Sometimes a small dose doesn't inoculate, it increases the desire

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When it comes to traditional vaccines, the science of giving people a small dose, a dose of a milder version, or a dead sample of the pathogen in order to promote the formation of antibodies and thus protect the individuals is well-established. And whatever some of the anti-vaxxers of this world might say, the evidence is that it overwhelmingly works, with complications and harm from the vaccine being extremely rare occurrences.

It's a category error, however, to seek to apply the same principle in the world of politics, and it’s a category error which the current Starmer government is making with great enthusiasm. Feeling threatened by the potential public support for Reform’s desire for mass deportations and ever more heartless treatment of the most desperate, they seem to believe that releasing selective footage of a tiny number of individuals being shackled and escorted onto planes for deportation will somehow defeat the toxin offered by Farage and his crew. But for those who want mass deportations, action against a tiny number doesn’t protect against the desire for more, it inflames it. ‘If they can do it for a few, why not for millions’ is a more likely reaction than ‘who needs Reform when Labour are doing the same thing’.

It shouldn’t take more than a moment’s reflection to work out that legitimising the process on a small scale will only encourage those who want to implement it on a large scale to ask themselves whether, if the approach is acceptable, they shouldn’t just vote for people who actually want to do much more of it rather than someone who believes that doing a little will be enough to buy their votes. Maybe there really will be some who will conclude that, if they can get Labour to implement Reform’s policies, then they don’t need to vote for Reform at all. But implementing Reform’s policies to stop Reform from gaining power to implement its policies doesn’t look like the smartest of moves. And whether that’s where Labour should be looking for votes is a matter on which people may have different opinions. To the extent that there are still some half-decent members and supporters of the Labour Party, it might lose them more than it gains them, but these are all calculations which Labour has presumably attempted to carry out in its attempts to stave off the surge towards Reform.

That, perhaps, is the greatest condemnation of all for Labour’s approach. Gaining and retaining power by implementing whatever policies seem most likely to achieve that has elevated that aim to be the be all and end all of their approach to politics. For a party founded on noble principles it’s reaching for the absolute nadir.