Editorial: Sanctimony and unreality in opposition, hypocrisy in government

​One of the themes of Keir Starmer’s speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday was the need for “trade offs”.

The prime minister told delegates of his party gathered in Liverpool that for 14 years the Tories performed “the politics of easy answers”.

It is true that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat government, then the Tory administration after it that ruled alone, then the one that ruled with DUP support, then the one that ruled alone again (under three prime ministers) ducked thorny issues.

The problem is that Labour opposed as unfair the inadequate reforms that the Conservatives did introduce.

For example, Sir Keir said: “We will get the welfare bill down because we will tackle long-term sickness and support people back to work.” But his party opposed the reforms that the former government tried to introduce on both welfare and sickness.

The prime minister is of course right to say that if there are new prisons (as is certainly needed), some people will live near to them. That if there is to be new housing, communities will have to accept it. That cheaper electricity means new pylons overground.

But not only was Labour the enemy of the trade-offs the Sir Keir now demands, his remarks are misleading in other ways. He worsened the pressure on prisons by adopting fierce sentences for only one type of disorder: anti immigrant. This necessitated early release of brutal prisoners. And cheaper electricity is not just about unpopular pylons, but North Sea and fracking, which Labour has ruled out.

Sir Keir is now casts himself as a politician of fiscal rectitude clearing up past over-spending. Yet he began his government by capitulating at huge cost to public sector pay strikes without so much as getting such employees to pay a bit more to their very generous and costly pensions.​

The sanctimony and unreality of opposition has turned into lecturing hypocrisy in power.