gig workers inside the full range of employment law, and would leave in place the right for companies to fire employees during a probationary period.
It has decided it doesn’t want to risk offending businesses during the run-up to an election, and nor does it want to give the Conservatives room to accuse the party of being in hock to the unions.
It doesn’t stop there. We heard a lot in the last couple of years about Labour’s plans for a green industrial strategy to match the huge range of subsidies on offer in the United States and across the EU.
And yet in June, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, backtracked on that as well, deciding that the £28bn a year it was planning to spend on a transition to renewable energy was to merely be an “aspiration” instead of a commitment.
A tax raid on the American tech giants has been quietly shelved. Plans for a £15-an-hour minimum wage seem to have been forgotten about. The list goes on.
As far as anyone can tell, the party is still planning to impose VAT on private school fees, and to end non-dom status for wealthy foreigners living in the UK.
But there is still a year at least before a general election. Given that neither measure will actually raise much money, it may be only a matter of time before a hastily assembled review decides those commitments have to be scrapped as well.
