Enjoy Britain’s new-found political stability while you can. I’d be more than happy to be proved wrong, but I can’t see it lasting.
All new governments say they are open for business and Labour has undoubtedly made the right start by prioritising planning reform.
Britain’s planning laws and procedures – which in their post-war form were a Labour invention, by the way – have long been a major hindrance to development and economic growth. Too often they stand in the way.
Rachel Reeves, the new Chancellor, promises to sweep them aside, unleashing a tsunami of housing and infrastructure development, she hopes.
By way of a down payment, the ban on onshore wind farms has been scrapped with immediate effect. Among other things, previously refused applications to build two new data centres on green belt land outside London are also set to be approved.
Detail is still thin on the ground. Beyond the reintroduction of mandatory local authority targets for house building, the proposed planning free-for-all so far lacks substance. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
All the same, it’s an encouraging start. It’s what the last Government should have done, but shied away from because of the damage it might have inflicted on votes in the Tory shires.
It’s also what Liz Truss proposed to do before she was unceremoniously defenestrated in the wake of her mini-budget. In another example of political cross-dressing, Rachel Reeves has stolen her clothes.
So far, so good. There is however at least one rather large fly in the ointment. Labour doesn’t properly understand what makes business tick or what drives wealth creation.
The party’s raison d’etre is the pursuit of a “fairer” society in which the gap between rich and poor is progressively closed. It has no problem with offending the Nimbys of middle England in achieving this aim and indeed seems positively to revel in the prospect of doing so.
But its instincts are otherwise to tax, regulate and intervene and this does not marry well with a fully functioning enterprise economy.
For now, however, the contrast with much of the rest of Europe on the one hand and the US on the other could hardly be greater.
In France and beyond, the political landscape is fast degenerating into the stuff of nightmares. Why the markets seem to think the outcome of French parliamentary elections, with its surge in the Left-wing vote, was a positive result is a complete mystery to me.
It’s true that Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National has been denied a majority, but what we’ve ended up with is the worst of all worlds – a political stalemate in which popular anger threatens to explode violently on to the streets.
If the Left’s high spending agenda were to be enacted it would surely break the French economy and – since no other member of Europe’s single currency would be prepared to bankroll such profligacy – very possibly the euro with it.
Mrs Le Pen has made some equally reckless promises in her pursuit of power, but behind the scenes offered what in practice would have been an altogether more sober approach to tax and spend.
For her, the present paralysis is in any case not such a bad outcome. In France, to govern well is to do unpopular things, while to govern badly is merely to ensure defeat next time around.
Either way, it might have damaged her prospects for the bigger prize of the presidency in three years time. For the time being France is in a hole with little prospect of digging itself out. The same might be said of much of the rest of Europe.
Across the pond, where the choice is between a narcissistic megalomaniac and a half-senile incumbent, things scarcely look much better. Almost unbelievably, there seems to be no way of dislodging the incumbent other than divine intervention or voting for the megalomaniac.
Here in Britain, regicide is par for the course. The Tories managed to change the leader four times in an attempt to save themselves before finally being defeated at the ballot box. This seems to be impossible in the US.
So here we are again, with a Labour super-majority to keep the torch of liberal social democracy burning strong while all around it is being snuffed out.
The apparent contrast could scarcely be greater. Assuming the new government sticks to the script, it ought to be a magnet for international capital looking for certainty on policy and a relatively predictable economy.
The pound has strengthened accordingly, an odd reaction perhaps to the sight of a professed “Thatcherite” losing power to a self proclaimed “socialist”. But there it is – the prospect of political stability wins hands down against the Tory record of chaos.
For now all is sweetness and light. In the devolved nations, the new Prime Minister has, unlike all five of his last predecessors, been greeted like an old friend. And at the Treasury and in the wider civil service, Labour has been welcomed back like a long lost father.
Where once they were at war, peace, harmony and mutual respect is again said to be the order of the day.
They should all make the most of it while they can. The honeymoon is unlikely to last.
Problem number one is that the Left in the party will expect a lot more from their electoral win than the thin gruel of continuity Britain currently has on offer from the leadership. Keeping the Left at bay without scuppering the pro-growth agenda is going to be tricky.
For many Labour supporters, redistribution trumps growth any day of the week and they’ll want to bear down on wealth by all means possible. This may act as a significant counterweight to the new Government’s ambitions for growth.
By committing itself to the same fiscal rules as its predecessors, the Government has badly boxed itself in. Rachel Reeves has ordered a review of the current state of the public finances which she plans to present in all its gory detail to Parliament before the summer recess.
This will be what is known in the City as “a kitchen sink” exercise, where just about every nasty is thrown into the mix by the incoming chief executive as a way of establishing a new base from which the only way can be up.
Things already looked ugly before she even began. Now they’ll look even uglier, hardening up the choice that has to be made between tax rises and public spending cuts.
Even with planning reform, delivering growth when there is so little scope within the Government’s own fiscal rules for borrowing to invest is quite an ask.
By ruling out any prospect of rejoining Europe’s single market and customs union, Sir Keir has similarly deprived Labour of one of the other levers he might have pulled to generate better economic growth.
Labour is targeting 2.5pc annual growth across the current parliament. Ambition is good, but hope is not a strategy.
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