Five rules to guide Keir Starmer’s response to Rishi Sunak’s budget

It is a hard truth of politics that budget day always belongs to the chancellor – from the famous photo with the red box and his team, to the ‘rabbits from the hat’, and the evening news bulletins. And with the looser attitude to confidentiality now adopted by Treasury, budget day now lasts for at least a week. This can be a matter of deep frustration for the Labour opposition, but in reality it is just one of the most visible expressions of an iron law: governments act, oppositions comment. Faced with this fundamental asymmetry, what should opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds do, and say? There are five simple rules for an effective budget response.

1. Be nimble

Oppositions travel light, which means they are able to travel fast. Be quick-witted: Starmer should have mercilessly mocked freeports yesterday. They undoubtedly deliver benefits to those businesses that locate within them but the evidence on whether they will deliver net benefits to an economy like the UK’s is inconclusive at best. Their main appeal is to ministers in search of an eye-catching headline in local papers.

Be swift in response: the devil in a budget is always in the detail. The Red Book published alongside the budget yesterday contained many telling details glossed over by the chancellor. Just one barb would have punctured Sunak’s smooth presentation. Be opportunistic: make it about productivity. You know there are no easy answers to how to boost long-run productivity growth – force ministers into trying to give an answer again and again.

2. Get the framing right

All lines of attack – even the most opportunistic – can be magnified if they are proof points for a broader narrative. Starmer laid the groundwork for Labour’s budget critique in his major policy speech a few weeks ago where he located the origin of the government’s mis-steps over handling the pandemic in the previous decade of spending cuts. The power is to be able to say that "this is not a mistake you have made, this is who you are". Mistakes can be corrected, fundamental character can’t be changed.

3. Exploit the tensions

It is a paradox that when you are in opposition you feel that the government is all powerful, yet if you are in office you feel constrained on multiple fronts. Both insights are true. Governments act, but they are also a balancing act – coalitions of interests, ideologies and ultimately voters. A government elected on a landslide has a particular problem – new voters with new aspirations. There are now far more Conservative seats where Universal Credit matters significantly to voters – and will get more important as unemployment rises to at least 6% as furlough unwinds. Labour pressure to maintain the £20-a-week increase in Universal Credit beyond the planned end date of 30 September is good politics – it signals to lost voters they are not forgotten, pressures the government on an exposed flank, and lays the groundwork for forcing a government U-turn.

4. Focus on the future

The government’s strength is that in determining what happens today, it tempts oppositions to concentrate on tactical skirmishing. The opposition need a voice throughout the news cycle, but pinned above all the desks in the Leader of the Opposition’s Office (LOTO) should be the phrase ‘Strategy, Strategy, Strategy’. Dodds was right to highlight the absence of a plan for social care yesterday. By this morning Sunak was saying there had to be a cross-party consensus.

5. Play to your strengths

If Labour has an underlying brand it is in the name. Every voter understands that jobs are central to the existence of the party. And they will be central to the next election, which will not be about the past – whether defined as Brexit or austerity – but about the future. Starmer and Dodds need to own the future – and economic growth. This can be the platform on which they reconstruct an electoral coalition.

A vision for jobs and growth provides a critique of the government’s 'levelling up' agenda, a platform for an industrial strategy, and the glue to bind the country together. The territory to be fought over is clear too: the ‘net zero’ economy, which can provide both blue collar jobs and a sense of middle class wellbeing. However, Sunak’s budget had little to say about the prime minister’s promise to "build back greener". The COP26 climate conference in November is approaching fast, and the government is racing to show that it has a credible policy, one which provides clarity for business and wins public support, for reaching net zero. Labour is still in this race – and must seize the opportunity to what it would do before the prime minister gets there first.