The state of the nation

 A friend has sent me a copy of an article Will Hutton wrote in 2022 for Prospect Magazine on an assessment of the state of the UK economy after 12 years of Tory-led small-state doctrine,  deregulation and low taxation. Early in the article Hutton provides a useful list (in no particular order):

1. Poor productivity;

2.  Threadbare welfare services;

3.  The menace of predatory finance;

4.  Inadequate human capital;

5.  Systematic aversion to risk-taking;

6.  Paucity of public investment;

7.  Carelessness about who owns our national assets;

8.  Lack of economic resilience in critical sectors (ranging from energy to water);

9.   Overheated property prices;

10.  Exit from the EU's single market;

11.  Impotent regulatory agencies;

12.  Weak business investment.

Two years later, and thus after a full fourteen years of the Conservative  "free market" experiment, there seem no reason to alter the list.  All the Opposition Tory Party seem to offer now is more of the same  -  indeed to "double down " on it.  

Hutton points out, however,  that then (and now?) Keir Starmer's Labour Party "fails to work out feasible practical reforms, [thus] leaving a vacuum."

 Later in the article Hutton provides a list of things the UK is still "good at."  These are (again in no prearticular order)

1.  Pharmaceuticals;

2.  Aerospace;

3.  Financial and business services;

4.  Creative industries;

5.  .Beverages (like Scotch whisky);

6.  Tech-driven start-ups (around our leading universities.)

This list has some interesting overlaps with one produced by Larry Elliot and discussed in a  earlier post. (See https://keynesianliberal.blogspot.com/2024/10/what-are-we-still-good-at-makiing-and.html)

Both the above lists provide useful anchors against which to assess the relevance and likelihood of success of any  measure proposed by our still new government.  

So far they have expressed an intention to improve the public infrastructure and the political response, supported and amplified by the hugely hostile press, has been to bleat  about the the taxes proposed to finance this.  We need to move on, recognise the need for higher taxation (preferably on unprotrusive "rent" rather than productive exchanges).  

And, as Hutton points out, the longer we resist re-aligning ourselves with our neighbours in Europe, the more difficult we make our return to the ranks of well run, equitable, and efficient first-class nations.