James Windsor-Clive was the Conservative candidate for the Ealing Central and Acton at the 2024 general election.
The UK is in the doldrums. Incomes have stagnated for the best part of two decades, and people have little hope of fortunes improving.
Many reasons are offered for this malaise: the highest energy prices in the developed world, worsened by net-zero regulations that bind our hands further; our inability to build new homes and infrastructure due to labyrinthine planning laws; and the increasing burden of regulation that swamps businesses and entrepreneurs in red tape.
All need urgent attention, but something deeper, more pervasive underlies the problems we face.
We as a society, and as individuals, seem to have lost our appetite for risk.
We are losing the essence that drove a small island to become the vanguard of the industrial revolution and to venture out across the globe.
The slow creep of this change is all around us. In our attempts to limit risk to citizens, we are constraining ourselves and reducing our chances of future prosperity.
Two recent examples show how this works in practice.
The Manchester Arena bombing was an unimaginably tragic event. Young fans of a pop star became the victims of a horrendous terrorist attack. Agonisingly, the bomber was flagged to security guards, who failed to act. MI5 were also aware of the bomber, but he slipped through the net.
We must learn what we can, but that does not always mean more regulation and restrictions. Human error is inescapable, and in a free society another attack will always be possible.
Successive governments have been heavy-handed in their response — bringing forward Martyn’s Law. It requires every venue with a capacity of over 200 people to document public protection procedures and register with a new regulator. This applies whether it is your local village church or a large commercial operator in a city centre.
Will it help prevent another terrorist act? Probably not. Will it cost businesses thousands of hours in compliance? Absolutely.
A friend runs a family hospitality venue that just meets the threshold. He can do the paperwork himself for now but expects his insurers will eventually demand an external assessor at his expense.
The cost is significant, and the risk reduction is negligible.
A similar story could be told about the pandemic. The first lockdown was vital. We knew little about the severity and infectiousness of COVID-19. Keeping people safe was of paramount importance.
The second lockdown was understandable. The NHS was creaking under the strain, and it seemed sensible to have a short circuit breaker.
The third lockdown, which lasted almost three months, is more difficult to justify. We knew more about how the virus spread and its mortality impact. There were other countries, like Sweden, that demonstrated that full lockdowns were not the only solution. We opted for the most risk-averse option with little thought about the devastation it would cause to our economy, our schools, and the nation’s mental health.
It is easy to pin this on the government, but the public was no bolder. Ipsos polling showed that around 80 per cent of people were in favour of that third lockdown. Most of us preferred a cautious approach, but we had less visibility of the trade-offs than the government.
When emotions are running high, and public sentiment is strong, it is tempting to respond quickly and decisively. It may be the right approach in some cases; in many others it is not. We can’t fall into the trap of endlessly regulating to ensure something never happens again, especially if the event was extremely rare. It is the pathway to ossification.
We must accept that life is capricious. We can’t seek to engineer a riskless society without damaging enterprise. It is simply not possible.
20 mph speed limits may be safer, but surely 15 mph is even safer, and 10 mph even safer than that. We need to stop this fallacy.
It is hard to know when attitudes started to shift. The ever-expanding creep of health and safety could be a symptom or a cause. Either way, we need to be more rigorous in our application of common sense. We might even need to risk a few newts’ lives in the building of our much-needed infrastructure projects.
It might be the consequence of an ageing society. Research shows we get more risk averse as we age. Almost one in five of us are now aged 65 or over, against roughly one in seven in the early 1980s, according to the ONS. A gradual shift in societal attitudes might well reflect these demographic trends.
We all bear some responsibility. Gone are the days when you bundled a child out of the front door to go exploring with the only order to be back before dinner. Now we watch children like hawks looking to prevent every knock, scratch, or bruise. If we don’t expose our children to risky play, like climbing trees, we can’t expect them to have healthy attitudes towards taking risks.
The desire to make safe choices seems to have affected the political class across the House. It might be a reaction to social media. The virality and velocity of information ensure any policy misstep is amplified. Those affected by a policy have a platform to fight back, and the losers are far more vocal than the beneficiaries. It makes politicians naturally cautious.
Two decades of stagnation are testament to the need for change. The age of managerial politics is over. We now need to take more risks and be radical.
Kemi Badenoch understands this.
In her speech at TheCityUK’s conference in June she spoke of the UK becoming a low growth economy due to our desire to eliminate all risk from financial markets. I suspect she would agree that it is not just an issue in the City, but in society at large.
I don’t think the cause is lost. Britain is still capable of making bold choices. We are still one of the most enterprising countries in the world, with thousands of people choosing to start their own business each year. It is essential we champion them.
Radical simplification must be the aim. We should make the regulatory environment as easy to navigate as possible. It should encourage people to build infrastructure, start businesses, and invest in the UK.
We should also consider a proportionality test for new safety legislation. The state puts a value on life every day, whether it is the figure that NICE uses to appraise treatments or the one the Department for Transport uses to assess the economics of road safety measures. This type of appraisal should be applied across Whitehall.
We have spent two decades trying to build a country where nothing can go wrong and found nothing much good happens. Britain used to have the stomach for more. It is about time we found it.
James Windsor-Clive was the Conservative candidate for the Ealing Central and Acton at the 2024 general election.
The UK is in the doldrums. Incomes have stagnated for the best part of two decades, and people have little hope of fortunes improving.
Many reasons are offered for this malaise: the highest energy prices in the developed world, worsened by net-zero regulations that bind our hands further; our inability to build new homes and infrastructure due to labyrinthine planning laws; and the increasing burden of regulation that swamps businesses and entrepreneurs in red tape.
All need urgent attention, but something deeper, more pervasive underlies the problems we face.
We as a society, and as individuals, seem to have lost our appetite for risk.
We are losing the essence that drove a small island to become the vanguard of the industrial revolution and to venture out across the globe.
The slow creep of this change is all around us. In our attempts to limit risk to citizens, we are constraining ourselves and reducing our chances of future prosperity.
Two recent examples show how this works in practice.
The Manchester Arena bombing was an unimaginably tragic event. Young fans of a pop star became the victims of a horrendous terrorist attack. Agonisingly, the bomber was flagged to security guards, who failed to act. MI5 were also aware of the bomber, but he slipped through the net.
We must learn what we can, but that does not always mean more regulation and restrictions. Human error is inescapable, and in a free society another attack will always be possible.
Successive governments have been heavy-handed in their response — bringing forward Martyn’s Law. It requires every venue with a capacity of over 200 people to document public protection procedures and register with a new regulator. This applies whether it is your local village church or a large commercial operator in a city centre.
Will it help prevent another terrorist act? Probably not. Will it cost businesses thousands of hours in compliance? Absolutely.
A friend runs a family hospitality venue that just meets the threshold. He can do the paperwork himself for now but expects his insurers will eventually demand an external assessor at his expense.
The cost is significant, and the risk reduction is negligible.
A similar story could be told about the pandemic. The first lockdown was vital. We knew little about the severity and infectiousness of COVID-19. Keeping people safe was of paramount importance.
The second lockdown was understandable. The NHS was creaking under the strain, and it seemed sensible to have a short circuit breaker.
The third lockdown, which lasted almost three months, is more difficult to justify. We knew more about how the virus spread and its mortality impact. There were other countries, like Sweden, that demonstrated that full lockdowns were not the only solution. We opted for the most risk-averse option with little thought about the devastation it would cause to our economy, our schools, and the nation’s mental health.
It is easy to pin this on the government, but the public was no bolder. Ipsos polling showed that around 80 per cent of people were in favour of that third lockdown. Most of us preferred a cautious approach, but we had less visibility of the trade-offs than the government.
When emotions are running high, and public sentiment is strong, it is tempting to respond quickly and decisively. It may be the right approach in some cases; in many others it is not. We can’t fall into the trap of endlessly regulating to ensure something never happens again, especially if the event was extremely rare. It is the pathway to ossification.
We must accept that life is capricious. We can’t seek to engineer a riskless society without damaging enterprise. It is simply not possible.
20 mph speed limits may be safer, but surely 15 mph is even safer, and 10 mph even safer than that. We need to stop this fallacy.
It is hard to know when attitudes started to shift. The ever-expanding creep of health and safety could be a symptom or a cause. Either way, we need to be more rigorous in our application of common sense. We might even need to risk a few newts’ lives in the building of our much-needed infrastructure projects.
It might be the consequence of an ageing society. Research shows we get more risk averse as we age. Almost one in five of us are now aged 65 or over, against roughly one in seven in the early 1980s, according to the ONS. A gradual shift in societal attitudes might well reflect these demographic trends.
We all bear some responsibility. Gone are the days when you bundled a child out of the front door to go exploring with the only order to be back before dinner. Now we watch children like hawks looking to prevent every knock, scratch, or bruise. If we don’t expose our children to risky play, like climbing trees, we can’t expect them to have healthy attitudes towards taking risks.
The desire to make safe choices seems to have affected the political class across the House. It might be a reaction to social media. The virality and velocity of information ensure any policy misstep is amplified. Those affected by a policy have a platform to fight back, and the losers are far more vocal than the beneficiaries. It makes politicians naturally cautious.
Two decades of stagnation are testament to the need for change. The age of managerial politics is over. We now need to take more risks and be radical.
Kemi Badenoch understands this.
In her speech at TheCityUK’s conference in June she spoke of the UK becoming a low growth economy due to our desire to eliminate all risk from financial markets. I suspect she would agree that it is not just an issue in the City, but in society at large.
I don’t think the cause is lost. Britain is still capable of making bold choices. We are still one of the most enterprising countries in the world, with thousands of people choosing to start their own business each year. It is essential we champion them.
Radical simplification must be the aim. We should make the regulatory environment as easy to navigate as possible. It should encourage people to build infrastructure, start businesses, and invest in the UK.
We should also consider a proportionality test for new safety legislation. The state puts a value on life every day, whether it is the figure that NICE uses to appraise treatments or the one the Department for Transport uses to assess the economics of road safety measures. This type of appraisal should be applied across Whitehall.
We have spent two decades trying to build a country where nothing can go wrong and found nothing much good happens. Britain used to have the stomach for more. It is about time we found it.