The failed state
Margaret Thatcher used to say to senior Civil Servants that “if any of you were any good you’d have jobs in the private sector”. Although in the end she seemed to have come to appreciate the necessity for good management of government and was admired by the Sir Humphrys for her clear policies and desire to drive them through.
But like nearly every other aspect of Thatcherism the current Tory Party seems to have only remembered the bits it wants to remember. Even David Cameron admitted he planned to slash government when elected, the credit crunch just gave him the chance to sell austerity as necessary, which it wasn’t.
But the results are now clear as the Institute for Government reports, Britain’s public services are stuck in a “doom loop” of recurring crises. They are performing worse than before the pandemic and worse than before 2010.
They are in short crumbling around our ears, everything from the health service to housing, prisons to the environment, the quality of civil service mandarins and defence procurement.
The reason is not just austerity, the Tories slash spending on the state because they do not think that much of it has a useful purpose.
Like those business leaders you occasionally meet who claim that government did nothing for them and they owe nothing back, the Tories mock and deride the very things that make the economy work.
You have to remind people that without state spending business would have to educate its own workers from the cradle, provide limitless health care for them and their families, pay them a wage that they can live comfortably on, build their own roads, dig their own sewers, build their own power generation, provide pensions, sick leave and unemployment insurance to all their workers. They wouldn’t have the protection of the Royal Navy or the police or the legal protection of the courts. Their patents would be worthless and their factories pillaged daily.
All this and far more is happily provided by the state at huge tax payer expense so that entrepreneurs can make money.
If the Tories and the business leaders think the state is just a burden they should try to set up business in the Congo or Russia or North Korea.
Developed, sophisticated, high tech countries need a state that actively works to create the environment that makes the economy prosper.
In this regard the UK is increasingly a failed state.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media