The second part of our series on reducing demand for government, in which we set out a programme for change – focused on families, civil society and government.
The demographic tide can’t be turned back, but its advance can be slowed – by the self-reinforcing triangle of stronger families, better schools, good jobs, and the stronger society that these help to build.
In the end, I’m with Nigel Lawson: these alternatives would produce marginal gains at best, and at worst decades of distraction from the real path back to a stronger health service.
If politicians can’t do deliver realistic cost projections and timetables, they need to make sure the public grasp the full scale of the eventual benefits.
Above all, they shouldn’t become preoccupied with Woke to the exclusion of everything else. This is the trap that many Labour backbenchers and much of the Left is falling into.
Activists who want free termination up to birth have allowed what was meant to be an emergency measure during Covid to become a dangerous new normal.
A small sliver of the housing wealth that is largely in the hands of those of us who have benefitted from rising house prices would go a significant way to filling the funding gap.
The expensive subsidy creates a domestic training bottleneck, whilst this country’s demand for healthcare workers is met through immigration.
And this is the fundamental problem: it allows us to dodge a broader long-term industrial strategy, precisely because the short-term labour fix is so easy.
The first article in a new series on ConHome about how government might be made smaller, taxpayers better off and and society stronger – through strong families, better schools and good jobs.
Pharmaceutical interventions have their place, but a balanced and sustainable approach should focus on getting people active.
A modest (if growing) list of technocratic interventions will not be enough for the electorate, no matter how good they are in their own terms.
The Government needs to resist the clamour from ideological libertarians and give people the tools they need to lead healthy lives and address the culture of the nation towards food, activity, and looking after yourself, as they do in other healthier countries.