Main Edition
US
FR
August 27, 2024 - 3:45pm
Barely two months after its landslide victory, the new government’s honeymoon is well and truly over. After the summer strife and before this winter’s discontent, Labour’s lack of bold political vision and transformative policies — which was all too visible during years in Opposition and the general election campaign — has been further exposed by events which have a habit of haunting every party newly in power.
Pinning the “rot of riots” on “14 years of Tory failure” and on the “snake oil of populism”, as the Prime Minister did in his Downing Street garden speech this morning, won’t cut it with people. The public has a sense that the roots of our national woes go much deeper — more than 40 years of a broken economic and social settlement which we owe to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, as well as their heirs Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Rishi Sunak.
The mantra “there is no alternative” has produced decades of rampant economic and social individualism dressed up as progress, when in reality we have gained individual freedoms yet lost stability and common solidarity. Britain’s social fabric is unravelling as a result of the individualist creed shared by the Tories and Labour that has left us as a country freer yet lonelier. Today, the UK is at once more diverse and more fragmented, as the riots revealed.
By pinning the blame on populism today, Keir Starmer told at best half the story of why things have in fact got a lot worse. The other half is the dominant centrist ultra-liberalism of the last half-century, and the economic and social disruption wrought by the resulting policies. Privatising public utilities such as water, energy and railways left Britons with extortionate bills and depleted services. Austerity-induced cuts destroyed much of local government and other vital public services. The relentless financialisation of Britain has accelerated the decline of industry and manufacturing and made us over-reliant on exporting globally tradable services in an age of trade wars and rising protectionism.
Meanwhile, the benefits of mass immigration in terms of demography, talent and cultural enrichment have accrued disproportionately to the affluent middle classes while putting pressure on already underfunded public services and exacerbating the dramatic shortage of affordable housing, all of which hits the poorest hardest. It is this class which is most likely to demand limits on the volume of inward economic migration, not to mention tackling illegal immigration.
All this happened on the centrist watch of New Labour and Conservative governments, and their joint failure has produced a backlash against grievances which they wrongly dismiss as populism. This sort of sneering only serves to discredit mainstream politics and erode trust in politicians which the Prime Minister rightly wants to restore.
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.
SubscribeYet another example of the amnesia that allows commentators to ignore the impact of Covid on the Johnson government.
Boris might well have delivered his vision if the pandemic had not intervened.
Of course he wouldn’t. It was all hot air and predictable.
Buyers remorse sometimes v stubborn.
It would also have helped if he hadn’t been captured by Carrie and her econutcase friends and they deranged agenda.
With the State bigger than ever (outside of war), and taxes higher than ever, if public services are crumbling, how did they, apparently, not crumble in the past when far less was spent on them. Seemingly, the higher the spend, the more they crumble.
Maybe there are more relevant factors at play than just throwing more money at anything that moves. Perhaps a job for politicians to ponder.
My first thought was ‘was Adrian there in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s?
It is fairly obvious that Adrian comes from a left of centre world view and has a tendency to lump free market economics with the increasing state spending of the Brown years after 1998.
I do not believe that state ownership delivers better outcomes for public utilities. State run companies are without exception sclerotic, employee centric, resistant to change and inefficient. Criticism of today’s ‘private’ utilities is often the consequence of interference by the State controlled regulator and a reluctance to accept the reality of investment needs and operating cost although it is fair to criticise the obscene financial gearing which was allowed by the Regulators in many sectors. But in a real free market those companies would have failed and the assets redistributed to more efficient players.
To suggest that the Blair and post Blair years have been a period of public sector austerity is to fly in the face of the real growth in the proportion of state spending to GDP and the unfunded investment in state infrastructure through PFI.
If Neo-liberalism is defined as free market economics I would contest that Neo-liberalism ended in 1994. To call any of Tony Blair’s governments Neo-liberal flies in the face of reality with increasing public sector expenditure, increasing judicial oversight, increasing state regulation and the increasing influence of supranational unelected bodies.
In truth, we are seeing Adrian’s vision being attempted in today’s Britain and it is an unmitigated failure as incompetent politicians, public sector servants and quangos preside over a failed neo-keynesian project started in 1997.
I see the problem very differently. I consider it stems from the Blair, Brown government massaging unemployment by ramping up the public sector payroll and creating public sector jobs that don’t need to be done. The Guardian was full of adverts for “Supporting People Workers” and “Cycling Engagement Officer” or “Energy Efficiency Officers”. No one ever asked what exactly did such jobs entail and how they created value? All the millions employed in such make work jobs have to justify their jobs. They can only do so by creating regulations and projects that soak up time and money whilst imposing huge costs on everyone else.
The UK public sector is now like a cancer. It takes from the body and grows into to obstruct the body until it kills itself.
“Populism” is just one item on a rather long list of things the PM doesn’t quite get.
“Faced with rage and suffering and despair, politics has to provide a national story of sacrifice and service, grief and hope, loss and gain. How the new government articulates these conflicting forces will determine not just its political fate, but also the UK’s destiny for decades to come.”- Empty rhetoric rather than anything concrete.
All that is proposed is something socially moderate and economically radical – whatever that means. No discussion regarding the shackles of net zero or a proposal regarding the process of reducing excessive immigration that the author recognises as a problem.
Is Labour likely to drop DEI and intersectionality and the other shibboleths of the progressives that divide rather than unite? Improbable.
As for economically radical we know what motivates productivity and innovation and that is less red tape and more incentive. This is probably not radical enough for the author who is against individual endeavour rather than some collective endeavour that has proved ineffective in the past.
I agree. But there is also a window for Labour to embrace policy issues that DO have popular appeal: tackling inequality by taking a hard look at how digital transition is changing the labour share of income.
Even the green policies could be sold to a mass audience, if recast as a genuine battle of the people against the rich. Such as: No new climate policies until the private jet brigade have paid their fair share.
Good luck trying to fight technological advance. That’s proved beyond the scope of the most competent politians of the past. And we’re not exactly looking at the A team here.
Still, the TUC seem to think they can legislate against AI eroding jobs in the “creative industries”. It seems that the painful learning exercise of the 70s and 80s needs to be repeated.
My money’s on ever more displacement activity and performative politics.
It’s not necessary to fight the technology in order to stop the income-inequality producing effects of the same.
One policy solution (I’m not advocating this, but it is an idea) is a one-off ‘nationalisation’ of the underlying capital. Basically, you take ownership of the tech, nationalize it, and distribute ownership shares based on citizenship.
a genuine battle of the people against the rich.
The problem in Britain is not that people get rich – if you want everyone to be rich you have to allow some to become very rich – but that the wrong people get rich. How many of the millionaires in your circle of acquaintances got that way by creating value and how many by sitting in a house and watching the price go up or thanks to an unfunded final salary public sector pension?
Maybe more ‘how’ they get rich HB?
Here’s some facts about UK capitalism – we have only one software company and one electronics company in the respective global top 100s; one medical device maker in the top 50.; no companies at all in the top 25 listed global biotech firms; just one company in the top 24 scientific and instrument list. If you count the chip designer Arm, now quoted in New York, as British (a stretch), it is our only representative in the semiconductor top 100. We do have two pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca and GSK, in the top 50 and five firms in the top 100 chemical companies. But any relief should be qualified: Britain has only eight pure technology businesses quoted on the London stock exchange worth more than £1billion. For an allegedly advanced economy this is pitiful – the measure of the Tory legacy.
Despite the lauded ‘City’ UK companies are starved of investment and hence sell shares to raise capital. That then results in takeover and transfer away from UK. We’ve exchanged on this before but it’s why we have to make our Pension industry work differently in how it invests.
Our failure to compete in any of these areas is a direct consequence of one thing and one thing only: our membership of the European Union.
Can you name any iconic French, German or Italian business that is less than fifty years old? No, you can’t. They have the same problems of over-regulation we do.
I’ve spent more than thirty years working in business, not just in the UK, but Europe and the US as well. By your own admission you spent your life working for the government. I know a lot more about this than you do.
So the outflow stopped with Brexit? I think not. And did investment improve post Brexit? I think not.
Stop being so chippy too, esp when we were having half sensible exchange.
As regards working for the Govt, interestingly RN loyalty is to the Crown as it is for all Armed services. Perhaps for some the same thing.
I think you’ll find that most of the time since Brexit foreign investment in the UK has been the highest in Europe.
I’m not being chippy. If you had any personal experience relevant to these issues you would understand why Europe is in steep economic decline relative to the rest of the developed world and therefore why leaving the EU was the right thing to do for the long term.
Investment from outside i.e the buying of shares in UK companies offered because same companies can’t raise capital here that’s needed and hence have to share a potential crown jewel to someone else.
Why you going on about EU/Europe? We’ve not been in it for 4yrs and were signalling we were out for some before that. I fear you don’t want to confront the problem of investment wasn’t an EU issue. Its the way we have capitalism structured in the UK and that’s always been in our gift to resolve.
Why you going on about EU/Europe?
Come on, you’re taking the p1ss, aren’t you? You never stop whining about Brexit. I’m simply trying to explain to you why it’s not the terrible thing you’ve been told to think it is.
Economics 101:
If you want to have a prosperous economy you need to have a situation where small ones can grow to become big ones. We don’t have that because the only thing that anyone is interested in investing in (thanks to New Labour) is artificially inflated house prices.
Deflection HB. Now you’d think with your expensive US Graduate background you’d be able to discuss the nature of the investment challenge in the UK and why we struggle to hold onto potential world class companies without continuously going back 14yrs, blaming migrants or the EU in a grossly over-simplistic manner. Let’s try again – what would you do to get these companies to stay and grow in the UK?
what would you do to get these companies to stay and grow in the UK?
Simple. De-regulate and stop taxing productive activity in order to buy votes from baby-boomers like you. Nothin’ to it, really.
Hugh, you are a pompus git. All one needs do is read your witterings to discern that you dont know much at all.
Wow, that’s a powerful and compelling argument! Well done! At least I can spell FFS.
The problem for pension companies is a regulatory one. Due to Capital Adequacy rules they are effectively forced in holding almost exclusively fixed income portfolios. To incentivise them to hold UK equities these rules need to be relaxed.
There is certainly something in needing to change some rules IW, and maybe also get alot of the smaller funds to consolidate. The key thing is we have ponder and make changes that get more of this money invested in the UK.
Consolidation of smaller finds is a bad idea as it’s often the smaller funds which are willing to take a greater risk (they’re often sub funds of bigger institutional funds as part of a fully blended portfolio.)
I was global head of sales and marketing for an institutional investment consultancy specialising in both the Lloyds and London Markets and Pension sectors.
The regulatory constraints imposed of the investment strategies of insurers and pension fund managers by a regulator who was shackled to an EU regulatory regime which was designed to force Investment into “fixed income” ie government issued debt and global corporate issued debt through skewed “capital adequacy” requirements wasn’t to protect those whose retirement or ltc insurance relied on security of the investment.
The reason why we’re short of globally leading technology companies is we don’t have (or not enough of) the skills. We overproduce humanities graduates, and underproduce science and engineering graduates. This is not just the Tory legacy, in fact it’s not just the legacy of both parties, its a national level of disrespect or even contempt for STEM. Apparently (in the UK this is), 70% of people in finance have a humanities degree; it used to be the case (maybe still is) that 50% of people in IT have a humanities degree. Has that last statistic got nothing to do with the Horizon fiasco?
Our political class, civil service and media are all dominated by non-scientists. Even worse, in Britain almost uniquely, we seem to think that managers can just jump from one industrial sector to another without any domain knowledge. Again anything to do with Horizon?
There’s also a hell of a lot of fund managers and analysts with advanced degrees (masters and PhD) in STEM subjects such as theoretical physics, mathematics, engineering of various disciplines, etc. Purely and simply that’s where the money is. They’re recruited by the big financial institutions during their final year if undergrads. The rest of industry simply cannot compete with the salaries and benefits.
I’m not condoning it but until it can be addressed I can’t see things changing any time soon.
I think something in that too ML. Think Sichuan province in China had something like 30k engineering graduates last year.
IW makes the point that we do train more but they find it easier to make money in Finance. There’s alot of high calibre mathematicians for example trading in FX. So some of this is about the investment flowing to create more world class companies and generate the additional income opportunities.
But I concur we need a rebalance in University and vocational training too. That said we shouldn’t lose sight of the power of our international language and how that helps us in the Arts and Culture service sector. We generate significant revenues through these domains too.
I think you and others have misunderstood my point. I don’t necessarily support these policies, but I think that this is a potential path for Labour to reclaim its credibility in the eyes of ‘the people’.
Sounds like populism to me 🙂
HB: they are not rich, they are well off. You dont seem to understand the difference between the two. wages or a good pension will never make you rich, profits make people rich. Its profits that count.
You’re missing the point on green policies. It’s precisely the rich who can afford the latest electric SUV for instance, while the plumber next door in his 15 year old van can’t afford to a new vehicle. What’s the betting that if and when electric planes take off (!), the first customers will be the private jet market, so that they can stick their green credentials in our faces.
Except the etire “climate policy” industry is a parasitic scam that never has and never will mitigate, much less manage, the climate.
It’s already doubling down on them. The latest dictat issued to educationalists and teachers in training is to ensure they’re fully versed in what’s seen as “the problem of whiteness”.
It wasn’t unexpected that this would happen, but tackling the so-called “problem of whiteness” is precisely why there was rioting on the streets. The peace is very uneasy; the message coming from the Rose Garden is full of thorns and barbs. The peace won’t last.
Ah yes. The problem of whiteness. Not even allowed to black up to solve the issue.
Any link LL for that dictat, so we can check it out?
It’s been widely reported. Not difficult to find.
Look through any NGO/Quango mission statement, there will be a section displaying their commitment to DEI with all the CRT buzzwords.
Standard left wing culture war twaddle.
Less Red tape? Err and the proponents of Populism then went for Brexit and increased it.
Your obsession with Brexit is a class thing. Get over it.
Quite a lot of inconsequential verbiage here, but little or no understanding of the real issues: too much government, too much centralisation, too much regulation, too many universities, too many quangos, a parasitic middle class fed on artificially inflated house prices, the short term benefits of mass immigration and other kinds of government largesse instead of the fruits of its own efforts …
Too many freeloaders.
Labour won’t fix any of this anymore than the Tories did.
Fix it ? No chance. These people *are the freeloaders* !
Exactly.
Expecting parasites like “human rights lawyer” to solve uk problems is naive.
My prediction is that Labour would just flood country with more low IQ savages and give votes to non citizens and 16 years old.
Realistically it would take people like Franco or Pinochet to clear left out of this country.
I do fear that that is where we are heading.
Reaching for the word “populism” as an explanation for the country’s problems indicates that the government has either already capitulated before those problems and is just looking for a way to shift blame for what it has to do next or it is showing that it doesn’t understand those problems and therefore has no idea of what solutions they need.
“Populism” and “progressive” are two words that instantly grind my gears when I hear them. I’d love to pour 10 tons of concrete over them and then sink them somewhere in the Atlantic.
Totally agree with you on the word ‘populism’. It is used to mean anything which disagrees with the government of the time. Last week on UnHerd I asked for a definition and the best one offered was, “The opposite of elitism.”
There is no doubt that we are ruled by a self-seeking élite who feather their own nests. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people carry on their lives with no interest in politics. So, when Brexit came along there was a ‘populist’ rebellion against the élite, who didn’t like it one bit – no more cushy élite jobs in Europe. Of course, the élite will not rest until Brexit is fixed. So, what is the definition of ‘Democracy’?
The real elite – the v Rich, were entirely unaffected by Brexit. You hit the wrong target.
Your élite, the very rich, do not have any effect on us – except perhaps in the richer parts of London.
This ‘v Rich’ thing is a deflection. The problem is not that people get rich, but that the wrong people get rich. Usually by milking the state. How many of the millionaires in your street got that way by creating value of some kind? None, probably.
Think of the elephant herd on the room: climate policies.
One could try to be subversive and routinely bring qualifiers into the discourse: “Democratic populism”, “Authoritarian progressives”
Does depend a bit how one defines ‘populism’. A benign use might be appealing to ordinary people with policies they’d welcome. Not much wrong with that of course – on assumption any slogan backed up with some practical idea on implementation.
A more malign variant though separates ‘ordinary people’ from some ‘secret, manipulative elite’. Now this is where it’s much more dangerous and wrong. It’s the old ‘Protocols of the elders of Zion’ claptrap rehashed and remember how that got used.
There is undoubtedly a v rich cohort whom have left behind many others in the West. It can suit them that crude populism throws us off the scent of how neo-liberal economics has really benefitted a v small number and driven greatly inequality without the promised trickle down
You have been reading too much spy literature. The élite is that élite which makes government policy. Sure, very rich people can have an impact but they don’t actually make the policy. I am talking about those people who have a political theory, an idea of equality where everyone is equal – excepting, of course, the theorists themselves who can justify anything.
An example of this comes with so-called environmental policy. The élite, the Mayor of London, the senior politicians, can travel in big chauffeur-driven cars with police escorts, in private jets to conferences – they can justify anything because they see themselves as too important to follow the rules. Even when Greta did her famous boat trip to the USA, her entourage followed by private jet.
These people are so corrupt that they bend every rule. The very rich don’t even have the rules to bend.
That’s all a bit adolescent CW if you don’t mind me saying. But it also has a rather malign undercurrent – ‘these people’. So undefined only you can decide. It’s almost Maoist/Cultural revolution thematic.
As regards v Rich, who do you think funds Tufton st?
‘Ordinary people’ is a bit of a giveaway. It signifies a world view based on the proposition “we’re better than them”. That’s a delusion.
Wikipedia and Oxford Dictionary definition HB, not my own.
If not oxymoronic, then definitely unself-aware….
Blaming “populism” can be compared in a different situation with “the two state solution”. It translates as “we have no understanding of what is going on and even less idea of a solution”.
“Privatising public utilities such as water, energy and railways left Britons with extortionate bills and depleted services.” Well those public utilities were not privatised in Ireland and the Irish have been left with extortionate bills – paid via a combination of high consumer charges and high personal taxes – and depleted services. If they had not been privatised the cost of investing in these utilities would have on public debt – already nearly 100% of GDP – rather than on the privatised utilities’ balance sheets. There are no easy answers without economic growth, and Professor Pabst seems to have no more idea how to achieve that than does Sir Keir Starmer. It is hard to see how a country where the government spends close to 50% of national output, and heavily regulates the rest, is experiencing “rampant economic and social individualism”.
I agree nationalised industries were starved of investment and always will be as cash strapped governments need it for current usage
Where the utilities are a natural monopoly (water, railways being the two biggest examples) they should be nationalised without a doubt. Sectors such as telecoms and energy have generally been highly effective privatisations (particularly telecoms.)
The problem with the energy market was not down to privatisation per se (the competition within the retail market definitely did keep consumer prices down) but the failure to “nationalise” in some form the production and wholesale market where competition has an effect on profits but little or no effect on wholesale prices which are driven by global demand and price manipulation by the broker market and hence leaves the retail suppliers with a very limited room to manouver when external events cause wholesale prices to either rise significantly or fluctuate wildly.
Japan does quite well with privatized train systems. And private underground systems competing out of the same stations.
If you wish to get from a to b at a certain time do you have a choice of train operator depending on the offered fare?
Genuine question as I have no experience of their system.
Labour is for public sector, (particularly middle class), workers. For Union influence. For Muslim votes. For the EU. For extreme greed nuttery.
It is against private enterprise, private money ( unless it’s theirs – witness Starmer’s unique pension provisions), against the working class, black or white, against Christianity, against Judaism, against the UK.
There are some deeply malevolent people in government now. Including Starmer.
Prof. Pabst is arguing from a very specific point of view. He believes in communitarianism. It is a real thing, and not to be confused with communism.
He is trying to establish a dominant narrative here, whereby we come to see the problems of our time in a specific way, and which points the way to a communitarian solution. Judging from the comments so far, he has not succeeded.
Obviously Sir Keir — a close friend of Brave Sir Robin — is Clue Less.
But then so is Herr Professor von Kent: “bold political vision and transformative policies,” my eye.
Clueless? Hmm how’s he ended up in power then after Labour’s crushing defeat in 2019? I suspect he’s slightly smarter than you like.
how’s he ended up in power then
By lying through his teeth?
Tory own goals ?
Some of this was spot on as regardless look-back analysis, but Author trying too hard to pin it all on what he called the ‘…reign of ultra-liberal centrism’. I doubt those exposed to 10+ years of Austerity think it was quite that. Nor will he find a Centrist core that thought Brexit a jolly good idea.
In working so hard to target a vague ‘centrist’ philosophy the Author never once mentions the Left. Intriguing. The problem is you can’t hit both Left and Centrist without appearing all over the place. And the Right just made a proper hash of things so you can’t go there either. He hides his own solutions by offering critique but no potential prospectus. Thus gives good opportunity for some to nod along whilst failing to zero in on practical things we must do differently that aren’t mere slogans.
That said agree that what Starmer is lacking is a national narrative. One senses he’s just naturally less performative on this sort of thing. He’s a practical man focused on driving practical solutions. But national leadership will require more and we’ll see how he finds his feet over next difficult months to come.
As soon as I read a commentator refer to the decade from 2010 as an era of austerity, despite government spending going up in real terms every year, I know the author has no grip on reality.
Colour me completely unsurprised to find that this author is a professor of politics.
Make that two of us. Austerity is what our parents’ generation suffered after WWII, including food and fuel rationing. A few minor cuts to governmental departmental budgets… .don’t make me laugh.
Populism: Political views I have always despised but attract wide democratic support and are most eloquently advocated by the type of public figures I have always abhorred.
Lol, a lot of ich irony to enjoy on so many levels. Thank you!
An observation rather than a criticism, but I wish professors of politics didn’t write like professors of politics: simpler language would be more communicative, if communication is the aim.
Check those assumptions, sir!
Anyone would think from this tired leftist analysis that the UK was some sort of “night watchman” state with low taxes. This is far from the case. Angela Merkel once said that 50% of the world’s social welfare spending was in Europe, and that probably meant Western Europe.
On the other hand, the rot could be the result of a ‘cradle to the grave’ welfare state morphing inexorably into an infantilising dependency culture, with its attendant rampant growth of ever more fanciful ‘rights’ and abandonment of responsibilities. But I guess that such thoughts might not be within the mental scope of a left wing professor of politics.
Ah… Starmer, time for some more Port for the guns, and a bit of Stilton.. last drive in 30 minutes…. Ah Starmer… Hounds are due any second, time for another round of Port before The Master calls the hounds in….Ah Starmer….