Labour were talking about economic growth for months before the general election and they have been talking about it for months afterwards as well.
The thing is, there hasn’t been any, or next to none of it.
This is a problem, for the daily lives of millions of us, and the government’s prospects and popularity, when, as the prime minister puts it in an article in The Times today, “growth is the defining mission of this government”.
The economy is coughing, spluttering and wheezing – “the sickness of stagnation and decline” as Sir Keir Starmer puts it — and the government’s critics – including, privately, some of its own senior ministers – reflect now that their doomy and gloomy language early on did not help, and perhaps made things worse.
So now they are trying to change the vibe. The talk will emphasise action, dynamism and optimism.
Here are eight words, in four quotes from the Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ speech to business leader this morning which give you a sense of that:
“Huge potential.”
“Exciting developments.”
“Great companies.”
“Fundamental strengths.”
The mantra from folk at the top of government is their craving for what they call “visible proofpoints”.
This is Westminster speak for cranes in the sky and shovels in the ground – things they can point at which people might associate with progress.
But here is the rub: so many of these ideas will be keenly contested.
That is precisely why some of them carry the distinct aroma of déjà vu – ideas tried but never actually delivered before.
Take the expansion of Heathrow Airport. There has been talk of a third runway in west London since not long after the Wright brothers were first airborne.
Now there will be more talk of it and no planes for ages, even if a planning application is actually successful.
I hear that an internal piece of work commissioned within government concluded the new runway would not be finished before 2040 and the biggest rise in passengers would be people in transit – getting off one plane and immediately getting on another – and so some wonder how much benefit that would actually bring the country.
All those arguments begin now, or start again now.
But what the government wants to achieve here is deliver a massive signal of intent – and a willingness to embrace those inevitable arguments and win them.
There will be more of them, and noisy ones too, with their plans, again not original, to economically turbo charge the areas around and between Oxford and Cambridge.
A corridor of massive potential but pathetic transport connections is the thrust of the argument – how come it takes two and a half hours by train to make a journey between two cities 66 miles apart?
Now there is talk of a dual carriageway, better rail services, new homes, new reservoirs; a splurge of busyness to transform the region into “Britain’s Silicon Valley”.
There is little doubting the government’s ambition: the prime minister is comparing his vision to the deregulation of the City of London under Lady Thatcher and the revolutions of globalisation under New Labour.
The big questions are will it work, and what happens if it doesn’t?
So many western economies are weathering an era of the scars of the financial crisis, conflict, pandemic and the colossal and rapid transfer of economic heft to China and the east.
Sclerotic has become the new normal, with huge consequences politically, economically and socially – how we see ourselves, how many imagine the future.
Can, this time, a big shove from the government turn things around?
