We need a national rescue plan

Why are the government’s missions so vanilla? Why is the government being all doom and gloom? Why the unexpected tax hikes?

These questions asked across the media suggest the government is struggling to connect. Keir Starmer knows this, which is why he is soon to launch his plan for government. But a list of targets won’t be enough. We need a plan based on an honest analysis of where we are at and a compelling vision of where we could get to. The government cannot skip these steps or look to past formulas from Blair, Thatcher or Attlee because the UK’s situation has fundamentally changed. We have declined and, therefore, none of the political stories from the 20th century will help. 

The UK is tired and old. Our population is increasingly tired an old, and our physical and social infrastructure is too. The UK is Woolworths before it went bust. People feel nostalgia towards it, but little else. We’ve got a large number of defunct assets but we can’t get rid of them or afford to renew them. Most dangerously, there is an inertia in our decision-making preventing us from facing up to reality. 

But what if we choose not to go bust? What if we choose to break free of our inertia and develop a plan for the future based on a realistic assessment of where we are at and where it could be possible to get to?

So, what is a realistic goal? Perhaps it is a resilient country that survives in an unstable world, by working hard and exploiting our advantages to keep a seat at the big (not top) table. If so, what do we need to do to get there?

Work and learn more: We have an ageing population, and too few people of working age to fund it. We therefore need people to start work younger and retire older, to invest in workplace training to enable people to keep on top of changing demands, and to 

bring in more young workers from abroad. The prevailing wisdom has been that, in an information economy, we need education. That’s true, but education can perhaps be better delivered alongside employment rather than ahead of it. In fact, if skills needs shift rapidly, undertaking a lengthy period of education prior to working runs the risk of learning lots of obsolete information.

Export to bring in more money: Our population is too large to survive on an export economy of high end services and bespoke manufacturing. They are both important and we don’t do nearly enough of the latter, but we also need something bigger that many more people can work in. We are too expensive a country to ever be the home of mass manufacturing again, so what could we do? We have a comparative advantage in wind, so could increase wind energy production to produce exportable green energy products. Imagine a world in which fuel tanker ships start rather than end their global journeys in the UK.

Stop wasting money: We need public services that can lift people up and prevent social ills without being too expensive to run themselves. This means slaughtering some sacred cows, especially about the NHS, and putting the users of, not the providers of, public services in charge. Only then can we see what’s wanted, make it available more efficiently and stop funding things that aren’t needed.

Renew our private and public infrastructure to make it easier to make money: if we can get the above right, we will be able to grow investors’ confidence, and secure affordable finance for a massive renewal and expansion of climate-resilient infrastructure and productivity-boosting machinery. This must be focused on enabling the above measures, so it gradually reduces national operating costs and grows the UK’s tax base. 

The ideas set out above may not be the right ones, and there are inevitably other options, but the test of any major policies should be whether they form a rescue plan capable of turning around the fortunes of a tired, old country, or not. If looked at through the wrong lens, of “Great Britain” or the post-WWII settlement, such policies may be rejected as reactionary or Victorian. However, we are no longer that country. We need a tough mission of solidarity not an easy one of nostalgia. 

If Keir Starmer wants to get people behind his new plan, it needs to be realistic and hard nosed. That would entail asking the British public to swallow some bitter pills about where the UK finds itself. But he also needs to spell out a vision of where he wants the country get to. Without this, any plan will be a hollow rhetorical exercise - a repeat of Sunak’s five promises.

Many have argued Starmer’s done the doom and gloom bit already, and too much. However, in all previous occasions he’s a) underplayed how bad it is, b) failed to set out how to rescue it, and c) not explained the prize if the government succeeds. Fundamentally, the Prime Minister needs to convince the country that it’s not only the government that needs a reset and a brighter future, it’s the UK itself.