‘Sir Keir Starmer’s comment that his government needs to go “further and faster” in delivering change reminds me of a driver going fast because his car is running out of fuel.’

David Emms, whose letter to The Times was published on 3rd May

© Times Newspapers

The anchors of stability which have kept the world in balance over the past eighty years are fast slipping away: whether in politics, economics or culture. That's not to say that they have provided a firm basis for building our future — wars, financial crises and social breakdown have all featured strongly in the decades since the end of the Second World War.

But, from a global perspective, the combination of Trump's shock and awe tactics, excess debt and significant social change as a result of migration and technology are certainly moving us swiftly on from old certainties. The recent elections in England on 1st May show that the same challenges are very much evident in the United Kingdom, with both established parties, Conservative and Labour, being literally taken to the cleaners by the rise in support for Nigel Farage’s Reform party.

It's clear that the old political reasoning providing a choice between socialism and the self-interested ‘natural party of government’ (as we used to describe the Conservatives) is no longer acceptable. As Robert Colvile wrote in the Sunday Times on 4th May, most voters ‘don’t have a scooby’ what and who the Tories stand for. If the main parties cannot provide a logically-based and more egalitarian style of government, then voters will show their preference to demand their own ‘populist’ self-interest, whatever that means.

‘Change’ is meaningless without delivery; but delivery based on socialism and contemporary Conservativism is no longer feasible, and the public-finance piggy-bank is empty.

Needless to say, it's economics which has brought down both Labour and Conservative parties in the UK and, apart from some well-meaning soundbites from Nigel Farage, there's no indication that Reform would do any better: just as in the United States, Trumpian economics is causing havoc not just for international relationships but also for ordinary people throughout America.

In the UK, the fact that so-called stealth taxes have pushed over eight million people into higher-rate taxation is deeply significant. The freezing of tax thresholds was introduced by the Conservatives and has been locked in by Labour, and it has left huge numbers of people feeling worse off, even if they don't understand the intricacies of the tax system. Meanwhile, Labour's attempts to impose higher taxation on ‘those with the broadest shoulders’ has also failed dismally as a result of the exodus of wealthy individuals, both non-doms and ordinary citizens. As a result, the changes to capital gains tax, which were intended to reap the benefits of this policy, have actually seen a significant decrease in revenues, over and above the distress they have caused among the farming communities.

Then, as Trussell shows in its report, ‘Cost of Hunger and Hardship’, the 9 million enduring poverty in 2024 continues to increase in number: a further 425,000 people are projected to face this situation in the next three years if nothing changes to reverse it. They estimate the cost to the Exchequer being £75 billion each year.

Other issues such as migration have only become an issue because they play to the narrow self-interest to which populist politics appeal. Meanwhile, the irrationality of slashing overseas aid budgets while at the same time trying to hold back the surge of economic migrants from disadvantaged countries simply demonstrates the illogicality of government thinking.

For all these reasons, we need a fresh start for the principles on which western democracies are based. Politicians need to understand why debt has reached such stratospheric levels if they really want to deliver the change they promise; and they have to be prepared to work in partnership, in particular with philanthropists, if change is to be delivered in the short term — that is, within the 4-5 year electoral cycle.

It's helpful to re-visit those ‘self-evident truths’ of which Thomas Jefferson spoke 250 years ago: that all are created equal, with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Then we should measure up these self-evident truths against the principles adopted by today's political parties.

For example, socialism may claim to reflect that equality but has totally failed to deliver it — in fact, welfare universality has impoverished the ability for government to focus on the needs of the most disadvantaged. As we commented on 24th March, its application over the past 75 years is the biggest single reason for today’s dire state of public finances.

Meanwhile the Conservatives may have claimed that ‘levelling-up’ would deliver ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all’, but the huge swing to Reform in those ‘Red Wall’ areas has proved that it, also, has not delivered.

I would add three more basic principles to Jefferson's self-evident truths:

  • The need to embed inter-generational rebalancing in order to ensure that we think forwards across generations in developing policy — this would address what I call the ‘Black Hole of Economics’;
  • That care for the long-term future should be an integral part of the design of government, so that there is long-term oversight (for example, from a second chamber elected on that basis) of the short-term executive management provided by Ministers and MPs; and
  • A recognition that people can only feel responsible for the world in which they live if they have a sense of ownership — of participation — therein: while home ownership is an important component of this, it needs to extend into sharing the benefits of, and contributing to the development of, automation.

These self-evident truths are not reflected in any of our current leading political parties, including Reform.

With populists in the ascendant both here in the UK and in the United States, it's time for long-established parties including Labour, Conservatives and, in the U.S.,  the Democratic Party, to go back to the drawing-board. This may well result in a convergent realisation that the search for a more egalitarian form of capitalism embodying all these self-evident truths would lead to a more constructive and stable future for all.

But we should also not lose sight of the need to deliver such change globally. Looking beyond parochial economics, most of our major long-term challenges are global in nature, including climate change and international conflict.

It may be nearly eighty years since the formation of the United Nations, but it is still a talking shop between bureaucrats appointed by their member nations; it has no democratic legitimacy. And yet we can see how nations themselves have developed from a host of sparring regions in order to provide their wider democratic oversight. Why can't we adopt the same principle to achieve global oversight for all these things which really matter for future generations?

Who knows whether, if the United Nations was endowed with those self-evident truths of which Jefferson spoke plus inter-generational rebalancing and widespread individual participation, it might enable us to deliver, and not just talk about, real change on a global basis.

Gavin Oldham OBE

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