by As I was reeling from last week’s local election results I started (because I know how to have a good time) to jot down a non-exhaustive list of ways in which the UK is seen as worse than 14 years ago. The resulting catalog was extremely long, extremely easy to write and painfully difficult to edit down in the space designated for this column.
Such an inspection will certainly recruit towards the gloom mongering, thus through a preemptive cave.
First of all, the UK still has many great assets and characteristics. Second, there is no way to tackle these challenges without detailing and prioritizing them. And, thirdly, Tory rule faces many of the following problems.
But some are new, few have improved since 2010, and most have gotten much, much worse. Together they are a damning indictment of the Government and a reasonable explanation for why the electorate seems to have lost patience with the Conservative Party.
Of course, the possible solutions to these problems will be political solutions. Picking the order in which they are tackled would probably spark a furious debate. But, in reality, ideology is less necessary than basic management competence. With that in mind, and in no particular order, here is the UK to-do list:
Planning. A project to build a road tunnel under the Thames Estuary has resulted in a 359,000-page planning application. Why? Too much bureaucracy is fostering a “can’t do” attitude.
Productivity. Even the French are bothering us and they spend most of the summer out of it. This is the root cause of our economic woes. But we don’t even know why UK productivity growth is so low, let alone what to do about it.
Pollins. Do you want to understand what systematic underinvestment does to the physical fabric of the nation? Take a drive.
The NHS. Simply put, the UK’s biggest policy problem. The public respects the National Health Service but they also know it is broken. Health care is the largest item in the Government budget and remains chronically underfunded. Reform is vital and yet politicians lack the courage to embrace it.
The stock market. UK plc is now trading at such a discount to other countries that many companies are considering upping sticks and relocating or are now takeover targets. Or both. Westminster will never love the financial industry. But he needs to understand the City better.
Farming. Pressured by low food prices and high costs, farmers are also left to deal with the transition from EU subsidies, more extreme weather and increasing environmental protections. At least they have Jeremy Clarkson to highlight their plight.
Pensions. Do you think we now have intergenerational inequality? You just have to wait. Almost anyone working today is saving enough to break even at retirement. A political disaster of epic proportions is slowly brewing.
Welfare. The key is to strike the right balance between providing a reasonable safety net to catch the truly unlucky and not bankrupting the state. The nation’s finances are going down the wrong path.
Energy policy. Where to start? The complete mismanagement of the wealth of our North Sea perhaps? Or a waste of our historical expertise in nuclear energy? Or close all our gas storage locations? The UK has got it wrong in so many ways for so long that simply fixing the mess will almost certainly mean we fail to take advantage of new technologies.
Tax. If you had a blank sheet of paper and wanted to invent a bewildering system full of strange thresholds and unintentional disincentives you’d be hard-pressed to produce anything worse than the UK’s Byzantine tax regime.
Housing. We’re not building many new homes and haven’t been for a while [see Planning]. Instead we are pushing prices up with policies that add demand to demand. In addition, we are demonizing landlords. It’s a terrible combination.
Net zero. Could a consensus be reached to achieve this goal or is it such a blunt instrument that it will never work?
Airports. There are few areas where the UK’s global ambitions and net-zero targets are more clearly at odds. Heathrow has been the focus of this tension but plenty of airports in the country want to expand. Will they be allowed? Almost certainly not [see Planning].
Water. It looks like a case of privatization gone wrong. Is Thames Water, drowning in debt and threatened with renationalisation, a special case, or representative of the wider malaise? Can natural monopolies ever be run as businesses?
Universities. What happens when you cross the currents of austerity, immigration and culture wars? Anything is good – as the higher education sector, one of the UK’s traditional strengths, is now discovering.
Railways. In most other countries, traveling by train is a low-cost, low-stress and low-carbon way to get around. Not so in the UK. Depending on your political leanings, unions or privatization are usually blamed. But the issues run deeper than that.
Immigration. The British public generally believes that immigrants make a positive contribution. This country is good at welcoming newcomers and absorbing them into society. However, it is now an economic crisis and chaos at the borders threatens to undermine what should have been a successful situation.
Industrial policy. Does the UK even have one? Should?
Councils. Many are being driven to the breaking point. For some it’s a lack of funding. For others it is financial incompetence. Most are struggling to cope with a huge increase in demand for their services.
Brexit. Whether you’re pro or anti, we can certainly agree that arguing obsessively about one topic to the exclusion of almost everything else for eight years has created a huge opportunity cost.
Short term. If you were to look for a theme that connects all the previous issues then the UK would certainly not be able to plan properly. [see Planning]. Most companies and investors struggle to look beyond the next quarterly results and politicians seem unable to raise their sights beyond the next election.
Could that be changed now that the next seems a foregone conclusion?
