Running for US president in 1976, Ronald Reagan opposed the Keynesian consensus and detente with the Soviet Union. That platform was too strident for Republican sensibilities, never mind those of the wider public. In 1980, the same agenda was the plainest common sense. What changed? Not Reagan. It was the nation’s appetite for a rupture. The United States needed to marinate in the status quo for four more years before voters said: “Enough.”
Britain, I suggest, isn’t there yet. The nation is tired of malaise, but not that tired. The result will be the election of a continuity government, further disappointment and only then an acceptance of uncomfortable change.
Here follows a plausible account of the rest of this decade:
Labour does some things to make Britain more dynamic, such as loosen planning restrictions. These are cancelled out by policies that gum Britain up in other ways, such as new labour laws and, in time, tax rises. The government spends more cash on public services, which improves them, but ducks reform of those services, which negates that improvement. In the end, the material experience of the average citizen nets out at not much better than it is right now. Freed from the pandemic and the energy shock, economic growth goes up a bit, but not to the pre-2008 trend.
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At that point, in the historic election of 2029, an exasperated nation draws a line. It entertains once-verboten ideas. Things become sayable that now aren’t.
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Such as? A nation as trade-dependent as Britain cannot be outside a giant single market on its own doorstep. This is doubly true when there aren’t trade deals to be had elsewhere, thanks to the protectionist turn in Washington. In 2020, even Remainers hadn’t the stomach for this conversation. In 2024, it is common among pundits and some voters. In 2029, it will be visitable terrain for politicians.
Consider the trend, not the present state, of events. The share of the public who think Brexit was a good idea is down to one-third now. Given demographic churn alone – children reaching voting age, old people leaving us – is that likelier to expand or to shrink?
The Tories aren’t making much mention of Brexit in this election, either as a retrospective boast (“Look what we achieved”) or a prospective vision (“Here is what we can do with it”). Labour, too, closes down the subject at every turn. This cross-partisan omerta is wise. The moment isn’t right, quite, to reopen the subject. But you have to be trying very hard to not see that it is coming. In 2029, joining at least the customs union will be on the table.
And so might much else. The British state needs deep reform. The “triple lock” on public pensions is an expensive folly. The out-of-work benefits bill is too large. Britain doesn’t need all of its current universities. A Whitehall that can’t build a high-speed rail line within schedule or budget isn’t going to revive the deindustrialised regions or nurture the artificial intelligence sector. Lots of politicians know some or all of this, but shrewdly judge the occasion wrong to say so. Things have to be a bit drabber for a bit longer.
If the election after next is the big one, who will be leading the change? Who will be saying the newly sayable? A mended and future-facing Conservative party is improbable by 2029. Perhaps a third force, then. But don’t discount Keir Starmer himself.
Second terms – Thatcher’s, Blair’s – are often a prime minister’s most dramatic. It is then that history starts to whisper to them, “what will you be remembered for?” Starmer is the most underrated politician in the democratic world, give or take Mark Rutte. Although he reached his 60s before deciding what a woman is (a lapse that he will never shake off in full) his political judgment has been acute. If it tells him that 2024 isn’t the time for a national rupture, he is doubtless right. But when that changes, he is unlikely to miss the shift in the air.
I cited Reagan but there is a similar tale, from a similar time, that is nearer to home. In 1974, then UK premier Edward Heath, a Conservative, sought a mandate to tame the trade unions (“Who governs?”). The public instead gave the status quo one more heave under Labour. Only after that failed did the space open up for Thatcherism.
The lesson? It is not, or not just, that she was a world-historical talent, and Heath wasn’t. It is that people take time to reach breaking point. An untenable situation – a marriage, a mode of government – can stagger on and on, until it doesn’t. The UK is approaching a general election of vast importance for its future. It just has to get next week’s one out of the way first. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024