The real debate should start on July 5
A “conspiracy of silence” about public spending holes and rising taxes accompanied by outlandish claims and facile smears have been the default campaign mode. Time to come clean about what’s ahead
The UK is a high-tax country. The share of the tax take in the economy (GDP) is at a 70-year high (35%) and due to rise to 37.7% in 2027-28 according to the OBR. That would be a post-war high.
The canny electorate knows that. Hence, for the most part, it is aware that whoever wins power at Westminster this week, Labour or, astonishingly, the Conservatives, taxes will rise. Rishi Sunak's hysterical smears and scares about Rachel Reeves raising taxes so high Labour "will bankrupt every generation" while he'll cut them are laughed at. Labour's prevarications about, say, capital gains tax raise the odd eyebrow rather than alarm.
The analyses and forecasts of economic think tanks like the IFS carry weight. As Paul Johnson, IFS director, has warned: the two big parties face a choice in government between higher taxes or worse public services but are refusing to acknowledge it. Like other European countries, the UK faces "growing fiscal pressures associated with ageing populations, higher stocks of debt, higher interest rates, energy insecurity and climate change, and growing geopolitical threats," according to the OBR.
Add in Russia's war against Ukraine, low productivity, anaemic economic growth, appalling levels of poverty and inequality, and the outlook is for more public squalor and less private opulence and for an even greater overwhelming sense that "things simply don't work anymore." On current trends the UK will be more impoverished by the end of this decade and will have seen another parliamentary term end with folk worse off than at the start. The biggest victims will again be younger generations.
Optimism of the will....
Eleven years ago I co-authored a pamphlet, Basta! An end to austerity, for the Socialists & Democrats group in the European Parliament and it's worth an update. It began: "Ambitious plans to make Europe the most competitive economy and greenest society in the world have been abandoned in recent years under Right-wingmajority control. But the time has come to reinvent Europe as a source of hope for its 500 million citizens and to give them, especially the young, a sense of abetter future."
The UK was still an EU member state in 2013 and I remain firmly convinced that outside the EU it has far less chance of halting its impoverishment. But this is not a piece about Brexit even if I share the view that rejoining would deliver a multi-billion boost to growth and Labour won't be able to achieve the economic and social improvements it wants outwith the single market and customs union. Rather, it's about rebooting optimism and trust in democratic government. Just as it was a decade ago in the immediate aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis. Much of that period has been wasted; we cannot afford another decade of decline and despair.
Ironically, of course, one has to begin with greater honesty about the scale of both the problem and the task ahead. How on earth can the UK improve health outcomes, including cutting waiting lists, and raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP in the face of mounting geopolitical threats? That and other demands imply welfare cuts way above the £12bn adumbrated by Sunak during the campaign with his customary insouciance. Or, more positively, reskilling the economically inactive to (re)join the world of paid work. That, in turn, means ending the nonsense of current plans for £18bn real-terms cuts in investment spending each year. It's time to reinvent the 'golden rule' that borrowing to invest falls outside the budget deficit. And stick by it.
....and handling Scotland's innate pessimism
This correspondent has increasingly become despondent about the prospects for change as he approaches his ninth decade. Pessimism of the intellect has become a default mode. But there remains an innate optimism about humans' ability to come together to change society for the better via collective effort. For society as a whole that requires a political class determined to nurture it.
Here in Scotland the optimism undoubtedly unleashed by the Yes campaign post-2014 has been doused - and even the amazing Tartan Army's performance as joyful diplomats in Germany will wear off. Few if any voters expect dramatic socio-economic change whether Labour or the SNP top the polls/take the most seats. Optimism is muted at best.
Honesty - and integrity - are again required. We need to come clean about the real state of society and the economy rather than accuse political opponents about their "plans" to reimpose austerity or leave a £95bn spending hole or make investments as an independent nation that create immediate improvements and "end austerity."
There may well be a change of party in power at Westminster on July 5 but let's not hold our breath about the changes a'coming. That needs an open national conversation about today and tomorrow that's been glaringly and depressingly absent from this tedious election campaign.
Merci mon brave!
Excellent article. Pessimism of the intellect ? Maybe honesty of the spirit.