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One of the most significant policy announcements I thought was the supervised brushing in schools policy. It's basic common sense, it's strong, the economic arguments are behind it, the social arguments are behind it, and it tells us something about the kind of government Starmer's going to run - interventionist, unafraid of the 'nanny state' accusations, dedicated to ensuring some baseline level of standards for kids with parents who can't or won't do it for them. More stuff like this would backfill the narrative deficit (imo).
I'm surprised you mentioned this as fitting the narrative gap you're talking about. To me it's a very bizarre policy indeed, and one that I suspect voters will likely reject as government being too involved in their children's lives, rather than fixing the underlying issues. Either that, or they'll fucking love it because it's authoritarian and focused on poorer households.
That's not to say they're not trying to fix the underlying issues, but this stuff quoted in the article is way more important, and I suspect more resonant too:
Labour’s action plan includes a 9pm watershed for junk-food ads, banning vape adverts aimed at children, a free breakfast club in every primary school, better access to mental-health support, cutting waiting times for hospital care for children, and guaranteeing more dental appointments.
It feels like the moment has changed and space for a few big interventionist policies would go down really well — not on people, but on systems. The green investment fund and single worker status were those things.
slippers-
I'm surprised you mentioned this as fitting the narrative gap you're talking about. To me it's a very bizarre policy indeed, and one that I suspect voters will likely reject as government being too involved in their children's lives, rather than fixing the underlying issues.
That's actually why I really like the policy. At first glance it seems like nanny state, looney left, dancing round the edges, nonsense. But then when you hear Starmer or Streeting talk about it, and you find that tooth decay is the number one reason for children to have to go to hospital - because it's so hard to get a dentists appointment before it's too late - then the benefits become obvious. It's a no brainer, just for the misery, but even i fyou're a conservative you'll understand the economic benefit to sorting kids teeth out BEFORE they have to go to hospital with all the waste that entails.
I agree that the green industrial strategy was another of those big strategic projects which tell us narratively where Labour is at. I'm sad to see it disappear/scaled back.
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I think it's quite smart. To me it feels like a gateway policy. Something hard to argue with. It shifts the narrative on State intervention and tries to detoxify it.
Or maybe it's just a proof of concept?
That said Idk why Daily Mail types are so anti State intervention. They're the biggest lot of agentless fucking bedwetters ever. As soon as something is notionally within their world they absolve themselves of any responsibility and want the State to do everything - make a law banning this, give me a scrapage scheme for that, tripple lock these, etc. Forever a hand out, never one in their pockets.
ReekBlefs
hugo7
Me too. And so we're clear, I do not want a big wishlist of stuff in an unrealistic manifesto - that's not what I'm saying we're missing. I saw what happened in 2019 when Corbyn chucked a load of stuff in the manifesto without laying the narrative groundwork for it first. (I think the free broadband policy was one of those most stupid I've ever heard but there was the germ of a good idea in there - but the public would only have bought it if they'd spent the year talking about how digital pathways were the key to success in life, upping opportunities, and levelling up the north etc. But they didn't.)
What I'm saying is that I'm saying we've a gap in narrative which ties all our policies together, and combined with the shifting stances on some issues, our critics can make a more or less valid argument that we don't 'stand for anything' - even though many of those policies really do.
One of the most significant policy announcements I thought was the supervised brushing in schools policy. It's basic common sense, it's strong, the economic arguments are behind it, the social arguments are behind it, and it tells us something about the kind of government Starmer's going to run - interventionist, unafraid of the 'nanny state' accusations, dedicated to ensuring some baseline level of standards for kids with parents who can't or won't do it for them. More stuff like this would backfill the narrative deficit (imo).