Last week, Andy Burnham announced that he was working with Google to display petrol prices on the maps application and allow consumers to find the cheapest option before they fill up. This was far from a bad idea – consumer transparency is crucial for a market economy to function. But it was widely ridiculed online and Burnham’s continued reliance on small cost-of-living interventions will eventually be viewed as inadequate by the public.
This disappointment will flow from two facts. First, the limited size of the measures the government is capable of taking (owing to our immensely constrained public finances). Second, the government’s inability, in the short term, to protect Britain from global economic shocks.
And on a more fundamental level, are these small-scale, demand-side tweaks really what a Labour government should be aspiring to? Must we settle for piecemeal interventions which leave the public frustrated and also fail to address the structural weaknesses of the British economy?