Labour one year in: a great time to be unpopular
3 min read
Like many political anoraks, I have a wall at home of political memoires.
They are filled not just with those juicy behind-the-scenes moments you rarely get to see at the time but also a huge amount of insight… and regret.
And if you were to ask me the one universal regret from Thatcher to Blair, Major to Brown, that passes through all of them, it is not doing more of the unpopular stuff earlier.
On the first anniversary of the Labour government, most commentators are focused on Labour’s unpopularity. Reform UK has overtaken Labour in the polls, benefit cuts have been reversed and Rachel Reeves’ tears have seen bond prices drop.
But the truth is, there's no better time to be deeply unpopular. If you're going to take the difficult decisions that actually fix a country's problems, you do it when the next election is a distant speck on the horizon, not when you're frantically trying to shore up support in the final stretch.
Yes there have been self-inflicted wounds and embarrassing U-turns. But that comes from attempts to go hard early.
Bond prices are not dropping because they don’t like the Chancellor but because they fear her being replaced - with someone more economically left-wing.
This is not a sign of her failure or weakness but a sign of her economic strength. Traders want her in the job going as far as she can to meet her fiscal rules within the confines of a Labour government which is filled with MPs ideologically opposed to state spending cuts.
Some of what Labour has done today could well bear fruit before the next general election.
Keir Starmer has achieved a trade deal with the US, something the Tories never managed, which will save thousands of jobs in motoring, British steel, aluminium and yes, farming.
While the UK-India free trade agreement is expected to increase bilateral trade by £25bn by 2030.
In comparison, it took the Tories six years to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which only had Brunei and Malaysia as new signatories and is worth just £2bn in total, using a generous calculation.
The Industrial Strategy, meanwhile, represents the most comprehensive attempt to reshape Britain's economic foundations in a generation.
The £7.3 billion commitment to gigafactories and green steel production isn't just about creating jobs—it's about positioning Britain as a leader in the industries that will dominate the 2030s and beyond. The first battery manufacturing facility in Coventry is already under construction, with 3,000 jobs promised by 2027.
The Great British Energy initiative, with its £8.3 billion investment in renewable infrastructure, tackles both energy security and climate targets whilst promising to reduce household bills over the medium term.
While I don’t agree that the government has backed all the right winners, the National Wealth Fund represents exactly the kind of patient capital investment that previous governments consistently ducked.
From backing housing targets with structural change to the renationalisation of the rip-off railways, these are actual things done.
We had become a nation of NIMBYs always complaining about a lack of change nationally and then opposing it the moment it falls in our back yard.
The new jobs created by battery manufacturing in the Midlands, the reduced energy costs from offshore wind expansion, and the productivity gains from improved transport links won't show up in tomorrow's headlines, but they'll be visible in voters' pay packets by 2028.
John Higginson is the founder of the Political Purpose Awards, CEO of public affairs agency Higginson Strategy and a former national political editor.
