Boris Johnson has left the Conservative party in policy la-la land. “Cakeism” has run riot – vast, incoherent ambitions detached from political, economic and business realities. Thus the aim is to be “Global Britain” but an ultra-hard Brexit ensures shrinking exports, falling inward investment, dwindling financial muscle and inevitably global retreat.
Britain is to be a high-wage, high-innovation economy but there is only one hi-tech company in the FTSE 100, and no strategy to add any more. We are to be a science superpower but there is little chance when we are excluded from the biggest transnational scientific organisation on earth – the EU Horizon programme. There are targets to level up Britain’s glaring geographical inequalities but with scant resources – with what little there is directed at Tory constituencies.
As the cost of living crisis intensifies, the government consistently offers too little, too late. A mid-ranking European power must collaborate with others to have leverage over any significant policy area: instead, rancour, rows and delusions of a capacity to go it alone dominate. There are commitments to fiscal responsibility while simultaneously advocating more spending and lower taxes. It is an intellectual black hole.
The incoming PM’s problems start with the legacy of Johnson’s Brexit – the unchallenged, sacred verity of Conservative politics. But this allegedly “oven-ready” deal paid no attention to the realities of the 21st-century economy, now dominated by products and services that compete on their knowledge content, resilience and compliance with the highest regulatory standards. To exclude ourselves from the EU single market, which sets the standards for the whole of the EU, is thus a ball and chain around Britain’s growth potential – and by menacing our exports worsens the deficit in our current balance of payments so that a sterling crisis is an ever-present risk.
Importantly, the attempt to shoehorn Northern Ireland back into the UK market and suspend its relationship with the EU by unilaterally rewriting the NI protocol had led to no new contracts being awarded in the EU Horizon programme, and to existing ones being cancelled. It is a self-defeating debacle.
Beyond that, Johnson was an opportunistic policy jackdaw – backing whatever seemed attractive to whatever audience but with no sense of how it was to be delivered or financed, or how it fitted with a larger vision. Levelling up was his commitment to the former Labour “red wall” seats in the Midlands and north which turned Tory in the 2019 general election. They deserved better, he rightly insisted, from life expectancy and public transport to career prospects: but how?
The levelling up white paper set 12 interlinked economic, social and political priorities – but their achievement demands a mobilisation of resources, strengthened institutions and serious devolution. Johnson, obsessed with favouring only Brexit Tories and their constituencies, could deliver none of it. Above all, no serious creative thought had been given to how the UK could find the billions necessary, over many years, to fund levelling up. In the event, the HS2 link from Birmingham to Leeds was cancelled. The entire strategy needs urgent attention if it is not to collapse.
Yet in principle it should be a national priority. So should developing lifelong learning, placing big bets on innovative projects, renewing our infrastructure, confronting digital monopolies, securing energy resilience consistent with lowering carbon emissions, and offering a national social care system for our elderly.
To none of these challenges did Johnson give sustained attention. Is the health and social care levy even going to survive, let alone deliver what was promised? Energy policy in the wake of the crisis in prices after the Ukraine war is a particular jumble; grandiloquent impossible ambitions to build eight new nuclear power stations in the decade ahead sit alongside drawing back from commitments to renewables. Any chance of meeting net zero commitments by 2050 (and capping energy bills) means insulating a million homes a year: the figure runs at a derisory 30-40,000, with no commitment to improvement.
Looming in the background – and undermining all of it – is the commitment to a smaller state and lower taxes. Rarely has any government or any party faced in so many contradictory directions at once, with so little chance of achieving any of its goals. Exit Johnson – leaving behind a mess for others to clear up.