Melissa Hussain is the Founder of Anti-Poverty Conservatives, the London Chair for Conservative Young Women, and a recent graduate in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from the University of Oxford.
The Labour Party has made itself more palatable to voters by promoting the benefits of capitalism. In the last election cycle, Labour claimed to be the party of wealth creation, business, and social mobility.
On the surface, one would think these words are from a Conservative government. Spoiler alert: they are. At first glance, one may also think such buzzwords are consistent with Labour’s underlying philosophy of socialism or distributive justice. Spoiler alert: they are not.
Just this week, Labour have boasted about appointing a mostly state-educated, and most working-class, Cabinet. However, a look beneath the surface tells a less flattering story.
Right now, Labour is celebrating that its Cabinet has only one privately educated elected minister. But fourty percent of the new Cabinet went to either Oxford or Cambridge. Labour can point to Angela Rayner, our new Deputy Prime Minister, who comes from a working-class background as a former care worker and trade union activist. But one swallow does not a summer make.
Labour’s focus also betrays a selective definition of diversity. Approximately eighty percent of total employment is in the private sector – but such experience is relatively thin on the ground on the government benches today.
In fact, Labour’s most recent round of selections for parliamentary candidates pushed out applicants who had experience in the private sector. Commentators on social media had even argued that Keir Starmer’s Cabinet is the least qualified in history, because so few ministers have experience outside of politics.
Time and time again, Labour was explicit they preferred teachers, nurses, and doctors. This subset of working-class applicants tended to win and become parliamentary candidates. They are now our politicians.
Experience of public sector roles is obviously important. But such people do not represent the entire working class, the great majority of whom have private employment.
Yet the through-line in Labour selections was that you must have been hired by the state, or acted directly on its behalf, as many lawyers do.
This isn’t entirely down to the centre: local Labour members are partly responsible for selecting candidates. Potential candidates were longlisted by Labour’s National Executive Committee, of which Sir Keir Starmer is part, but local associations mostly make the ultimate decision on selection.
Whilst the National Executive Committee blocked candidates who were too passionate about Labour’s purpose of endlessly expanding the state, the preferences of the rank-and-file membership still told in the final shape of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
But Starmer’s message to applicants was clear: you should be public-sector experienced (and loyal to Starmer). This long-standing Labour tradition is evident in the shape of the Cabinet: the Prime Minister was a lawyer, the Home Secretary never worked outside the public sector, and even the new Chancellor had only a short stint as a banking analyst (after a role at the Bank of England) before entering Parliament. The trend goes on for the rest of the Cabinet.
This matters, and not just for identity politics. The danger in the lack of private sector representation is that the Labour Party will not encourage social mobility through the making of private sector job opportunities.
But the private sector is where wealth in our economy is rooted. I worry the emphasis from Labour will always be on the government creating more jobs via public investment, rather than tilting the economy to create more jobs via private investment.
When Labour said they would create wealth, they meant they would create wealth by investing in public services. Yet whilst strong public services are undoubtedly important in their own terms, they don’t create wealth. Higher public spending requires higher taxes, reducing people’s disposable incomes and undermining businesses, the entities which actually earn the profits upon which wealth is based.
Labour has talked about supporting business, but what they mean by this is forming partnerships. In layman’s terms, this means holding meetings to listen to businesses – important, but by itself mere procedure, with no guarantee that such talks will be followed up with actual policy.
Today, Rachel Reeves will set out her plans to kick-start economic growth and, per the Daily Mirror, make every Briton better off. She has no hope of doing that unless she, and her party, are prepared to step out of their comfort zone.
Melissa Hussain is the Founder of Anti-Poverty Conservatives, the London Chair for Conservative Young Women, and a recent graduate in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from the University of Oxford.
The Labour Party has made itself more palatable to voters by promoting the benefits of capitalism. In the last election cycle, Labour claimed to be the party of wealth creation, business, and social mobility.
On the surface, one would think these words are from a Conservative government. Spoiler alert: they are. At first glance, one may also think such buzzwords are consistent with Labour’s underlying philosophy of socialism or distributive justice. Spoiler alert: they are not.
Just this week, Labour have boasted about appointing a mostly state-educated, and most working-class, Cabinet. However, a look beneath the surface tells a less flattering story.
Right now, Labour is celebrating that its Cabinet has only one privately educated elected minister. But fourty percent of the new Cabinet went to either Oxford or Cambridge. Labour can point to Angela Rayner, our new Deputy Prime Minister, who comes from a working-class background as a former care worker and trade union activist. But one swallow does not a summer make.
Labour’s focus also betrays a selective definition of diversity. Approximately eighty percent of total employment is in the private sector – but such experience is relatively thin on the ground on the government benches today.
In fact, Labour’s most recent round of selections for parliamentary candidates pushed out applicants who had experience in the private sector. Commentators on social media had even argued that Keir Starmer’s Cabinet is the least qualified in history, because so few ministers have experience outside of politics.
Time and time again, Labour was explicit they preferred teachers, nurses, and doctors. This subset of working-class applicants tended to win and become parliamentary candidates. They are now our politicians.
Experience of public sector roles is obviously important. But such people do not represent the entire working class, the great majority of whom have private employment.
Yet the through-line in Labour selections was that you must have been hired by the state, or acted directly on its behalf, as many lawyers do.
This isn’t entirely down to the centre: local Labour members are partly responsible for selecting candidates. Potential candidates were longlisted by Labour’s National Executive Committee, of which Sir Keir Starmer is part, but local associations mostly make the ultimate decision on selection.
Whilst the National Executive Committee blocked candidates who were too passionate about Labour’s purpose of endlessly expanding the state, the preferences of the rank-and-file membership still told in the final shape of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
But Starmer’s message to applicants was clear: you should be public-sector experienced (and loyal to Starmer). This long-standing Labour tradition is evident in the shape of the Cabinet: the Prime Minister was a lawyer, the Home Secretary never worked outside the public sector, and even the new Chancellor had only a short stint as a banking analyst (after a role at the Bank of England) before entering Parliament. The trend goes on for the rest of the Cabinet.
This matters, and not just for identity politics. The danger in the lack of private sector representation is that the Labour Party will not encourage social mobility through the making of private sector job opportunities.
But the private sector is where wealth in our economy is rooted. I worry the emphasis from Labour will always be on the government creating more jobs via public investment, rather than tilting the economy to create more jobs via private investment.
When Labour said they would create wealth, they meant they would create wealth by investing in public services. Yet whilst strong public services are undoubtedly important in their own terms, they don’t create wealth. Higher public spending requires higher taxes, reducing people’s disposable incomes and undermining businesses, the entities which actually earn the profits upon which wealth is based.
Labour has talked about supporting business, but what they mean by this is forming partnerships. In layman’s terms, this means holding meetings to listen to businesses – important, but by itself mere procedure, with no guarantee that such talks will be followed up with actual policy.
Today, Rachel Reeves will set out her plans to kick-start economic growth and, per the Daily Mirror, make every Briton better off. She has no hope of doing that unless she, and her party, are prepared to step out of their comfort zone.