Credit: Alex Livesey / Getty
As our exit from Europe continues to dominate daily politics, other, vitally important areas are being neglected. So what should our politicians’ priorities be once we are beyond Brexit? We asked our contributors to draw up a pledge card for a post-Brexit manifesto.
1. End austerity
Austerity has failed. It must be killed off for good. We have seen over the past decade, just as we saw in the 1930s, that cutting and slashing is the worst possible response to an economic crisis. By sucking activity out of the economy, austerity reduces tax revenues, hits public services and incomes, and prolongs recovery, thereby causing unnecessary pain and suffering to working people.
We need to resist the idea that a government should manage the nation’s finances in the same way that a household manages its budget. On the contrary, when everyone else is retrenching, it is the government’s job to lean against market logic and maintain spending and investment so as to keep the economy buoyant and tax revenues healthy.
Full employment, not inflationary targets, should be the prime goal of economic policy, and we should reinvigorate our much-neglected manufacturing sector by ending the overvaluation of our currency and making our exports more competitive in the international marketplace.
2. Renationalise our railways
We should take our railway system back into public ownership. Privatisation has led to an unreliable, overcrowded, fragmented, overpriced and investment-starved service. It has failed both the passenger and taxpayer.
Since our railways were sold off, government direct subsidy and fares have increased in real terms by 200% and 20% respectively. It is a scandal.
Renationalisation would be a hugely popular measure with the public. Post-Brexit would be the perfect occasion: we will be free from EU laws prohibiting public ownership of railways.
In keeping with our determination to make our air cleaner, we should redirect funds set aside for road-building and the aviation industry to a substantial expansion of our railway network. Our over-reliance on the car must end.
Poor transport links have contributed to economic decline in many of our coastal communities. We should assist regeneration efforts by reconnecting these isolated communities with our public railway system.
HS2 is an unnecessary folly. We should scrap it.
3. Time for an English parliament
We should create an English parliament with real democratic power inside a federal United Kingdom. For too long, the English have – in contrast to the Scots, Welsh and Irish – been denied their national identity and political representation. This lack of empowerment has deepened a sense of alienation and resentment among the English.
Surveys show that the overwhelming majority of people in England identify strongly as English. This is particularly so in areas that voted for Brexit.
Creating a fairer economy will not by itself bring people together. Where we currently have disunity and atomisation throughout our communities – not least because identity politics proliferates – we must foster instead a spirit of civic nationalism that generates a sense of belonging, patriotism and shared citizenship between all of our people.
So it’s time we again recognised England as a legitimate political and cultural entity in its own right – and gave the English their own parliament.
4. Actually wage the ‘war on drugs’
The scourge of drugs and our failure to tackle it has caused widespread devastation. The degree to which it has afflicted our communities – through crime and family breakdown – is inestimable. Our indulgence of illegal drug use has also contributed to the misery and carnage in supply countries such as Colombia and Mexico.
There is no ‘war on drugs’ in the UK; it is a myth. Our authorities routinely ignore illegal drug taking. We have decriminalisation in all but name.
The ‘turn a blind eye’ approach has plainly failed. Instead, we should mirror the approach of Japan – a free, law-governed and deeply civilised society – which enforces its drugs laws rigorously and, as a consequence, sees much lower usage. Because deterrence works, Japan’s prisons aren’t packed with illegal drugs users.
Cannabis, the use of which is becoming increasingly correlated with mental illness in scientific studies, should remain illegal.
5. Get a grip on immigration
Our failure regarding immigration has reinforced the disconnect that has emerged between the political establishment and the majority of voters over recent years. We have a proud tradition of welcoming new arrivals to our shores. The vast majority of Britons are decent and tolerant; they simply ask for proper control of the system.
Yet rapid and large-scale immigration into hard-pressed communities has violated the sense of place and belonging felt by many of our citizens. And by facilitating the transfer of workers from low to high-wage economies, free movement laws have proved to be a boss’s dream, as they drive down labour costs.
Migrants are, of course, not to blame personally. But all governments should seek to regulate the labour supply – which is, after all, just another market dynamic – so as to secure the best outcome for workers.
We should celebrate immigration, but we must also get a firmer grip on the system and ensure that future numbers are modest and manageable.
Click here to compare Paul Embery’s pledge card to the others in our Beyond Brexit series.
Paul Embery is a firefighter, trade union activist, pro-Brexit campaigner and ‘Blue Labour’ thinker
PaulEmbery 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThese delusional predictions are down to a simple fact: journalists are – for the most part – now active campaigners and not reporters. Their mission is to define a “narrative” and attempt to make that normal so it gradually becomes reality. Reporting things as they are died in the late 1980s.
Back to the core of the article. It would be interesting to know if there is some research about the proportion of people who are actively voting for a party (or set of beliefs) versus those who are voting against a party (or set of beliefs). My suspicion is that we have drifted into a world where the voting against approach has become increasingly important. Indeed, I would suggest that Boris Johnson in 2019 was a huge beneficiary from this. Also, that the recent increase in current Labour polls is down to the same reason. And how else to explain the Liberal Democrat by-election win in Chesham where their candidate campaigned against HS2 (which the Lib Dems as a party support and is now irreversible in the Chilterns (the tunnel is largely built) ?
Given that voting against behaviour is probably inherently more volatile than voting for, it is no suprise that politics is so fluid in Europe.
To be really successful, I suspect you need to be able to appeal to both voting for and voting against groups. It’s arguable that both Thatcher and Blair were able to do this. Boris Johnson seems to have lost connection with much of his voting for support. Keir Starmer looks like he has a weak appeal to both groups.
I’ve always regarded elections as merely an opportunity to vote for the least worst option. After all, no one gets the government they want, not even party leaders since manifestos are inevitably compromises.
“It would be interesting to know if there is some research about the proportion of people who are actively voting for a party”
That’s a really good point. I’ve tried to do some research on the collapse of the Lib Dem vote after the coalition government. Lord Ashcroft’s polling found that many Lib Dems central identity wasn’t that they were Lib Dems but that they weren’t Labour or Tories. They derived a certain satisfaction from been able to say “don’t blame me , I voted Lib Dem” once in power, they abandoned the party in disgust when forced to implicate themselves in hard choices of government. I suspect we will see the Green Party increasingly playing this role going forward. Which will actually probably play into the Tories hands, as left of centre voters who don’t want see the consequences of a Labour-SNP-Lib Dem government, chose it as an opt out.
Eisenhower set the trend for post war politics, with his offer a chicken in the fridge and 2 cars on the drive for every American (or something like that). The point is, it was a ‘social contract’ that made sense: vote for us and things’ll get better for you. And until about the Reagan-Thatcher era, that was a credible proposition. But now, whether its because of their own ideas or incompetence or market forces, political ‘elites’ simply don’t deliver for ordinary people. Most have experienced 25 years of stagnant wages, the benefits of mass immigration, collapsing public services, and a handful of people getting rich in a way unimaginable 40 odd years ago. So yes, they are going to give the ‘populists’ a try. Why not, when all the ‘elite’ can offer is rubbish that no-one wants and seems not to benefit the plain man.
Its amusing to see the left scratching their heads or reacting with hysterical anger and/or despair at the ground being gained across the western world by right leaning populists.
What they don’t seem to realise (or simply cant bring themselves to accept) is the simple fact that if one makes strenuous, continous efforts to shift the overton window, the people who politically speaking stay still become opponents.
Canada, Australia and NZ seem to buck the trend, and the US in part, if the ability to rig an election counts.
The Australian Labor party had a poor result in the recent election, that they managed to form a government is down to the rise of independents under their preferential voting system. In New Zealand Labour support has collapsed despite the continuing (and thoroughly undeserved) popularity of their leader.
Things are pretty bad here (NZ) with every social and economic metric getting worse and an ongoing divisive, and deeply unpopular, racial separatist agenda being forced on the people. Labour are toast, unfortunately the next election is over a year away.
I can’t comment on Canada.
I’m willing to wager that Labour will win the next election in NZ. While Arderns popularity was never going to stay at the high levels she enjoyed at the start of her tenure, especially during a worldwide recession, the opposition are absolutely clueless.
Tax cuts for top earners (who already pay a much lower rate of income tax than most first world countries) as well as tax cuts for landlords and property speculators during a housing crisis aren’t likely to win them the working class votes they need to attract to win the next election. An austerity drive and wage freezes when more people are experiencing a cost of living crisis will be an electoral disaster
I attended the Harvard University Law School graduation ceremonies last month. Ardern was the guest keynote speaker, and her speech was articulate and intelligent, which may or may not match her governing style.
I suspect Canada may just be behind the curve a little. There seems to be increasing unrest in terms of the Liberals approach. We’ve not been lucky in our Conservative Party leaders of late which also has an impact.
I don’t think Biden would have won had Trump been a little more careful. I know a few people who voted for Biden, without really wanting to, their main worry with Trump was that he was unstable.
Wokeness isn’t popular in Canada — just as everywhere else — but centre/centre-left policies remain popular with a majority of Canadians.
Britain’s conservative government is not centre left, it is draconian woke extreme left
Absolutely agreed, but for whom do we now vote
“draconian woke extreme left”???
What a bunch of hooey.
Only this week the Washington Post ran an article on the resurgence of the left after various elections in South America leaving the USA on the sidelines. It seems a bit desperate given the tumultuous nature of South American politics to be looking there for leadership of the left.