It has been a remarkably short honeymoon. Getting rid of the Conservatives before they did any more damage was something well worth celebrating. Yet there is already a significant lack of enthusiasm for what has replaced them. An early poll had the government plunging by six percentage points to record only 29% of intents to vote.
At first glance the problem the new government seems to have, comes from two sources. The first is that they genuinely have inherited a mess: public services really have been driven to breaking point and the government is remarkably short of enough money to fix the problems it faces. It is going to be hard to match expectations of improvements with delivery on the ground, and unless something transformational happens to life in our neglected regions there are going to be a large number of resentful voters out there.
The second problem is more counterintuitive. Having a very large majority is very bad for the government, particularly when it hasn’t earned it at the ballot box and only recorded 34% of the votes of those who bothered to turn out. Large majorities produce arrogance. As Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings would be able to tell you if they weren’t so riddled with that characteristic.
The team that thinks its genius was responsible for the great victory can all too easily get into the habit of assuming that it knows best and anyone who opposes it from within the ranks needs to be shut out of power and heavily disciplined. That leads to a siege mentality where a small clique gathered around the prime minister makes the real decisions and parliament and MPs get treated as cannon fodder. Votes can be won without listening to awkward alternative views.
Ignoring those alternative views is, however, dangerous. It leads to damaging mistakes. As we have seen with the winter fuel payment which could have been dealt with so much more sensitively and skilfully.
Growing the economy
Tough as those problems are, they may yet prove to be the easier of the challenges to overcome. The real stumbling block for this government is likely to be what it is setting out to achieve and what it believes success looks like. If you are pursuing the wrong objectives you are not likely to achieve the right ones.
Put simply, I think Keir Starmer would be overjoyed if he could go down in history as having run things competently; he sees himself as a latter day Tony Blair. Reasonably efficient ‘business as usual’ seems to be the prime ambition. Above all this is a government that believes that the best way to get out of the problems it has inherited is to achieve economic growth.
Mathematically growth looks like a logical solution. The only way of providing more funding for public services without raising taxes, is to increase the size of the economy. Unfortunately getting that growth isn’t simple and it can come at a heavy price. Since achieving something along those lines was the central strategy of Liz Truss we are entitled to exercise a degree of caution.
‘What kind of growth?’ is the key question. There are no gains to increasing the production of oil, gas, plastic, or the profits of hedge funds speculating on financial markets. There are gains to improving the income and the living standards to people in neglected regions, and to the quality of services that are provided for them.
Artificial intelligence and assisting the wealthy
Over the past decades there have been enormous increases in the wealth and power of those who control finance. At the same time there have been shocking declines in the living standards and the hope for the future amongst many traditional working-class communities. The Gini coefficient, which measures the distribution of income, is over 6% higher than it was in the 70s and 80s.
The spread of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to make that divide worse not better. Those who own the software and the machines will get a lot wealthier, whilst the pain of losing employment is likely to switch to those in what were once considered safe, middle-class professions such as law. AI can trawl through every legal precedent in seconds and can give reliable advice on which course of action was the most successful in the past. Even the best trained lawyer can’t do that.
Without conscious action to control it, the over concentration of wealth and power in a few hands will continue to get worse. A government that comes into office promising no new taxes is unlikely to have sufficient vision and sense of purpose to meet that challenge.
Impact on the environment
Along with that crisis of inequality, business as normal is also heading rapidly into a whole series of environmental disasters, as the self-interest of a few differs sharply with the needs of the many and with the needs of the other creatures who share our planet.
Climate change is happening faster, harder and sooner than governments expected. That is starting to have an impact on food production and on the lives of more people each year. Record flood levels, huge forest fires, fierce winds and bizarre weather patterns are just the early signs of problems that are certain to carry on getting worse for another 30 years. Pollution has become such a horrific problem that microplastics have been found in children’s brains and men’s sperm. The habitat for entire species have been destroyed and industrial agriculture has had a devastating impact on the soil we rely on to grow our crops.
In such circumstances it is a hugely optimistic government that bases its strategy for getting out of its problems on economic growth. At best that growth is going to be badly constrained by the growing costs of an increasingly unstable environment. At worst we are going to struggle to feed the population and cope with the wars and waves of immigration that may result.
Closing ranks to save our economy
A wise government would be putting us on a war footing to cope with an increasingly risky set of circumstances. The focus needs to be on reducing our demand for energy, increasing the amount of food produced locally, reducing dependence on importing essentials and providing stable lifestyles in an unstable world. What is needed is a complete repurposing of our economy and society which requires a conscious plan to change the entire economic and social system for the better.
The economic experiment of letting free markets rip, that was set in motion by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, has failed. It has left us with a deeply divided society on the verge of environmental collapse. What is needed in its place are governments with sufficient ambition to plan for a better future and a willingness to co-operate to achieve it. It is far from clear that the current British government has the vision or the bravery to rise to the challenge.
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