In one sense you are right. The Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget showed what happens when governments in lots of debt try to break the economic orthodoxy imposed by the international bond markets. Since then it has not been an option for the UK.
Economic stability does not sound radical but it is a key first step to reducing the cost of interest on the National Debt (the moron premium) and to open up the possibility of more borrowing in future. That provides the initial headroom, not available currently, to fund other policies.
"Breaking with the status quo" is not necessarily the same as massive unfunded tax cuts, the problem we face now is that the spending programmed into the status quo has removed all available fiscal headroom. For example see the triple lock, which is essentially bleeding the state to death in slow motion.
It is certainly possible to break with the status quo without spending lots of additional money, especially in areas such as planning policy, the triple lock and the like.
Unfortunately, day to day spending is going to have to fall to allow for the accumulation of productive capital and the necessary increases in labour productivity.
Right now we have economic stability, but in the form of slow (but stable) economic decay.
Unless something radical happens now we risk a death spiral that starts slowly but steadily accelerates.
I know it is fashionable to blame everything on Liz Truss or Brexit, but the current total stagnation has lasted since 2008. Real GDP per capita has essentially not moved since.
Absolutely. And the only way out is to restore economic growth, by shifting to a high wage high productivity economy.
But nothing in the manifesto is likely to lead to that.
It's just a bunch of the status quo, complete with continuation of huge and unaffordable fiscal transfers. Added to that is the continuation with the systems that have failed repeatedly for the last 30 years (transport, energy, utilities, take your pick).
Magical growth will appear if the incoming government can convince economic forecasters that growth is coming. In the short term it won't be necessary for the growth to actually happen, the important thing is for it to be in the economic forecasts. In particular the new government will need to convince the economic forecasters in the Office for Budget Responsibility, as part of the budget setting process. Once better economic growth forecasts are delivered by the Office for Budget Responsibility, that further increases the headroom to fund other policies.
Bond markets do not blindly believe what the OBR says, they will do their own analysis indepedently of them.
If you want them to not panic, it is not enough to convince the OBR to change its forecast to say that more headroom exists, you have to convince the bond vigilantes.
The bond markets do not believe that Starmer will deliver significant upside to economic growth.
That's what you see. It is what the international bond markets see, and what the economic forecasters see, that matters. But convincing the international bond markets and the economic forecasters can only be done by winning the general election first.
The problem is, the things he is saying to win the election will ensure that no significant change can happen.
He has decided to pack his majority in the short term by promising a continuation of policies that absolutely must be abandoned if the UK is to recover from the economic decline.
He also has strongly managerialist tendencies (especially seen in his selection of underlings like Sue Grey) that strongly imply that he plans no major break with the status quo.
Now he might be lying, but if he tries to reverse course on this it will lead to the Labour Party's utter annihilation in 2029 from the backlash.
Starmer thinks like a lawyer who has spent decades flourishing within the current system, because that is what he is. This is not the mindset that will deliver a better UK.
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