Labours policies will benefit millions, but now it needs to sell them better – The Guardian

Brutal attacks on Labours tax and spending plans are part of the furniture of any election. No surprise at the incoming fire over Labours promise to compensate women born in the 1950s for the state pension entitlements stolen from them. The equalisation of men and womens pension age was accelerated by the Tories, cheating them of firm entitlements.

The Waspi (Women against state pension inequality) group has campaigned for years, dressed as suffragettes with demos all over the country, but they complain that their case has hardly been heard. Now Labour has come up with the goods: there has been plenty of reporting of the cost but none of the jubilation these women feel. Labour long ago promised to compensate them, but has only now spelled it out in a stonking great commitment of nearly 12bn a year for five years.

So heres the crude question: how many of these more than three million older women will be swung towards Labour?

In Pendle, Lancashire, Sally Lambert was one of the Waspi organisers who met shadow chancellor John McDonnell on Wednesday. All the women in our group were so pleased to have someone listening at last, she said. They support equalisation, but they needed longer to save and this government theft is the only equality they have experienced. Her story is a good example of how working women born in the 1950s have been impoverished.

She didnt know until two years before she was 60 that, once shed reached that age, she would have to work another six years. By then, she had cut back work after cancer treatment left her frail. She was grieving the loss of a son and was caring for her mother. Like most, she was not a high earner. She left school at 15 and worked as a machinist making slippers: There was no equal pay back then, we had a lot less than the men. Later, she made Christmas decorations for shops before doing community work for a disability group.

It is head-in-the-hands-and-weep useless at explaining, selling and persuading those beyond their believers.

This is what happened when women like her found they had no pension and couldnt work more. She had some savings, so didnt qualify for any benefits. After shed exhausted those savings, she spent a very small inheritance when her mother died. Im so lucky I have a husband who has a 10,000 a year pension, so we got by, she says. But others in her group with no partner had to sell their homes to survive. Women who were divorced never had lost years of pension counted in the settlement.

Does she think these 1950s women, the ones Labour calls the Made in Dagenham women, will swing to Labour? My friend just joined the Labour party this week! She feels it will persuade many, as will the partys policies on the NHS and free social care. Those born between 1950 and 1955 will get 100 a week for each week they lost, not as a lump sum: younger ones get less, on a taper.

The plan is attacked on the grounds that Theresa May herself would be due 22,000. But well-off women will be paying higher tax rates and as Lambert says: Its an entitlement we paid for that was stolen, not a benefit. Labour could have means tested this, but cutting out relatively few high earners is unlikely to save much. As for fiscal rashness, the Resolution Foundation says that both Labour and the Conservatives are set to break their budgetary rules, so the mud may not stick.

Take the other assault on Labours tax plans: Jeremy Corbyn made a poor fist of defending the abolition of the absurd marriage allowance. Its a tax relief that was widely ridiculed at the time, brought in to please the Daily Mails clamour for incentivising marriage: Iain Duncan Smiths Centre for Social Justice claimed lack of a marriage licence was a prime cause of poverty. David Cameron brought it in just before the 2015 election. It came as a 1,060 transferable tax allowance, so it only goes to couples where one partner doesnt work (or is earning below the tax threshold). They get nothing, as this 250 is added to the higher earners pay slip.

Here are the absurdities: it goes to civil partners too, displeasing the extreme Christian lobby. If keeping people married for the sake of the children was the aim, only a quarter of recipients had children and only one in six families with children qualify. A third are pensioners, but maybe they need to be kept moral too. Only 31% of couples qualified. It was an administrative burden as, suddenly, PAYE couples had to fill out tax forms to get less than 5 a week.

Heres the real affront: a philanderer on his third wife gets the allowance, but his abandoned wives get nothing. Nor do abused partners escaping their abusers. Ah, Cameron said, its not about the money, its the message. Labour, from day one, always said they it abolish this nonsense.

So does it break its promise not to raise income tax? Barely. In its total spending, those few couples with children losing this allowance will gain over and over, especially in more free childcare. Older couples who lose the allowance will gain massively more from free social care as well as a free 150 TV licence.

The trouble is not with Labours policies, with its manifesto nor most of its tax and spending plans. The problem is that it is head-in-the-hands-and-weep useless at explaining, selling and persuading those beyond the believers: thats meant to be the politicians art. It takes steady ploughing and tilling the land of the voters to sow radical seeds and expect them to thrive: both tactics and strategy have been weak. The inevitable attacks are fiercer this year than ever, in need of better defending than most of the shadow cabinet can muster.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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Labours policies will benefit millions, but now it needs to sell them better - The Guardian