What red wall voters really think of Liz Truss’s ‘grow the pie’ plan

Ever since Liz Truss started talking about “growth” during that interminable summer of leadership hustings and stump speeches, I’ve had my doubts.

Try as I might, I really couldn’t see how one might put “economic growth” at the centre of a political strategy. Yes, this country has had a productivity issue since the 2008 financial crisis. And yes, in theory, a growing economy ought to drive job creation and tax receipts – but “growth” itself is conceptual, ethereal and intangible.

If you’re a normal voter, going about your normal life, you might – MIGHT – enjoy the benefits of “the pie getting bigger”, but it’s not guaranteed. You’re not likely to spend too long looking at the latest missive from the Treasury, thinking: “Yes, GDP is up – phew, I’ll vote Tory again.”

And then along came the “anti-growth coalition”, which is, I think, against stiff competition, the worst political slogan of all time. It adds a layer of intangible nonsense on top of an already intangible concept. What is growth? And so what if there’s an unclear group of people who oppose it? It’s weird and appears to be designed to talk to some popular conspiracy theory that simply doesn’t exist.

Put it up against some recent (and recent-ish) classics – “Get Brexit done”, “Take back control”, “Things can only get better”, “Education, education, education” – and you begin to realise just how bad it is.

The political language that has followed from this Truss/Kwarteng pitch is also rather odd. For example, explaining that the government doesn’t want to redistribute wealth by giving certain groups “a bigger slice of the pie”, but instead wants to “grow the whole pie”. It feels like something from a nutty economics professor; not the leader of the world’s sixth biggest economy. I’m certainly not the first person to point out that one can’t actually “grow a pie” at all.

Don’t take my word for it. My colleagues and I have been talking about growth and pies and Trussonomics more broadly in focus groups since Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget. And it won’t surprise you to hear – especially if you look at the political polls – that the whole agenda is leaving people baffled and, quite often, angry.

In groups across the red wall – the area of the country that once reliably voted Labour, but turned to Boris Johnson in 2019 – we’ve heard many takes, most of them negative. Here’s a sample of quotes from Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire, and Bury in Greater Manchester.

“Stability is more important at the minute. We’re just financially unstable, we don’t know whether we’re coming or going. We don’t need to concentrate on growth, we need to concentrate on stabilising the country.”

“I can understand wanting to grow the economy, I suppose, but I don’t feel like I’m getting any of the pie at the minute, so I’m not gonna get any of the bigger pie, am I?”

“Good idea in theory, the trickle down effect, but whether it reaches the guy on the shop floor or in the factory they haven’t built yet, I don’t know.”

“Why aren’t I shocked? The rich will always look after themselves, that’s the MPs and the bankers.”

It would be easy at this point for those of us who hope Starmer will be our next PM to sit back and assume it’s all plain sailing for Labour between now and 2024 – and to a point, that would be right.

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But the public response also presents a challenge to Labour. It might have been better articulated and better received than Truss’s recent public pronouncements, but much of Starmer’s pitch to the country in his conference speech at the end of last month was predicated on the concept of “growth”, too. It might have been “green growth”, but it was still growth.

Starmer’s vision was, it must be reiterated, much clearer and he was much better at explaining how his idea might become tangible in normal people’s lives and communities, but it will still face challenges if campaigners think it will automatically cut through.

“A greener, fairer future” and “green growth” were OK as conference slogans in September, but come a general election, Starmer and his people will need something that doesn’t sound like it’s been lifted from an economics textbook.

Ed Dorrell is a director at Public First