On the debit side, Britain is an ageing country, like other western democracies. Families that age risk dying out, and ours has been sustained by immigration – on a scale previously unknown, which brings its own challenges.
Ownership of capital divides up by age, with younger people on the wrong side of the line; and by place, since prosperity is spread unevenly in Britain, at least compared to our European neighbours. Meanwhile, there is a risk that one part of the country, Scotland, may leave altogether.
Provincial discontent with these disparities helped to make the Brexit vote possible, but it isn’t clear what our Government wants to make of leaving the EU – or how it will “build back better” after Covid, in the noble if problematic drive to level up.
And to the traditional list of British weaknesses, such as low productivity, inventing stuff here that gets developed elsewhere and neglected skills, one can now add a record tax burden, and public services that sometimes aren’t as good as we pretend (the NHS) when they work at all (passport offices).
Meanwhile, parts of the displaced Remain ascendancy have come to terms with leaving the EU, but parts have not. Count parts of the civil service, the legal “academy”, bigger business, the quangocracy, higher education and the state broadcaster in with the latter.
Now to the credit side. We have culture skirmishes rather than wars, at least compared to America – so far. Dividing lines on abortion are less sharp, and we have no equivalent of Roe v Wade. A deposed Boris Johnson has not yet done a Trump and urged his fans to march on Parliament.
If we are less divided than the United States, we are also more rooted than our European neighbours. France, Spain, Italy, even Germany with the AfD: all have seen established political forces under pressure or going bust over the past 15 years or so.
By contrast, the political parties that sit in the Commons are, if represented in very different numbers, much the same as at the end of the Thatcher era. It’s first past the post that does it. One man’s force for inertia is another man’s force for stability
If our skills sector is weak, our universities one is stronger, at the top end anyway, with four British ones in the world’s top ten. And there is an upside to the dominance of London that provincial England flicked a v-sign at during the EU referendum, in the City of London and financial services.
Then take into account the relative flexibility of our labour market, the vaccine success story, the can-do Armed Forces, the service of the Monarch, the vibrancy of much of the arts, Olympics sporting successes.
Such is the country that the new Conservative leader can expect to govern in less than two months time. Unlike Boris Johnson, this new Prime Minister will not have won an election. Like him, he – or she – can’t reasonably be expected to solve some of these challenges in only two years or so.
But the new leader will need to rise to three in particular. First, the cost of living crisis: the new Government will need an economic policy which, frankly, this one has simply not had.
Second, holding “our precious Union” together. The Prime Minister must have a workable plan to keep Nicola Sturgeon in her box. Finally, there is the lack of housing in general, and owned homes in particular, for younger people, and its consequences
Housing shortages mean children later if at all – the average age at which people marry is now in the late 30s – labour immobility, and so lower productivity and wages. Not all new housing can be shifted into the midlands and north.
Which takes us to the leadership election itself. During the last one in 2019, I went to a big hustings in Kent. So did journalists from publications of all political colours and none.
One from the decidedly unblue Financial Times, and then another from the even less so Observer, told me how impressed they were with the often-maligned-at-this-time Conservative activists present: by the quality and tone of their questions – pointed but polite.
As a member myself, I wasn’t at all surprised and believe that, whatever one’s view of the choice they made, there was a logic to their decision. Brexit should be delivered, they believed. Boris Johnson was most likely to deliver it. Ergo, vote for Boris Johnson.
My hope this time round is that Tory activists approach the contest in the same spirit, mindful of the responsibility that we will have to get it right – as Conservative MPs do this week during the Parliamentary stage of the election.
Frankly, it could all go either way. On the one hand, if presented – to pick a topical example – with a proposal for tax cuts, members could ask some probing questions. Are these the right taxes to cut? How does the candidate propose to cut them?
Does he believe that they will pay for themselves through higher growth, or more borrowing If not, has he advanced any broader framework for them at all? If so, is it durable?
Sajid Javid’s plan is showing the pluses and minuses of advancing a detailed scheme to finance tax cuts. On the one hand, credit to him for coming up with answers. On the other, it may be that they provoke even more questions.
And finally: will any proposed tax cuts really happen at all if the candidate wins the contest? After all, Boris Johnson promised an income tax cut for top earners during the 2019 election. We await them still.
Or the contest might go the other way – and become a performative Tory version of Just A Minute, in which candidates compete for the most orgasm-inducing soundbites in the least possible time.
“CutIncomeTaxScrapTheNorthernIrelandProtocolAbolishNetZeroPromoteLordFrostQuitTheECHRBanWokeSackTheJudgesBombtheEU” – bing! Thank you, Ferdinand. Or is it Flossie? You win a standing ovation and a pass to Downing Street.
For clarity: there’s nothing wrong in wanting tax cuts (marching in step with spending cuts), or believing that the Net Zero target is impracticable, or thinking that Lord Frost should be promoted or the Protocol rewritten from top to bottom.
Nonetheless, one should always be suspicious of people who tell you want you want to hear. Obviously, they’re easier to rub along with than people who tell you what you don’t want to hear.
But better the man who tells you can’t have what you want than the man who says that you can…but only if you vote for him. And after you’ve done so, says he’s terribly sorry, but circumstances have changed. Or that he’s now a prisoner of them.
And with all due respect to the bloke still in situ in Number 10, that we’ve had a run of our Party Leader telling us what we want to hear, but not all of it has happened.
If Ministers haven’t delivered what they promise now already, it might be worth asking them why not. If their answer is simply to blame Boris Johnson, ask yourself how sustainable it is to gain office by trashing his legacy, and perhaps theirs.
Better sharp questions than ecstatic cheers as a candidate tears up the Northern Ireland Protocol on stage. And louder cheers yet when a second one eats it. And louder cheers still when a third sets fire to it – plus himself, the other candidates…and perhaps you too.