I recently saw a comment on an article about the UK’s tax loopholes; it said that tax reform is a dull subject for the electorate and boring for governments to implement, hence why it won’t be dealt with any time soon. This kind of view is symptomatic of a host of the political issues limiting the country, and one that we’ve been dealing with for decades.
The neoliberal shift that began in 1979 has given us a political situation whereby the electorate are promised a better life so long as the economy grows - a chicken and egg type situation, if you will. In this telling of things, the economy can only grow if governments take a ‘hands off’ approach via deregulation, privatisation and reductions in government spending; the state is seen as a limit to economic growth. This view is so ingrained in the minds of the electorate that, for most, it is hard to see an alternative path. Even those on the ’left’ have allowed the post-Thatcherite consensus to continue. The circumstances under which Margaret Thatcher came to power in the late 70s, and the state of the nation in the preceding decade, imprinted a certain attitude towards the state on the minds of politicians and electorate alike.
Prior to this economic revolution, the Keynesian view that dominated economic theory from the mid 20th century onwards was that government spending can influence demand and support the economy. There was a belief that better living standards achieved through spending on infrastructure, unemployment benefits and education would contribute to a stronger economy. It’s hard to discount this theory when you look at the relative prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s and the meteoric rise in living standards post World War 2. Unfortunately, economic literacy in the UK is left wanting thanks, in part, to intentional masquerading by politicians and a friendly tabloid media helping to imprint the inherent linguistic framing that twists the connection between the idea of growth and positivity.
The limited economic understanding among the population means that people are making electoral decisions based on skewed beliefs of national budgets, deficits and debt - usually backed up by media reporting. The majority of people in the UK cannot accurately define GDP or its affects on households, and believe that a nation’s economy functions similar to that of a household budget, whereby there is a set amount of income that should be balanced by a comparable amount of outgoings. Continuing to run with this narrative benefits the political classes when it comes to attacking their opposition’s track-record. The Cameron premiership beginning in 2010 is a prime example; we were told that the only way to prevent inevitable bankruptcy would be to implement an ‘age of austerity’ which was the sole method of achieving a growing economy, higher wages and better lives. These concepts push the electorate further towards populist candidates who promise to have the solution to the issues we face.
UK politics is increasingly becoming a popularity contest. Every election since 1979 has been won by the party whose leader tops the popularity polls and, as examples like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband show, competent politicians are often sidelined at elections because they lack charisma. It’s understandable, and shows a fundamental problem with the Westminster system of politics. In the UK, convention says the leader of the most populous party in parliament takes the reigns. Given not even MPs themselves can agree on the duties of the job or where their loyalties should lie, the easiest way through an election for the population is to vote for the party of the leader they want to be running the show. Unfortunately, as we’ve settled into a comfortable two-party system, people feel their options are either Labour or the Tories and so we see tactical voting on a national scale; this only serves to further disconnect the idea of an MP being a ’local’ representative.
So, we find ourselves in a place where political leaders need to be popular in order to get elected. To do that they need to win the electorate over by promising fantastical economic growth, which they’re told means higher wages and a better life. It makes sense, then, that politicians promise wide-ranging system change, or to disrupt the way things have been done, or huge infrastructure projects. These plans get the headlines which cut through to the electorate come election time. The issue comes when these promises are not delivered, either because they were over-promised initially, or they become prohibitively expensive, or the inter-connected nature of a modern nation is overlooked at the planning stage and what was originally promised becomes near impossible to actually achieve.
As parliament cannot bind its successors, every new Prime Minister comes into post ready to make their mark and push ahead with their premiership defining plans. The NHS and education are perfect examples of reform-churn. Reform is implemented, and then changed, chopped and reformed once again. A study of the NHS since the 1990s has shown that less than 40% of constituent organisations within the health service survive ten years before the next round of reform is put in place. Rishi Sunak announced yesterday his plan for an Advanced British Standard to replace T-Levels and A-Levels; this is despite T-Levels being announced only five years ago and the first awarded just last year. This is on top of the reforms implemented by Michael Gove in 2010 that were still being debated in parliament last year. What good does this never-ending churn do for us? How can the effectiveness of reform be properly understood if it’s not even allowed to bed in? This cycle of endless change inevitably costs far more than it should, leaves us with services that are disorganised and underfunded and the prevailing neoliberal idea that government spending should be kept to a minimum leads to further problems. Looking at the health service again, the funding required to reduce the NHS backlog , accumulated in large part thanks to funding cuts, would be around an extra 5% per year - far above the 1.6% annual increase that is currently on offer.
The problem with this constant promise of change through top-down reform is that it impacts the trust the electorate have in the politicians they vote for and erodes the social contract that exists between citizens and the state. There’s tacit understanding on the part of the electorate that the taxes they pay go towards the services they use. This understanding, however, is being damaged and people are seeing less and less what they’re getting in return for the taxes they pay. Despite more than 50% of the population receiving more in benefits, whether in-kind or cash, than they pay in taxes, the wide-spread condemnation of welfare recipients permeates society, driven on by opportunist politicians and a friendly media. We need to move back towards a time where people understand what they’re getting for the taxes they pay; failure of these headline projects simply doesn’t deliver this.
Reform takes time. The short terms of office in the UK mean that governments are not well equipped to turn things around in a single term of office. Sure, we’ve have a Tory government for thirteen years but the average term of office of each prime minister in this period is 3 years and 116 days - obviously this discounts Liz Truss’ disastrous escapade as anything other than a mildly ineffectual cabinet minister. Three years is hardly enough time to pass any ground-breaking reform through parliament, let alone get through implementing it. And yet, the parties still promise these things. The selective short-term memory of the media helps the parties to brush any policy failures underneath the carpet and move on to the next big shining plan.
Sometimes, politics needs to be boring; It is the mechanism by which we live our lives. It dictates our ability to earn money, the quality of the housing we live in, the healthcare and education we receive and almost everything in between. The UK needs a little bit of dull policy making to steer things towards a more equitable society and keep the world moving onwards. How we go about persuading the electorate of that, I don’t know. But there is real opportunity to change the country for the better one step at a time. Let’s start by enabling the poorest to keep more of any changes in income by adjusting the Universal Credit taper, let’s push Capital Gains Tax inline with income taxes and expand payment onto all house sales to tax the vast amounts of unearned wealth that has accumulated in property over the past few decades. Incremental change to the systems people interact with daily needs to happen to provide tangible improvements to peoples lives. When people see their government actually delivering on their promises, trust rises. The easiest way to get rid of populists is to run an effective government.