Callum Price is Director of Communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and a former Government special adviser.
On Monday evening two of the British right’s most prominent voices, who have clashed time and again over social media, met face to face for the first time at the Institute of Economic Affairs. The Times’ Fraser Nelson and Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf went head-to-head in a debate co-hosted by Guido Fawkes, to answer the question ‘Is Britain Broken?’.
The debate itself was fascinating and engaging.
Spicy at times, it stayed the right side of civil, as both speakers, alongside their co-panellist Lord Frost, put forward the cases for and against the state of Britain today. But what can we conclude? Is Britain really broken?
The question is one that divides people in the political bubble. Robert Jenrick was once keen to stress his frustrations with the Conservative Shadow Cabinet who would not agree with him that Britain is fundamentally broken. But the Shadow Cabinet, and Kemi herself, certainly wouldn’t be the first to jump up and say that everything is going swimmingly either.
When you ask people outside of the bubble how they think things are going, the response is a pretty resounding thumbs down. IEA and Freshwater Strategy polling found two thirds of Brits say the country is heading in the wrong direction, with focus group participants saying things like ‘no one gets richer, everyone just affords to scrape along’ and ‘we have been falling off the global stage for years now’.
Given Nelson and Yusuf’s X interactions, one would reasonably have expected a titanic clash. There was plenty of disagreement, but they both saw eye to eye on three key things. Firstly, that Britain is a brilliant country. Nelson declared the UK ‘an amazing country’, and Yusuf agreed, ‘this is the best country in the world to live in, and the evidence of that is I live in it’.
Secondly, there was little disagreement that there’s plenty left to be desired.
Nelson caveated his ‘amazing country’ claim with the fact we have a ‘horrible crisis of government’. Yusuf pointed to specifics including how few hospital beds and prison places we have, and while there was disagreement about the scale of our law-and-order problems, both condemned Theresa May’s move to cut stop and search and its consequences. There was also agreement about the combined nightmare of our public finances, growth, and cost of living problems
Divides came on the extent of these problems, and more fundamentally on the cultural make-up of our society, particularly post ‘Boris-wave’. But the third, and most important area of agreement was that Britain is not so broken that it is irreparable. All panellists, and I expect many others beyond, agree that there are things we can do to fix Britain. What’s more, there is plenty of agreement on the fixes we need.
The question about whether Britain is broken or not is then effectively moot. Few dispute that there are serious problems that need solving. What matters is what they are and how we solve them.
The ‘what’ is easy, and identified by Yusuf, Nelson, Frost, and countless others alike. Energy costs through the roof; a planning system that strangles development of infrastructure and housing; a government structure seemingly incapable of getting anything done; a tax burden that suffocates work and investment; a welfare bill through the roof; a criminal justice system on its knees; and questionable border security, to give the understatement of the century.
The ‘how’ is somewhat trickier. But there is low-hanging fruit, particularly on the economy. First, stop doing harm. The state should lift its boot-heel from the throat of businesses and workers alike. We should make it easier, not harder, to hire new employees. We should stop punishing wealth creators, and make work pay more than welfare. There is common ground here for more than one political party to get behind. What’s more, if we can fix the obvious issues in our economy, the benefits will filter out quickly into the overall mood of the nation.
During Monday’s debate, Lord Frost pointed to 2010 as an estimation of when, he believes, things began to feel worse in Britain. Others point to similar periods in time to make a similar point – one meme jokes that the 2012 London Olympics was the Britain’s ‘season finale’, because everything has been downhill since then. Interestingly, this time frame maps quite nicely on to the chart that shows our growth problem. After the financial crash, the UK economy basically stopped growing in any meaningful way.
It may not be as simple as ‘GDP go up, world get better’, but it’s where we should start.