Stringer nails the "difficult decisions" lie

Labour MP Graham Stringer made a plea this morning for ministers to stop using the George Osborne line that punishing vulnerable people constitutes “difficult decisions” – the political equivalent of “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you".

He told the Telegraph:

“They keep saying these are difficult decisions, they are decisions they’d prefer not to do. Those decisions are difficult for the people on the receiving end. If you need the winter fuel allowance, that’s a really difficult decision for you. If you need Pip [personal independence payments] payments which are going to be attacked this autumn, that’s a difficult decision for you.”

But, because those around the Labour government are basically Tories at heart (or worse, Blairites) they are addicted to their cliches.

Today, people speaking for Labour have wheeled the difficult decisions line out again and again.

To be fair, Labour chairman Ellie Reeves mixed tough and difficult, although I’m not sure the message, if you don’t like it, tough is an appealing one.

“Well, interestingly, none of the other political parties have said how they would fund the NHS. They might criticise Labour’s policies and the tough decisions we’ve taken but none of them have put forward solutions about how they would fund the NHS, how they would get those waiting lists down, how they would recruit the extra GPs that we need so people can get appointments when they need them.

 “We’ve had to make tough decisions to stabilise the economy, to invest in the NHS, where waiting lists were at record highs.

“There have been tough and difficult decisions, but they’ve been the right decisions to stabilise the economy and to get those waiting lists down.”

As I have said before, from now on, every time a politician claims to have taken a “difficult decision”, s/he should be asked to clarify – difficult for you or difficult for the people who will suffer the consequences?

Meanwhile Starmer was rightly asked whether he is a coward after not campaigning in Runcorn and Helsby where Labour lost a parliamentary seat by six votes.

To prove he isn’t a coward, he dodged the question:

“The results are disappointing and I could stand here and say to you opposition parties always do well in by-elections like this, it was very close in Runcorn, et cetera, et cetera.”

So glad he didn’t stand there and say that.