“That’s Your GDP”: Labour’s big growth delusion

By now, you’ve probably heard the rumour that Labour has a plan. I know. It shocked me too. The plan in question is to ride a noble steed named economic growth to the top of the polls and then use it to magically fix everything from NHS waiting lists to sprucing up the haunted remnants of our school buildings. It’s a beguiling fantasy: we don’t need to tax the rich, we don’t need to challenge inequality, we don’t even need to argue about Europe anymore, we just need growth.

Growth is the one thing Labour’s broad - and increasingly divided - electoral coalition can agree on. Wealthy centrists love growth because it makes them feel grown-up and serious in front of their hedge fund mates. Trade unionists want growth because maybe it means a pay rise that isn’t immediately outpaced by the price of a multipack of crisps. Voters across the spectrum want more jobs, higher wages, better services, stuff that economic growth theoretically delivers.

The benefits of growth

To be fair, if the economy ever decided to get off its arse and grow, it would help. Growth increases tax revenue without having to actually raise taxes - which is, partly, how Tony Blair improved the public realm after the miserable state the Tories left it in. This is politically convenient for a party desperately clinging to the idea that it can achieve its political goals without social conservative swing voters making any of the sacrifices that will send them running into the arms of Nigel Farage and Reform.

More money sloshing around could theoretically fund all the nice things politicians take photos with when they’re trying to look like they care: nurses, teachers, maybe even a railway that gets you from Manchester to London in less than a week.

Punching the country in the kidneys

The problem is: if growing the economy was easy, the last lot would have done it. The Tories have spent the last 14 years trying to make GDP rise by repeatedly punching the country in the kidneys and hoping the pain would build character. What we got instead was austerity, collapsing infrastructure, and a workforce so demoralised you can practically see their productivity curve spiralling into a sinkhole.

Austerity turned Britain into a country that can’t even patch potholes without crowdfunding, and now Labour wants to dig us out of the hole without, crucially, spending any actual money or annoying any Daily Mail readers. Keir Starmer’s bold plan to reignite the economy includes deregulating the planning system. That’s right folks, the future belongs to whoever builds the most chicken coop size flats on the site of a former garage in East London.

Even if Labour somehow summons growth through the sheer power of committee meetings, it’ll take time. Years, probably. Long enough that it might be the next government, possibly Kemi Badenoch, who gets to claim credit. In the meantime, we’re left squinting at PowerPoint slides while the current Labour front bench insists that growth is basically the cure for cancer, climate change and bad vibes.

Growth isn’t a panacea

Here’s the catch, and it’s a big one: growth isn’t a panacea. Growth can happen while people get poorer. It can happen while wages stagnate, while rents soar, and while billionaires guzzle the GDP gains like it’s a Disney themed bottomless prosecco brunch (don’t ask).

This isn’t a hypothetical. It literally happened. In 2016, the British economy was growing. It was growing anaemically but even that tepid growth would be manna from heaven in today’s economy. However, real wages were falling, inequality was rising, and communities were told to be grateful that the City of London was doing great, thanks, despite local high streets being devastated like Chernobyl had just happened two postcodes over.

The halcyon days of growth

Then 52% of the country voted for Brexit, while the Remain camp said: “But GDP! Think of the GDP!” To which one Brexiteer in a focus group quite famously replied: “That’s your GDP.”

Okay, the focus group was before the referendum. I moved my timelines around for the sake of a good sentence. The point being that growth doesn’t automatically make people feel better off or vote against dodgy nationalist politicians and their ill-conceived pet projects, even though the early 2000s had growth and we now look back on that time as halcyon days. Turn up Mr Brightside.

So many inequalities to tackle

The comment about “your GDP” might be the most cutting piece of political analysis in modern British history. It captures something most politicians refuse to grasp, when ordinary people don’t feel the benefits of growth, they start voting like it’s all a joke; because to them, it is.

If Labour genuinely wants its growth agenda to succeed, it needs to deal with inequality. Not in a mealy-mouthed, “we’ll look at regional investment zones” way. Properly. Inequality isn’t just a line on a graph; it’s the thing that makes you work harder every year and still feel like you’re falling behind. Then you start hearing the siren call of the far-right.

There are so many inequalities to tackle, it’s like a greatest hits album of bad policy: the gap between rich and poor, the North-South divide, London and everywhere else, young and old. Particularly that last one. My generation gets blamed for everything - from economic stagnation to the decline of the handshake - and now, apparently, we’re not working hard enough.

A convenient excuse

That’s why Labour is tightening benefits. To flush out supposedly the lazy young people claiming mental illness incapacity. The ones who’ve been softened by participation trophies, avocado toast, talking about feelings and the idea that maybe work shouldn’t destroy your soul.

Boomers, especially the media commentators, love to blame my generation and younger people for being coddled. They claim this is the source of our economic malaise.

It’s a convenient excuse, so that they don’t have to think too hard about how the austerity, inequality and neoliberalism that they preach has failed to make us all wealthy and happy. Instead, it blighted us with poor growth, high cost of living, a ravaged environment, disease, a mental health crisis, a care crisis, a public services crisis and a lack of grandchildren for Boomers to play with.

Work doesn’t pay

Here’s the thing: I am working hard. I have two jobs, and neither of them are writing this blog. That’s a public service I provide for free. I’m not alone in this. Most of us are working to the point of exhaustion. Millennials and Gen Zs are grinding in a system designed by people who still think that working a 9 to 5 is all that’s needed to afford a home. Boomers didn’t have side hustles, because they didn’t need them. Millennials don’t have side hustles because we can’t concentrate on our jobs due to ADHD, but because we need them to survive.

On top of this hard work is the fact that every gain we make is devoured by a cost-of-living crisis, rising rents, and the recent torrent of inflation. There is no point flogging us with productivity mantras if the whole system is designed to funnel our effort upwards into shareholder dividends. Millennials and Zoomers see all our hard work enriching the already extremely wealthy where we’re left to snap up the crumbs. Then older people accuse us of being lazy and entitled because we don’t want our working lives to be one endless slog that leaves us too poor to retire at the end.

If Labour wants our support, it needs to talk about fairness, not just growth. A fair shake for Millennials and Zoomers would mean housing that isn’t a Hunger Games arena, jobs that pay more than survival wages, and a government that doesn’t ignore us at best and performatively flog us for the approval of Daily Mail reading Boomers at worse.

Big on buzzwords

Unfortunately for us, that’s not what Labour wants to talk about. It wants to win over conservative Boomers who think rising inequality is fine if they can still park for free at B&Q. So, we’re stuck with a Labour Party that wants our votes, but not our future.

In the end, Labour’s growth agenda feels a lot like a startup pitch from someone who’s never actually run a business. Big on buzzwords, light on results, and when it inevitably flops, the people who sold us the dream will already have moved on, leaving us to clean up the mess.

Again.