good morning. Kemi Badenoch gave a big speech yesterday about what Britain is doing wrong, how the government is failing and how she will transform the Conservative Party to win again.
Well, Badenoch’s ability to fashionably define it is hampered by her self-denial ordinance of not setting policy.
Ms Badenoch is half right that almost all the policy proposals she and the Conservative Party are putting forward now will be redundant by the next election.
That date could be about as far in the future from today as the first reported “unknown type of pneumonia” case in Wuhan is now. By the time of the next general election, Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States will be at or near the end. At least eight member states will move in and out of the EU’s rotating presidency during that time. So many things can happen between now and then.
But what she lacks is that well-chosen policies are part of the way the underlying principles are communicated. Let’s take the three shadow ministers as an example. I think they do the best job of communicating their intentions. They have not announced any policy, but they have set out a clear position. Shadow Education’s Laura Trott has indicated that she believes accountability and freedom are major drivers for improving public services. Shadow Justice Robert Jenrick has shown support for authoritarian law and order measures. And Claire Coutinho, of Shadow Energy and Net Zero, described all measures to achieve net zero (including those approved by herself) as pandering to the “climate change lobby”. It shows that you intend to do so.
These are clear statements about how shadow ministers differ from their political opponents, where they want to fight in the next election, and what they want to defend or deny about the last Conservative government. It’s a signal.
Badenoch’s stance is less clear. I think one of the reasons is that she does not understand the details and is not fully prepared to make the necessary preparations to be an effective leader of the opposition. Here are some thoughts on one example.
Another type of fix
Kemi Badenoch repeatedly discusses the British state and, by extension, the Conservative Party’s performance over the past 14 years. The idea is that the British state needs to focus on doing a little bit better, rather than doing a lot worse. (Or, as she said yesterday, “The government is already doing too much, and it’s doing terrible things.”)
She also makes an interesting argument for means-testing the winter fuel allowance, an idea that Whitehall officials have floated to the Conservative Party “many times”. She criticized Rachel Reeves, saying the prime minister chose to do this because “she doesn’t have an opinion of her own”. Means-testing the winter fuel allowance was a Conservative party manifesto promise in the 2017 election, and it was on this plan that Mr Badenoch was first elected to parliament. There are many things that could reasonably be said to criticize or defend the manifesto’s authors, Theresa May and Nick Timothy, but I think the phrase “no original ideas” is reliable. Or I don’t think it’s anything serious.
Perhaps I’m just spitballing here, but why did officials keep suggesting that the government implement a means test for the winter fuel allowance, and why Prime Minister Theresa May wanted to implement it in 2017? That may also be why our new Labor government implemented it. That said, it’s a reasonable proposition.
When Gordon Brown introduced the winter fuel allowance in 1997, pensioners were the poorest people in Britain. They are now the richest. This is like a “Christmas bonus” paid to some beneficiaries and pensioners, and in cash terms it is the same benefit as it was in 2000. This bonus was £10 when introduced by Edward Heath, £10 when it was made permanent in 1979 and is now £10. This is a really stupid way to spend money! We are giving benefits of diminishing value to increasingly wealthy groups for no particular reason.
If you think the UK government is doing “too much” then you need to get serious about what it actually does, and much of what it does is provide services to older people. Now I think that’s totally fine. As regular readers know, I don’t have much time to discuss generational inequities when it comes to government service delivery. Most of us incur significant costs from birth until the age of 18, when we finish compulsory schooling, and end up making net contributions to public funds until the last decades of our lives. This isn’t “generational injustice”, it’s just fairness. Most of us over the age of 18 don’t need any further state regulations and won’t need them until we’re much older. If we want a lean and efficient state, it is difficult to argue that the universal benefits introduced in 1997 are a non-negotiable part.
(There is another discussion about the housing market, which I will return to in a later email.)
Now, here is Badenoch’s argument. The way Reeves has done this, by fixing the point in time when the winter fuel allowance is received, means that pensioners who are ‘on a living’ are losing out. But that is an argument for raising the threshold for pension credits, not for cash transfers of decreasing value to be paid to more pensioners than they receive pension credits.
When Ms Badenoch talks about means testing, she seems to be envisioning some kind of perfect model with no edge cases, telling LBC’s Ian Dale: “Means testing is something we don’t do properly here.” “We don’t have that standard,” he said. A system that knows who should receive what. ” This means she thinks the British state needs to spend more money considering who to fund. This argument isn’t necessarily wrong, but if you want less government action and can’t support even this very simple reduction in universal benefits, and you want a much more complex benefit system. , you are not serious in your thoughts. A politician from a small country.
Mr Badenoch went further: On the same day he claimed that only a government with “no idea” would mean test the winter fuel allowance, the Conservatives also said they were “considering” means testing the “triple lock” pension. “There is,” he told Dale.
The “Triple Lock Pension” is not a benefit, but a mechanism. This is the solution that successive British governments have chosen since the coalition government of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democratic Party to address the problem that the UK’s state pension is not as generous as that of other countries. There are downsides to this mechanism, especially as people begin to see it as something that should be continued forever rather than as a gradual solution to a particular public policy problem.
However, it is not even clear what it means to “means test” the process of increasing the amount of the state pension by 2.5%, inflation or income growth, whichever is higher. The question of whether to make the state pension means-tested is not the same as the question of how to ensure that the state pension provides adequate income to those who need it.
Means testing could in theory be more generous to those who receive it, but the reason the Conservatives chose not to do this is because it would discourage people from saving for their own retirement. This is because I’m not saying they were necessarily right to do so, but I am again shocked that Prime Minister Badenoch’s grasp of what the government did and why it was not what people expected. received.
If she wants to lead a smaller, more efficient government than the last Conservative government and the current Labor government, she needs to engage more deeply with what both governments did and why. There is.
go ahead and try this
(Georgina writes:) I first read Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoner during my first few months living away from home. The 1956 novel’s rhythms, tingles, and tragic shifts perfectly capture the feeling of being an ‘outsider’, as Windrush-era newcomers find themselves bound to a narrowly defined immigrant group. Rather, it shows how individual Londoners are adapting to the city. “They’re only laughing because they’re afraid to cry” is one of my favorite lines.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the stage adaptation and how it would respond to the book’s musicality and creolized English, but I was struck. The play runs at the Kiln Theater until February 22nd.
I also heartily recommend this episode of BBC Free Thinking with some great guests who look back at Selvon’s achievements in Caribbean and modernist literature.
Have a wonderful weekend, however you choose to spend it.
Today’s top news
Streamlining | Under Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s plans to reform the NHS, UK hospital leaders will be judged with far fewer targets than before. Separately, the FT’s Laura Hughes visited Queen’s Hospital in Romford to uncover the alarming reality that “corridor care” has become the norm. New research from the Royal College of Nursing shows that 67 per cent of nursing staff in the UK routinely provide care in “inadequate” environments.
On the contrary | UK roads are a “national disgrace”, MPs have warned. The road network is blighted by potholes and councils don’t have the data to fix them, leading to traffic disruptions that ultimately harm the economy and inconvenience motorists. said the Public Accounts Committee.
Off and On | British government officials have discussed funding for a supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh, just six months after a similar large-scale computing project was scrapped at the university.
Mr Amesbury pleads guilty | Mike Amesbury MP has pleaded guilty to assault at Chester Magistrates Court, raising the possibility of damaging Labour’s first by-election in Runcorn and Helsby.
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