Will Labour’s attack on the Tory credit card spending spree pay off?

Being in opposition is never easy. Newspapers rarely care about what you have to say, you’re expected to have endless policies despite not being in power, and you are, ultimately, at the mercy of the government and its announcements.

If you attack everything they do and say, as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour did, you will be accused of crying wolf and the electorate will tune out. If you don’t attack enough, well, what’s the point of you then? It’s a tight rope to walk on and Keir Starmer has, at times, threatened to lose his balance.

Over the past few months, however, the Labour party’s attack operation has noticeably tightened. Though attacking today’s Tories can be akin to shooting fish in a barrel, the lines have been clear. The Conservatives, the opposition tells us, are crooked and corrupt and cannot be trusted with the nation’s purse strings.

This is the not-so-subtle message behind “The GPC Files”, a website launched by the party today after days of ominous trailing. Its target is government procurement cards – “Whitehall's version of a contactless debit card” – and what they have been used for by government departments.

From stays in five-star hotels and plush Airbnbs to fancy art purchased for Whitehall departments and pricey meals abroad, the picture painted by the opposition isn’t a rosy one. In the midst of a cost of living crisis, the image of government officials living it up on taxpayer-funded jaunts is striking, and has already made headlines in most newspapers.

Though it has clearly been a successful hit for Labour, it also feels like a potentially dangerous one. Any party in power will end up occasionally overspending, and a miserly approach to expenses for civil servants would make it tough to hire and retain the best and brightest.

The opposition is right to argue that greater transparency should always be encouraged, but can they really promise that a government run by them would never pay a penny more than needed? More broadly, the figures included in the files may seem extravagant out of context, but they barely represent a drop in the ocean when compared to the scale of day-to-day government spending.

Is creating an atmosphere where every single expense must be the cheapest possible one the right thing to do? The public hates Westminster enough as it is. Fanning those flames for quick electoral gain now may see them burnt in the future.

Still, they do not seem to care. Last month, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves told Laura Kuenssberg that a Labour government would “drain the swamp”, directly echoing Trumpian language. Though she was referring to the many, many Tory scandals – and arguably had a point – the words she used were telling.

A few weeks earlier, Keir Starmer pledged to introduce a “Take Back Control Bill” to Parliament, in order to shift power out of Westminster. Again, greater devolution could do the country a world of good, but that phrase is a potent one.

Of course, “drain the swamp” and “take back control” are winning slogans – we know this already. Populism often is popular; the clue’s in the name. The Labour party may think it is being clever in repurposing right-wing slogans and attack lines and bringing them into the left, but they should remember what happened to the people behind those messages.

Donald Trump didn’t drain the swamp, and then he lost his re-election bid; Vote Leave won the referendum, then made such a hash of everything that a majority of Brexit voters regret their decision. The anger that they brought out of voters, however, is still there. Britain and America remain united in their contempt for the political class.

In 2022, “ 35 per cent of the UK population stated that they trusted the national government”. Fixing this should be a priority but, again, it requires treading a fine line. Attacking the Conservatives for their various misbehaviours is obviously the right thing to do for Labour, but they are putting themselves at risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Populist tactics may be alluring, but they aren’t unlike magic diet pills. They may work very fast, but everything often unravels just as quickly afterwards. If Starmer wins by promising to take back control and drain the swamp, what will happen when it turns out he can’t really do either?