A.G. Hopkins, The Land Where Nothing Works

 

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.

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.

Those who do vote are at the mercy of a flawed electoral system, most obviously First Past the Post. 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 33.7% vote share though that figure  is complemented by riots which did occur linked to Brexit-driven recent immigration designed by the Conservative Home Secretaries, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman.

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.

Hopkins could have made more of that last point. 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 “Ware profiteering” – supplying the troops with tins of infrerior 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, 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, if anyone will have them.