On Monday, James Kirkup asked what would be happening in British politics if Remain had won. Part of his answer was that, without Brexit, the Conservative Party would have had the opportunity to think about an “economic model that would work better for Leave-voters and their communities”. With the Conservatives “fixating on Brexit”, issues like “industrial policy, regional policy, skills, training, social mobility and the concerns and status of non-graduates” have been “largely ignored”.
It’s hard to argue with that, except on one crucial point: Brexit may be the context within which these issues are ignored, but it is not an adequate excuse. Indeed, Brexit should be an inducement to think deeply about the country we want to become and its place in the world.
As we know, the process of exiting the EU is immensely complicated in itself and further complicated by the short-sighted self-interest of the various Parliamentary factions. But compare Brexit to what Britain faced during the Second World War – or rather don’t, because there is no comparison. Three-quarters of a century ago, we were locked in an existential struggle for civilisation (and I hope that even the most fevered Brexit-obsessive would not claim that today).
Nevertheless, as bombs were still raining down on London, there were enormously consequential efforts being made in Whitehall to prepare for peace. The great public policy thinkers of the time – most famously, William Beveridge – were laying the foundations of the post-war welfare state. In fact, key pieces of legislation, such as Rab Butler’s 1944 Education Act, were passed during the war.
Whatever the mistakes they made, no one can accuse the reformers of that generation of thinking too small. What they authored wasn’t just a series of reforms, but the blueprint of a post-war settlement that lasted for decades.
Their present-day successors are paralysed not by Brexit, but by a political culture in which consequential policy-making is centralised in Downing Street (and the Treasury) and fully subordinated to the ultra-short-term priorities of news management. A monomaniacal focus on ‘the narrative’ leaves little room for anything else, and if reform is pursued by ministers outside the inner circle, it is despite not because of the system – with any momentum lost as soon as the reformers are moved on or out.
This is a state of affairs that long pre-dates Brexit. One only has to look at the record of the five-year-long Coalition government or the 13 years of New Labour before that. Up until 2008, it was all about pumping more money into public services, and afterwards about managing the consequences of the financial crisis. In both phases, the underlying weaknesses of our economic and social structures were largely ignored – as they continue to be.
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