Tag: United Kingdom

Liz Truss is to challenge Rishi Sunak’s government with a so-called alternative budget.

It will come a year after Truss delivered the “mini-budget” which preceded her downfall as prime minister.

The Growth Commission, the body set up by the former prime minister, is set to release a report one week before chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivers his autumn statement on November 22.

It is being called the “Growth Budget” and is expected to propose policy on a range of areas, including, corporation tax, income tax and national insurance.

It is reported to recommend an end to the “tourism tax” by bringing back VAT-free shopping.

Other things on the agenda are public sector spending, productivity as well as regulatory reforms.

At the Conservative Party conference this month, Truss called for tax cuts to “make Britain grow again” as she urged the chancellor to cut corporation tax to at least 19 per cent.

Her fringe event also included speeches from three former cabinet ministers including Priti Patel, Jacob Rees Mogg, and Ranil Jayawardena.

Truss told the fringe event in Manchester she wanted to see the Conservative Party become the “party of business again”, and for the government to stop “taxing and banning things” and instead “build things and make things.”

Economic growth would not be delivered by the Treasury or public spending but by “giving businesses the freedom they need to succeed”, she said. 

“We need to acknowledge the government is too big, the taxes are too high. And then we are spending too much,” she added.

According to reports in the Times and the Telegraph, Doug McWilliams, the co-chairman of The Growth Commission, said: “This report is a detailed challenge to the conventional thinking which has proved unable to rise to the challenge of fixing the UK’s low-growth problem. Our analysis will present clear alternatives for policymakers to consider.”

Shanker Singham, the second co-chairman, added: “One of the things about the Growth Commission budget is that we are looking at both tax and fiscal policy as well as regulatory policy. We believe that the potential GDP per capita growth that could be unleashed as a result of regulatory reform is much larger than many have imagined.”

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Two annual gatherings and two carefully choreographed perorations later, and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer appear to have settled, in their headline pitch at least, on a similar electoral strategy: sell “change”. 

Look no further than the headline pitches, and you might conclude that Britain is suffering an unlikely blight of banal bipartisanship. But Sunak and Starmer’s ostensible rhetorical consensus is belied by the political contortions and sly electioneering that underpin it.

At the most basic level, control over an election campaign’s core divide is the preserve of the government of the day. An opposition party is bound structurally by its responsibilities as not currently the government to major on the need for some form of “change” if it seeks to construct a compelling narrative about why a prime minister and party must be replaced. 

The government, conversely, has more agency. And at the start of the year, it seemed Rishi Sunak intended to face the public in 2024 with a message of “Britain’s on the right track, don’t turn back” — the apparent antithesis of a “change” message deployed to such success by the PM’s Conservative predecessors Margaret Thatcher (1983) and David Cameron (2015). As was widely commented upon at the time, the “five pledges” were not about concentrating Whitehall’s attention, but attracting yours. The PM planned to bore Britain with a record of delivery so undeniable, so straightforward that the public would be forced to reward his party with an unprecedented fifth term. 

But, of course, a “right track” campaign only works if voters agree — and/or can be persuaded that the opposition party presents some kind of risk to progress. Importantly, it also won’t work if things are still getting worse but at a slower rate (see Sunak’s pledge on inflation for example).

The shift in strategy from Sunak’s five pledges, swelled with New Year goodwill and optimism, is in essence an admission that delivery-focussed messaging will not figure well while the headline indicators — on small boats, debt and NHS waiting lists — remain so bearish. 

Now, that Sunak has settled on reimagining himself as some eminent political pathfinder, sets up a fascinating battle with his Labour opponent. Indeed, recent elections have seen opponents largely talk over each other on the campaign trail: in 2015, Cameron insisted his economic plan was progressing swimmingly amid calls for a switch-up from Ed Miliband; in 2017, Theresa May sought to narrow the terms of the debate to Brexit, which Jeremy Corbyn to some success resisted; and, in 2019, Boris Johnson once more spoke of Brexit and the promised lands with lay beyond it — Corbyn could not this time skew the conversation. 

But if this conference season is anything to go by, both parties will agree in 2024 about the need for a pretty radical new departure. So with the terms of the debate set, and the candidates’ pitches largely carved out, how do their arguments fair when considered together? 

It is first worth focussing on Sunak’s platform — which, as the latest leading light of a 13 year political ascendency, is rather more audacious than Starmer’s.

A core assumption of the PM’s new strategy is that the electorate at large does not yet really know their prime minister — and that their view of him can, therefore, be moulded and reconfigured. Sunak is selling his “reinvention” as his most authentic self free finally bursting to the fore; but is the electorate’s understanding of the PM so ingrained that any reinvention will be rendered futile?

Second, Sunak must work to tie Labour and Keir Starmer to the “30 year consensus” he now intends to radically divert from. As he said in Manchester: “[Starmer] is the walking definition of the 30-year political status quo I am here to end”; only then can the PM assume the mantle of “real change”. Linked to this is the assumption that Sunak can in fact outbid Starmer on the politics of “vision”. 

But the drawbacks of Sunak’s new “change” approach, and the thinking that informs it, are equally plain. Indeed, the voting public is not quite as undecided on their view of the prime minister as No 10 strategists would hope. A poll from YouGov, released at the end of last month, showed the prime minister’s net favourability was at -45 — almost exactly the same as the Conservative Party as a whole at -48. Sunak had a net favourability of -9 when he took office in October last year, while the Conservative Party’s favourability has remained pretty constant. Sunak’s steady decline in the eyes of the public, coming over the course of a year, suggests a view of the PM has taken hold: no longer is he viewed favourably relative to his party. 

One also cannot overlook the view that an election in which candidates compete will varying visions of change will typically benefit the non-governing party. As Starmer said in his speech this week in a pointed response to Sunak’s address in Manchester: “They won’t change. They can’t change”. 

It is an attack line that is bolstered by the fact that Sunak’s rhetorical tilt at change is far from underpinned by clear advances on policy. The PM’s vision for change is founded on telling “hard truths” on HS2 and net zero — supplemented by new policies on A level reform and banning smoking for the next generation. It raises another dilemma: Sunak will likely be able to pass legislation, or at least get Westminster and Whitehall moving, on these points long before a general election campaign begins — so how long can the PM maintain this image as a “change candidate” through 2024? If he is able to act on his immediate priorities over the coming months, should we expect another set-piece speech in which identifies further policy areas ripe for change down the line? Does this make the prospect of an early election more likely? Or will pre-election messaging on “change” transpose into a “Britain’s on the right track” ticket down the line — as the PM cites success on the areas he has identified?

What is more, Sunak’s vision of change is not derived from some grand new philosophy of state action (Starmer thinks he has these with his “missions”). The prime minister has, seemingly, plucked some policy areas out of the air and declared his ambition to act on them — is this how government will be conducted until an election is called? And how will Conservative divisions feature in this approach? The prime minister had a relatively free run  in delivering his vision for “change” during his speech last week, as media attention switched from the fringe to the main stage. But with the return of parliament, backbench factions will seek to build on the momentum that they acquired at conference. 

In this way, despite a rhetorical consensus at the top of politics in favour of change, a great deal remains uncertain as British politics enters its endgame in 2024. Indeed, although he may have decided on a headline strategy — and an audacious one at that — Sunak has many more questions to answer. It means, after a tricky conference season, if all that remains to be answered for Keir Starmer is “why Labour?”, then the Labour leader probably has good reason to feel confident.

Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Twitter here.

Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website, providing comprehensive coverage of UK politics. Subscribe to our daily newsletter here.

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As members, lobbyists, reporters and NGOs flocked to Liverpool for Labour conference, there were some worries that Labour could follow the government’s rollback on climate and energy commitments that we had seen celebrated in Manchester the week before.

Instead, by the end of the glitter-strewn leader’s speech, Starmer declared that “climate change is an opportunity we can’t pass up”, and the flagship Green Prosperity Plan (GPP) remains at the heart of Labour’s much-touted “mission government”.

Given the dismayed response of manufacturers — including the auto industry — to Rishi Sunak’s goalpost shifting on climate measures the previous month, this looks like a smart move for keeping business on board. As a man with Sunak’s banking background should surely know, what businesses and investors crave above all else is the long-term stability that allows them to plan.

According to recent polling by the Labour Climate and Environment Forum (LCEF), over three-quarters of global investors said they believed that a clear industrial strategy like the GPP  would offer UK businesses more opportunities than risk, and 73% agreed that government front-loading investment in renewable resources would encourage the same or more investment from the private sector.

Across the conference venues, there were upbeat suggestions of how Starmer’s mission-led government, with its themes of infrastructure, energy, and security at work, might function.

At one LCEF fringe event on farming,  shadow DEFRA Minister Daniel Zeichner committed the party to supporting agriculture practices that help us meet our climate and nature targets –  a contrast with the government’s continued delay on the implementation of the Environmental Land Management Scheme – a replacement for the Common Agricultural Policy that was supposed to have been one of the great benefits of Brexit.

Meanwhile, in her speech from the conference hall, Reeves said that Labour would “make long-term decisions and invest in British industry” including upgrades to the national grid — an announcement that was extremely popular with the business leaders I spoke to in Liverpool. The importance of the £28 billion Green Prosperity Plan as part of her vision for “securonomics” has never been clearer.

At the Green Economy drinks, hosted by LCEF alongside Octopus Energy, IPPR and the Green Alliance, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said ambition on clean green industries is “fully embedded” in the party’s plans.

And in his speech, outlining plans for an energy independence bill, Ed Miliband declared that  “public investment will unleash private investment”, including “£2.5bn of public money that will crowd in tens of billions of private investment” — all geared towards creating sustainable green domestic power sources and encouraging home-grown British energy.

The indications are that rather than operating in fiefdoms, departments in a Labour government will have to show how their activities are contributing to the missions: so, for example, any infrastructure plan for schools renovations will need to come clad in  solar panels, and with a built-in plan for improving pupil’s health through their learning environment. What came through in conversations with the shadow top team was that collegiality is the key — with shadow teams working together to deliver on the five missions set out by Starmer.

All of this is easy to say from opposition, but the buoyancy of those assembled in the bars and cafes of Liverpool in the last week suggested that after years of internal struggle, the Labour party has arrived at a point of coherence.

This is going to prove essential in the years to come. Because, if anything, Labour is understating the scale of the task ahead. A combination of the pandemic and the Conservative soap opera of recent years has meant that 2030 deadlines for biodiversity and climate targets loom large. To describe the task ahead as an “opportunity” is a triumph of optimistic framing but the challenge has galvanised the party as they move into a more serious campaign mode.

But Britain needs this: when even the most conventional institutions, from the RSPB to car manufacturers are crying out for clear and decisive action, it’s no longer radical to think big.

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Jacinda Ardern’s exit from New Zealand’s top job earlier this year was the first big political surprise of 2023. Having made a name for herself as a charismatic, progressive leader, ultimately throwing an unprecedented spotlight on New Zealand’s politics, she quit after five years in the role. Supporters were saddened but understanding of her very human reasons, while cynics pointed to her party’s plummeting support.

Ardern’s half a decade of leadership, later defined by her government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, threw an unprecedented spotlight on New Zealand and its politics.

The country’s new leader, former Minister of Health Chris Hipkins, affectionately known as Chippy, doesn’t have the same pizazz as Ardern but New Zealand’s upcoming election, and crucially its overall politics, has lessons for the UK’s democracy.

The 2020 election saw the Labour party, who previously governed in coalition with populist New Zealand First, secured a majority of seats by winning over half the votes across the country. The likelihood of New Zealand Labour repeating that feat in October is next to none, with a third term far from guaranteed.

Hipkins’ Labour is trailing the centre-right National party while libertarian ACT and the Greens are battling it out for third place. Meanwhile, Te Pāti Māori are hoping to build on the two seats won in 2020 while New Zealand First harbour hopes of a return to parliament.

The election outcome is uncertain but whatever New Zealanders decide, their parliament will broadly reflect how they vote. New Zealanders owe that to their proportional electoral system.

In contrast, British voters see how First Past the Post (FPTP) distorts the link between seats and votes. Tony Blair won a majority of seats on just 35% of the vote in 2005. David Cameron managed the same with 37% ten years later. The system consistently advantages the big two parties while punishing smaller parties: UKIP took just one seat on 13% of the vote in 2015, whilst the SDP-Liberal Alliance secured only 23 seats on 25% of the vote in 1983. The status-quo is ultimately unfair on voters.

Until the 1990s, New Zealand faced a similar mismatch between seats and votes. In fact, two wrong-winner elections in a row – where the National party won the most seats on fewer votes than the Labour party – were arguably key in prompting the country to upgrade its voting system. At the subsequent election in 1984, won by Labour, the deputy prime minister launched a Royal Commission which went on to recommend PR.

Reform didn’t happen overnight. Change didn’t materialize until the 1990s during which voters backed change in not one but two referendums, likely fueled by distrust of the political class and the opportunity for voters to take politics into their own hands.

Unlike plurality systems such as the UK’s First Past The Post System , proportional systems have a mechanism to ensure that seats broadly match votes. This results in fair, equal votes, and, crucially, encourages parties to work together, recognising the reality that over half the population is unlikely to agree on all the major issues, resulting in a grown-up democracy of compromise and respect.

New Zealand’s journey shows this in action. The 2023 election is the tenth to be held under Mixed-Member Proportional Representation. There has of course been some resistance to the new normal – notably the failed 2011 referendum to ditch PR- but overall, voters and politicians have embraced reform and the multi-party system which has grown with it.

New Zealand’s flavour of PR closely resembles Scotland’s and Germany’s. Voters cast two ballots, one for a constituency representative (including Maori electorates) and one for a nation-wide party list. Party list seats are then distributed taking into account the constituencies won per party to produce overall broadly proportional results. It’s not perfect, recognised in recent Electoral Review Panel proposals, but it shows that a country so once committed to the Westminster political model can embrace fair votes and take its people with it.

So, will the UK follow? The road to electoral reform is filled with obstacles but the stars are aligning.

Electoral reform activists are far from complacent but there’s a real sense that 2024 could be the catalyst for change. Polling suggests Labour are heading for government, and despite the leadership not prioritising PR, delegates strongly backed reform. More recently, the party acknowledged the flaws in our voting system in their draft party program, and trade unions in particular are now calling for change.The Liberal Democrats continue to reiterate their calls for reform and the need for a “truly fair democracy” is one of the party’s  five overarching aims in their pre-manifesto.

New Zealand’s journey to Proportional Representation was long and arduous but campaigning efforts paid off and the country embraced reform. Jacinda Adern is no longer in the spotlight but October’s election serves as a reminder that a fairer, more representative democracy is possible. With an election next year, the UK could be on the cusp of a New Zealand moment of its own.

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Keir Starmer’s announcement of a sweeping new plan for addressing the NHS dentistry crisis was welcome news to those of us who have long been campaigning on this issue. Labour has pledged a £111 million-a-year funding package to “rebuild the service” after years of decline, in which some parts of the country turned into effective ‘dental deserts’ with no health service provision at all.

The plans include a fundamental reform of the NHS dentistry contract, which many practitioners believe creates perverse incentives in which high-needs patients are the least welcome. Under the new contract, dentists would be incentivised to work in areas of the greatest need for dental care. Addressing the enormous appointment backlog has also been flagged as a priority, with Labour promising to facilitate an extra 700,000 urgent visits to the dentist.

Of course, with all these measures the Devil will be in the detail – and hopefully the Party conference will offer some clarity. Nevertheless, this is a substantial commitment, and it stands in marked contrast to a government which has been asleep at the wheel on this issue for a long time.

In July, the Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into NHS dentistry published its recommendations for how to save this ailing sector. Speaking for the government, Neil O’Brien promised that “fundamental reform” is the way, however we have yet to see any concrete steps since. The government’s official response to the inquiry’s findings is now three weeks overdue.

System-wide reform has been needed for a long time. Last year, the BBC reported that 9 in 10 dental practices across the UK were not accepting new adult patients for treatment under the NHS, with 8 in 10 were not accepting child patients either. This has created an enormous backlog for dental appointments, with some patients having to wait almost three years for a routine check-up.

These spiralling backlogs have also led to increasingly difficult working conditions in the industry. In May, I wrote about how a significant proportion of dental practitioners have been driven out of the health service altogether, reflected in the 44% increase in dentists leaving the NHS for private practice. In addition, 50.3% of dentists in England have reduced their NHS work since 2019, and 74% intend to reduce their amount in the coming 12 months.

This exodus has only contributed to the backlog, creating an unvirtuous circle in which both practitioners and patients lose. The effects of this on the public can be seen in various “horror stories” related to DIY dentistry, whereby desperate patients have been forced to perform risky operations on their own mouths.

Fundamental reform of the sector is clearly needed; however, Labour is right to flag the importance of preventive measures in the short-term as well.

One of the measures announced was the introduction of supervised toothbrushing in schools, whereby children aged 3-5 years old will be regularly walked through the process by their teachers. This is well-supported by clinical research. Evidence shows that making kids brush daily at school can be effective at preventing tooth decay, and can help to instil positive oral health habits for life.

Indeed, in 2014 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published a set of guidelines recommending supervised brushing in early years’ settings: “[Local authorities should] consider supervised tooth brushing schemes for nurseries in areas where children are at high risk of poor oral health”.

On other preventative tools, the usual mantra of the dental community remains the same: brush regularly, floss, visit the dentist (when possible), and make good dietary choices that won’t harm the teeth. Choosing low-sugar alternatives to sweet snacks can help, as can regularly chewing sugar-free gum – which has additional oral health benefits as well.

A recent study by Frontier Economics estimated that if most people regularly chewed sugar-free gum three times a day, it could prevent 180,000 fillings. This could save the NHS over £50m per year, and help nip in the bud dental issues before they snowball into serious problems requiring intervention.

The bottom-line is that prevention can be an effective, low-cost, and evidence based way to improve oral health outcomes – and it’s encouraging to see Labour giving it so much air time.

Of course, simply promising reform from the opposition pulpit is one thing, and actually delivering on those promises in government is quite another. If Labour wins next year’s election, the Party will face an uphill battle trying to fix a system which has veered so drastically off-course. A good analogy might be trying to turn a tanker around in a hurricane.

Nevertheless, it’s reassuring to see the crisis finally being taken seriously in Westminster, with many parliamentarians starting to realise that simply tinkering around the edges of the problem will not be enough. Until major reforms are made, more and more people will be left stranded in the dental wilderness with no support. Fixing this should be top priority for any incoming government.

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