It's all they can talk about down the pub...

Reflections on the Future of Britain

‘It’s all about ideas’ said Tony Blair yesterday when opening a Future of Britain conference that had inevitably been previewed as being all about Tony Blair. Even now when trying to reflect on a valuable day’s discussion it feels almost impossible not to frame the contributions of a diverse set of world-leading experts through the lens of one man’s ongoing political life. So I will resist - for now at least. 

Plenty of people question the need for big ideas. One friend pointed out that the demand for big progressive political ideas is not often heard down the pub. Another that big ideas tend to be the preserve of managerial types out of touch with reality. I disagree - you need ideas and an intellectual grounding for a political project to succeed. Without them you can’t build the arguments that will win you an election and you won’t have a clear agenda in government. Which is to say I am a subscriber to the ‘lacking ideas’ critique of Keir Starmer’s current offer and a supporter of Tony Blair’s hunt for options.  

Optimism is a trademark of Tony’s approach but the unifying theme of most presentations, especially on the future of Britain’s economy, was one of pessimism. With admirable restraint contributors rarely mentioned Brexit but I was struck especially hard by the sessions on the cost of living.

We are in a mess

After twelve years of Tory government the country is a mess. As Martin Lewis said definitively ‘poverty is now an in-work phenomenon’. As Paul Johnson at the IFS said ‘ this is the first decade since the industrial revolution that wages have not risen and that children cannot expect to be better off than their parents’, Even Larry Summers offered up the reflection that ‘with the benefit of hindsight we might have invested more when borrowing was so cheap’. 

To put it another way this Tory government - despite printing money - has created a country where a job doesn’t guarantee you won’t go hungry at night, living standards are going backwards and we don’t have any strategic investments due to pay out because we cut public spending to the bone in a misplaced ideological fury. All of which is before we head into a period of sustained inflation and likely recession. The Tories can’t get us out of the cost of living crisis, they created the cost of living crisis. Yes, there are some mitigating factors but the culpability remains.  

This should make grim reading for glum one nation types but it’s also a hell of a hospital pass for any aspiring government to be. For me, the strongest takeaway from yesterday - rising above the whispered portrayal of national and wider western decline, was that without taking some very tough decisions about priorities it will not be possible to generate the policy space that any truly big ideas demand. 

Radical enough?

There were some home truths hiding in plain sight. The amount of wealth held by pensioners and state spending on pensioners is too high. The triple lock is unsustainable and inter-generational inequality is rampant. The NHS is also unlikely to continue to be affordable in its current state, especially as people live longer. So we need to find ways to make it less expensive for the public purse or taxes will have to go up further.

Despite the efforts of some speakers, even good old Blairite optimism can’t gloss over the fact that things are not rosy. Which brings me to the point of thinking that rather than levelling up the UK, the next political leader to ‘connect with the electorate’ needs to level with the UK. In doing so they might buy themselves the operating room to put forward some genuinely big ideas. 

For example, if a government were to set out to shift a percentage of pensioner wealth into climate change adaptation and technology, what might become possible as a down payment for future generations?

If the NHS were to become a different type of provider with less of its services fully taxpayer funded what other investments in life sciences might that make possible?

If government increased the overall tax burden to be in line with the EU average then what sort of investments in education, social care and infrastructure might be possible? Or even what sort of tax breaks could be given to entrepreneurs?

Of course any seasoned political campaigner will be laughing now because the idea of a full frontal attack on pensioners, the country’s biggest employer or anybody who resents paying tax is, according to prevailing wisdom, totally bonkers. Notwithstanding this, if yesterday got me thinking anything it was that if you want big ideas you need to be willing to take big decisions and win big arguments. If the country is - as polling shared yesterday said - ready to accept our shared predicament and keen for a more honest style of politics then perhaps there is scope for genuinely radical big decisions.

Forging the future

What are the chances of this happening? I don’t know. Slim probably. Yesterday’s Future of Britain conference was a hell of an achievement. With slick production, speakers of global stature, an urgent agenda and a sizeable crowd it felt modern, ambitious, exciting and dare I say it, very New Labour and yet…

I can’t help but feel that it probably isn’t possible to forge the future when you carry with you so much of the past. This is not a criticism, it’s a reflection. The process of analysing the strategic challenges facing the country, identifying the solutions on offer and creating a narrative with which to persuade voters to back your conclusions is urgently needed. It’s what the architects of New Labour did so well in the early 90’s and it’s understandable to want to repeat that but there’s a very real risk of path dependency thirty years later.

To avoid that the thinking needs to be done afresh, it needs to capture the zeitgeist in ways that are not possible from the basement of a Westminster hotel. It’s one of a long list of things to admire about Tony Blair that he has crafted a new institute with the capability to deliver an event like yesterday’s and that he is determined to keep pushing and wanting more - for himself and for the country. He’s asking the right questions, he may even find the right answers but without a link to power and the allure of the truly new it’s hard not to feel that even this might not be enough.