The fate of the government turns on its progressive theory of the state. Scrapping winter fuel payments for pensioners emits a reek of decayed Thatcherism not unlike that of rivers and beaches polluted by sewage, but it was not an unforced error that can be easily reversed. Leaving millions facing poverty or the forbidding labyrinth of a Tory system of means-tested benefits was a necessary move in a grand strategy, aimed at making the state into a machine that embodies and enforces radical changes in how people live. From preventative healthcare through to the war on junk food to energy policy, the goal is a fundamental transformation in society.
The image of Keir Starmer as a pragmatist dedicated to piecemeal change obscures the reality of an ideological administration. Contrary to the right-wing press, the ideology is not socialism or anything like it. Labour’s brand of progressivism, a compendium of ephemeral dogmas (mostly recent American imports), has little in common with any strand in the longer history of the British left. There may be echoes of Fabian paternalism in the mooted ban on outdoor smoking, but Starmer’s project is more of an assault on the traditions of the left than a continuation of them.
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