Britain is in trouble. Everybody knows it, and nobody can deny that Keir Starmer has inherited an almighty mess. Many of our problems will require years of reform and investment to solve, and others appear all but intractable. Most, granted, have no easy answers. That’s what you’ll hear from defenders of the Labour government. But some of our problems at least are self-inflicted and freely chosen, and could be dealt with very quickly.
The country has three millstones hanging around its neck that it could cast off, if only the political will existed. What are these unhappy shibboleths that nobody dares touch?
Treasury Brain
In 1935, Stanley Baldwin’s government set out an ambitious programme of rearmament, to be funded by massive borrowing, designed to deter German aggression. Had Britain invested sufficiently in its land forces, the catastrophe of 1940 and the fall of France might have been avoided. We will never know — because the scope of the rearmament programme was limited thanks to pressure from the Treasury. Instead of spending what was needed, a policy of fiscal “rationing” saw bottlenecks of resources. Production lines were kept waiting, and ambitious plans were scaled back due to this artificial curtailing of cash. Resources ended up being concentrated on the RAF, a largely defensive instrument at the time, and the army lost out.
It’s not easy being Green, and in the case of Net Zero policy, it’s becoming positively suicidal
The Treasury’s influence has been scarcely less malign or extensive since. For decades, British industrial policy and investment has been mismanaged due to the arbitrary rules of the Treasury “Green Book” which requires that government spending demonstrate “value for money”. Rather than a strategic and holistic economic programme that seeks to stimulate growth, this encourages a conservative and often dysfunctional and perverse allocation of resources. Because of greater economic activity and land values, it is always easier to justify spending in the South East and large cities, allowing regional and rural infrastructure and services to crumble, further accelerating patterns of economic stagnation and decline.
This muzzling of industrial policy and state stimulus has been worsened by the current government’s utter capitulation to Treasury orthodoxy. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has imposed the sort of fiscal rules on state spending that previously only existed in the wet dreams of Treasury officials. This may have pleased mandarins, but it has left markets profoundly unimpressed, with Labour’s “fiscal headroom” rapidly evaporating.
There are some easy levers to pull here. Labour can rip up the Green Book, drop its absurd fiscal rules, and borrow to invest in our crumbling infrastructure. Fixing potholes, building new council houses, constructing bridges, roads and railways, and signing off on new nuclear power plants, are all investments in economic growth, and areas where borrowing can be justified to bond markets. But it means going to war with the Treasury, and getting Britain back in the business of industrial policy.
Net Zero
It’s not that easy being Green, and in the case of Net Zero policy, it’s becoming positively suicidal. Of all the unforced errors of the current Labour government, ambitious and expensive targets to cut carbon must be the most stupid of all. We have the most expensive industrial energy prices in Europe, electronic car, eco homes and carbon targets that are far more extreme than our European peers, and we are refusing to exploit our abundant natural resources like oil, gas and coal.
Not only is this economic self-harm that nobody is demanding of us other than fanatical activists, it isn’t going to save the planet either. Countries like America and China produce the bulk of carbon emissions, and we are cutting our own by offshoring hydrocarbon extraction and polluting industries to countries with far worse environmental standards. We could instead be innovating cleaner technologies, producing cleaner steel, and lowering energy costs for businesses and consumers, helping both the environment and the economy.
But it means abandoning Green orthodoxies. Investing in nuclear rather than solar and wind in the long term, and extracting more of our own oil and gas in the short term. Most importantly it means slowing down the pace of green policies to a sustainable rate which fuels transition without driving deindustrialisation and poverty. For a government terrified of our economic and fiscal plight, greenlighting fracking nationwide would instantly improve our economic prospects and energy security. It isn’t too late to follow Norway in part nationalising our oil and gas industry, and putting the profits in a sovereign wealth fund which could itself invest in green technologies and start ups.
Judicial activists
If treasury Mandarins and the Green lobby represent special interest groups that are sabotaging our national interests, we need to look at a third group of wreckers: the British legal establishment. Growing public demands that we get a grip on law and order, purge “wokeness” from our administration, and deport those who come here illegally, or commit crimes, have been frustrated by a judicial class acting outside of its constitutional role. Often referring to international treaties and courts, many British judges have signed up to a cult of human rights, which they treat as superior to British law and the authority of the British state.
Criminals guilty of heinous acts of sexual violence have received light sentences, whilst (with Starmer’s encouragement) police and courts have gone after “speech crimes” with punitive zeal. Instead of punishments being given out proportionate to the wrong done, or the danger of a defendant to the public, wildly disproportionate sentences are handed down pour encourager les autres. This offends against the principle of equal justice, and has rightly led to accusations of “two-tier Keir” imposing political bias on the courts.
But even Labour is waking up to the problem, following the Sentencing Council publishing guidelines that openly proposed giving different treatment on the basis of defendants’ gender, sexuality, religion and race. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood wrote to the Council calling for them to rethink the guidance. She says that she has no powers to direct sentencing policy. But she could have those powers if Parliament wished. The policy of having often arbitrary and politicised sentencing guidelines, outsourced to a Quango, is an artifact of Blairite tinkering in the 90s — it’s not some sort of long-established constitutional norm.
It’s part of an entire synthetic pseudo-constitution dreamed into existence over the past 30 years, from the establishment of the Supreme Court, to the introduction of human rights into British law through the 2010 Equality Act, and membership of the ECHR. It ties the hands of the British government, making it harder to punish criminals, deport illegal migrants, and drive economic development. It has resulted in immense legal perversities in which councils and private companies have been rendered bankrupt in the name of equal pay for unequal work — an idea so mad only a judge could think it sensible.
Restoring confidence in the courts, and strengthening the hand of the British state to pursue popular and needed policies, are but a few pen strokes away. The sovereignty of British courts above the ECHR can be written into law. The Law Lords can be restored, bringing back the ancient alignment of parliament and the courts. Quangos can be ripped up, further restoring the centrality of parliament, and democratic oversight, in the policy arena. The Equality Act can be abolished and replaced with laws more narrowly drafted to protect freedoms to speak, worship and organise, without a generalised troublemakers charter.
