It is time to win again. Britain does not have to be in decline. The state of our country today is the result of the choices our politicians have made. Through their indecision and incompetence, they chose to prioritise consensus in committee rooms over progress, and over us. Be in no doubt: none of this was inevitable. They did this. They chose to effectively make theft legal, and to preside over declining living standards and little economic growth.
Our national story has never been one of surrender, or acceptance of mediocrity
In the run-up to the Budget, our political class remain stuck in the same tired conversations that have characterised decades of debate in Westminster. There are yet more meetings about how best to tinker around the edges of existing policy, yet more discussions about filling black holes and yet more pub gossip about tax rises, spending cuts, and whether Rachel Reeves can survive the post-budget backlash.
Sections of Westminster’s crowd are even obsessed with denying reality. Our problems are not that bad, they claim; the real issue is the ‘unending negativity’ and ‘doomerism’ that is manufacturing widespread public anger and panic. Even when confronted with the facts – shoplifting and phone thefts are at record highs, a knife crime incident happens somewhere in London every thirty minutes, and real earnings have stagnated since 2008 – some Westminster elites argue that these problems aren’t really so important.
To anybody outside of the Westminster bubble, these narratives are completely absurd. Indeed, such arguments are why people across the country have largely lost trust in our politicians and institutions. It should not be necessary to run a campaign to persuade our political class that when people see that their streets are increasingly dangerous, their wages not going as far and their taxes delivering less that they are right to be angry and to feel that politicians need to act – by locking away career criminals, letting Britain build once more to lower energy prices, and providing long-lasting, meaningful well-paid work in our country.
This is precisely why Looking for Growth (LFG) was founded. There should be no need for campaigns like this. But these campaigns – the LFG movement – exist because our political class chose to ignore the public, act cowardly and let Britain fall to crime, grime and decline.
For decades, the system has incentivised those within it to accept things getting worse – to expect it, sometimes even to celebrate Britain’s decline. Through its inertia, it decided to side with the blockers over the builders, to make our streets less safe, and to let career criminals ruin our lives. These issues are not an accident: despite how much certain parties and politicians want to skirt the blame, we must remember the UK today is the consequence of the choices our political leaders made.
When a criminal with over 300 convictions wasn’t imprisoned, when benefits schemes end up paying for BMWs for people with irritable bowel syndrome but denying support for parents of disabled children, when it takes over 3000 days to start the construction of infrastructure deemed national priorities, and when projects regularly run over budget and take years longer than planned, they represent systemic institutional failures, not isolated errors.
We don’t have to continue on this road. We don’t have to accept low levels of housebuilding, astronomical energy prices, a higher cost of living and tax rise after tax rise. We can choose differently. We can tackle the critical problems that the system has ignored for so long.
At LFG, we believe the route out is clear. As Matt Clifford, the chair of the UK’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, said at LFG’s recent event at the O2, we must make Britain rich again. Because whatever your ambitions for our country, however you view the role of the state and the responsibility of Britain in the world, the best way to reach those goals is through a wealthy nation.
If you want a more prosperous society, the most effective means is to increase the size of the pie. If you want to make our streets safe again, we must be able to pay for more police and prison space. If you want Britain to be at the forefront of innovation and human development, we must be rich enough to support our talented individuals and businesses. If, above all, you just want to feel and be better off in your day-to-day life, we need politicians who prioritise your purse or wallet.
Transforming Britain, however, is only possible if we fix Westminster’s systems: we must learn to do government differently. The culture in Whitehall’s corridors needs to change to one which celebrates and rewards winners, not punishes them. It needs to become one which releases the shackles, and backs the builders, innovators, wealth-creators and risk-takers, not the blockers. In short, it must become one that lets the British people be successful again.
There are those in Westminster who doubt this is possible. At LFG, we are convinced this is not just achievable, but actually a necessary condition of ending institutional decay.
We must remember that we have done great things before. We created, invented, innovated, and pioneered the principles and technologies that define the free world. Embracing that spirit, that endeavour which made Britain the country where the future happens, will unleash us once more.
Only such a fundamental change to Westminster’s attitudes will reverse our current decline. It is not enough to make incremental reforms to the tax code, public expenditure or planning system. Now is the time to be radical, the time for our politicians to believe in Britain once more.
Throughout history, the British people have recovered from setbacks and difficulties. We can do it again. But doing it again demands the courage to admit that our decline is the product of bad choices, and the will to make better ones.
Our national story has never been one of surrender, or acceptance of mediocrity. It has always been one of resolve and eventually success. The task before us now is to achieve that again: it is not to manage or accept decline, but rather to end it. This moment demands belief, leadership and ambition worthy of our history.
It is therefore time to save Britain, end decline and to win once more.
Dr Lawrence Newport is the co-founder of Looking for Growth, a political movement established to end decline and save Britain.
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