The four big holes in Labour’s policies ahead of general election

With its “five missions” for government, the Labour Party has more policy proposals than they are sometimes given credit for.

In his New Year’s speech in Bristol, Sir Keir Starmer made a point of highlighting this. He described his goals as “ambitious” and listed some off, such as “highest growth in the G7, halving violence against women and girls, clean power by 2030…”

But there are still some big gaps in the party’s policy that will – if they remain unanswered leading up to the election – be brought up again and again by critics, commentators and voters.

Green investment

Labour has set out a plan to pump £28bn in to green energy which was, originally, going to be a plan to invest that amount every year until 2030 if elected.

This has since been muted and the £28bn figure is now a target to work towards in the second half of a first parliament.

It seems, however, like the party is wavering over whether to commit to borrowing the money for the investment – which it previously said it would do – or open the scheme up to private investment.

It might seem like a technicality – albeit an important one – but it symbolises more than that.

The issue indicates whether Starmer and his party are prepared to make the argument that borrowing to invest is different to borrowing for day-to-day spending, and are confident this will land with the public and not leave them open to traditional Tory attack lines on public debt.

Some argue that without making this argument, Labour will be limiting its ability to be truly transformative.

Tax

Labour have gone hard on the attacks directed at the Conservative government over the higher tax burden imposed on people.

This week, the party triggered speculation it would look at unfreezing income tax thresholds – which would amount to a tax cut for millions – after launching an campaign attack tool aimed at the Tories on this exact subject.

But when pressed, repeatedly, on this question by journalists – including the i – Starmer would not show any ankle at all on whether he would be promising tax cuts.

He even suggested that no tax cuts would be forthcoming until the UK was seeing significant economic growth.

But still, he did not rule them out. The answers were all hints and suggestions. Insiders suggest a decision will be made after the Budget – but even then, will Starmer try to kick the can down the road once more?

Education and childcare

Once upon a time Starmer pledged to abolish university fees. That is a distant memory.

Instead, he said last year a Labour government would make the student fees system fairer in England and make the model more “progressive”.

Labour said it would want to “reduce the monthly repayments for every single graduate” and suggested that it will not cost any money.

But we are yet to see any real details of this policy and how it would actually work.

One of the party’s flagship tax policies is the decision to impose VAT on private schools but, again, the details of how this worked have not been set out.

Questions remain as to whether the fee would be applied retrospectively to parents attempting to avoid it by paying several years of fees upfront.

Migration

Labour has said it does not object, in principle, to the Government’s recently-announced measures designed to reduce legal migration despite questioning whether they would work.

The party has said in the past it would want to focus on businesses sharing skills and training to people already in the UK and reduce the number of foreign workers filling positions.

But it has not set out specifically how this would work – and whether it would be enough to tackle workforce shortages blighting many UK industries.

On illegal migration, Labour is against the Government’s Rwanda plan and has pledged to reverse it.

But Starmer indicated that he was open to offshore processing of asylum seekers as long as they were not being deported.