Since his landslide victory over the Conservatives in July, the Prime Minister has endured the largest post-election drop in approval ratings of any modern British prime minister. This is symptomatic of a more volatile electorate, less willing to wait for results and an even more impatient media who choose to slam the government at any opportunity. It seems as though the previous fourteen years have been completely forgotten by most broadcasters, who made Starmer’s £16,000 worth of clothes donations from a Labour peer appear to be evidence of mass corruption, while the Conservatives had handed out £8.4 billion in contracts to party donors since 2016.
Fourteen years cannot be undone in just five months.
As well as exaggerating the significance of these Labour ‘scandals’, the media has also failed to highlight legislation and policies the government has brought in since coming to power, leading to the image that both parties are equally as bad and do not have the interest of the people at heart. Much of the sense that nothing is being done is vindicated to the public by the fact that nothing, materially, has changed. This is because the policies have not been in force long enough to have had an impact yet. Fourteen years cannot be undone in just five months.
Such legislation the government has already passed includes bringing forward Bills for the nationalisation of the railways and energy. These Bills however still require examination by the House of Lords and for current contracts to end which inevitably means we will not feel the benefits until these formalities are concluded.
Just in the last week, the rollout of the first free primary school breakfast clubs began, the Finance Bill passed to the next stage of the House of Commons which will create 40,000 extra NHS appointments a week and employ 6,500 new teachers, and it was announced that young people will now have guaranteed access to apprenticeships and training. More relevant to students, the government has increased the minimum wage for all age brackets, increased the apprentice rate, and increased maintenance loans.
All of these policies will take their time to bear fruit given the way legislation is passed through government, however, with a little more patience, we may start to see the benefits as we head into the new year.