Fraser Nelson, in his column for The Times, considered the paradox that Governments who are too weak to make proper decisions about the long-term national challenges are the most keen to boast of having a “ten-year plan.” He says:
“Politicians are elected for five years, which is plenty if you know what you’re doing. This is the problem with changing prime ministers so regularly: you lose a year, sometimes more, due to the learning curve. The three years Burnham has before the election are just enough to pass a difficult law and get results – if you arrive in No 10 ready to go. If you arrive unprepared – you start talking about a ten-year plan.”
Timing is everything. Margaret Thatcher combined making unpopular decisions with winning elections by understanding this. For instance, when she came into power in 1979, she was determined to reduce overmanning and increase productivity in loss-making nationalised industries. Huge job losses in British Leyland, British Steel, British Gas and the Coal Board resulted in a big increase in unemployment. The adjustment to economic reality was painful. But the embrace of free enterprise gradually saw the emergence of new “real jobs” – producing goods and services that could be sold at a profit.
What is Andy Burnham’s capacity for equivalent tough decision-making? We have a daily diet of gimmicks, TikToks, and u-turns. Announcing a “ten-year-plan” is just another displacement activity – or “a distress signal” as Nelson puts it, who claims to have “counted 17 ten-year plans in the last five years alone, and almost as many industrial strategies”.
Halloween may be over. But we still have a listless, zombie Government. Few denied that last week’s Budget was boring in terms of its delivery. Some sought to make a virtue of the point regarding the substance. It is true that some of the more damaging tax increases that had been mooted were modified or abandoned – after Burnham’s former advisor Andy Haldane warned that we are “taxed out.” But other harmful measures are being implemented. However, it would be misguided to assume that because the Budget was dull we can enjoy a period of financial stability with nothing to worry about. Praising the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this basis is like commending Emperor Nero for displaying his musical ability during the Great Fire of Rome.
As Robert Colvile put it “it felt like a peacetime Budget in a wartime world.” It has been estimated that the UK Government will be insolvent by the mid-2040s – that payments to pensioners will start bouncing by then. But perhaps that scenario is unduly optimistic. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that spending on welfare was £333.8 billion in the last financial year. By 2031/32 it is predicted to rise to £431.3 billion, a jump of £97.5 billion. The current level of spending is far too high. It is at a disastrous unsustainable level. If Andy Burnham and John Healey do nothing, the problem will get dramatically worse than it is already.
This represents a challenge for the opposition too. The Conservatives have proposed £36 billion of savings in welfare spending. Reform UK offers a higher figure of £50 billion. There has been plenty of criticism, from the usual suspects, as to how “brutal” and “extreme” these “cuts” are. But even if implemented in full these would not be real cuts. They would merely mean that the overall increase in the welfare budget would slow down. Welfare spending would still be even higher than it is today. Thus the effective argument between the main political parties is whether we should go bankrupt in the 2040s, bring it forward to the 2030s, or put it off until the 2050s.
I fear I may be reminding you of Private Fraser in Dad’s Army, who kept making the point that we were “doomed.” Not so. I do think we will take the necessary measures to avert ruin. Our survival instinct will kick in – as a nation, just as it does for a household. It’s just that the later we leave it, the more drastic it will have to be. As an example, the state pension age is only due to rise to 68 by 2046. Pushing it up to 70 by 2036 strikes me as more realistic. It is more responsible to make such decisions now, so that people can plan ahead.
We shouldn’t just blame the politicians. Of course, in a democracy they will be circumspect about telling the truth if they don’t think the voters are ready for the truth. Comforting illusions of more “free stuff” are preferred. Yet surely we can be entrusted with a bit more candour than is presently offered.
Consider the gherkins. Scrapping tariffs to reduce the price of a jar by 4p is a welcome use of Brexit freedoms. Individually small measures can become cumulatively significant. Every little helps, as they say at the supermarket checkout tills. The ridicule comes because of the trivia of such announcments set against the silence on the important stuff. Burnham has been lucky during his initial vacuous premiership. How much longer can it last?