I
wanted this to be a good book and admired the author’s conscientious work in
putting together an economic and political history of Britain from 1945. But I
was disappointed by a timidity about confronting what might be called the
present state of the Disunited Kingdom and what if anything can be done about
it. I leave Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to their own devices since a majority of voters there have detached themselves at least emotionally from the Kingdom. So I am writing about England.
There
are people who think that the Kingdom is a democracy but I’m not one of them.
It’s true that it is a country which offers some opportunities for democracy
but they are not now taken up; many people don’t vote in national elections
(turnout in 2024: 60%) and most people don’t vote in local elections where 40%
is reckoned a good turnout. More importantly, the predominance of entirely understandable Us and Them
thinking means that when they vote most voters are probably not thinking as
citizens of a republic who are supposed to ask themselves the question, What’s
best for my country / community? They are quite often and maybe mostly
thinking, What’s in it for me? Opportunistic political parties are only too ready to supply
answers to that question: Triple Lock, Winter Fuel, Bus Passes. Old people vote. The Greens will hope to get young people to vote by offering alternative freebies. That isn't what democracy is supposed to be about. The original theorists of democracy linked it to taking an informed view and a long view.
Those who do vote are at the mercy of a flawed electoral system. In 1951, the then Labour government called a fresh General Election just twenty months after the previous one, aiming to increase its small House of Commons majority. On an 83% turnout it took 49% of the vote, one percent more than the Conservatives and in numerical terms gained 230 000 more votes than the Conservatives. Labour lost. The Conservatives took power with 321 seats in the Commons against 295 for Labour. No one rioted. No one rioted when Labour took power in 2024 with a huge majority of seats on a 33.7% vote share though that figure is complemented by riots which did occur linked to recent immigration, some irregular but mostly as more or less indentured labour under schemes designed by Conservative Home Secretaries, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, to replace free movement workers from the EU who were obliged to leave after the Brexit vote..
Then
there is the unelected buy-your-seat House of Lords though with sixteen seats
still reserved for representatives of the failed state church; the monarchy or
rather the dysfunctional but very wealthy Royal Family which hands out the
feudal titles which Establishment politicians love (Sir Jacob …, Sir Kier…, Sir
Sadiq); and the National Debt which is the killer. (By the way, there are countries which don't award the Titles which help sustain Them and Us, our near neighbour Ireland a good example).
Hopkins
could have made more of the problem of the National Debt. British governments are vulnerable to
the bond markets because they are so indebted. They are like home owners with
very large mortgages and vulnerable to increases in the interest rates attached
to their loans, increases which may force them to reduce other expenditures or
even to sell up. How big is the National Debt? This is the current AI answer
which I have double checked manually though without recourse to Zack Polanski’s
answer:
The
UK's public sector net debt is currently [April 2026] approximately
£2.91 trillion, which is equivalent to about 93.8% of the country's annual
Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This amounts to roughly £102,000 of debt for
every household in the UK.
There
are also, as I understand it, off balance sheet liabilities but I’ll settle for
the £2.91 trillion and ask you the question, Would you lend money to the
British government? And what rate of interest would you require to compensate
both for price inflation and the risk of default? The AI answer is this: interest rate 4.81%
which entails that the cost of servicing existing debt absorbs roughly 8.3% of
annual government spending.
So
if interest rates go up then something has to give elsewhere or taxes have to
increase. It’s really quite simple. So how do you feel about paying off the
National Debt? Imagine yourself a householder with £100 000 of debt on top of
your mortgage? What are you up for? £10 000 a year? £1 000 a year?
There
is a very important feature of the debt which needs to be foregrounded. It does
not arise from productive investments (things like roads, railways, cheap
energy projects) which in the long term will boost Gross Domestic Product and
in that way automatically generate additional tax revenues which can go towards
paying off the original debt. Nope. It arises from spending on
non-investment items such as the 2008 financial crisis; Brexit; military adventures; COVID – the
last named an absolute bonanza for criminals who made a killing out of
providing protective equipment often sub-standard and unusable. (The obvious
analogy is with what used to be called “War profiteering” – supplying the
troops with tins of inferior corned beef and such like). On top of those identifiable
sources there has to be added general government fecklessness. Parliament has a
Public Accounts Committee which routinely reports on how money has been
completely wasted though it does not get down to the small detail of things
like the State Opening of Parliament and the endless and very costly public
enquiries from which Lessons Will Be Learnt but aren’t. Horizon scandal? Still
not settled. Grenfell fire? Still no prosecutions, nine years on. The Law, like
Parliament itself, moves at a glacial pace. MPs spend their time marching
through two-hundred year old Lobbies unlike members of other parliaments who sit in semi-circular
chambers and push buttons on desk consoles.
The
present scenario looks like this: Growth in GDP has stalled as has the at least as important growth in productivity (output per head), employment has
stalled, stay-at-home-and-play-with-your-phone-benefits can be had for the
asking, new housing continues not to be built, infrastructure repair and
replacement schedules have simply been abandoned (roads and pavements the
obvious example; Hopkins uses them the beginning of his book). Add a government
with a large disunited majority and a stiff and visionless leader whose natural
habitat is the details of the Law and it seems to me that we are in deep
trouble. And if the Midlands and North and the unfathomable depths of East
Anglia get their way and give us Mr Farage on top of the Brexit they have already secured for themselves then the only way out for young people will
be through the door of emigration.
