No. 199 - Behind Boris's Single Success Lies the Real Failure. The Failure to Reform the Nation.

Dear James,

Any government has successes and failures. Polls go up and polls go down. Our present government is enjoying poll success at the moment due, in particular, to the undoubted achievement of the vaccine roll out. Boris’s numbers are up and ahead of Labour. People are already forgetting that the UK mortality rate from Coronavirus is approaching 125,000, the second highest rate per head of population in the world after Belgium. People are gasping to ‘reclaim their freedom’ and it is tantalizingly within reach. Who wouldn’t be grateful to the scientists and politicians who have made Britain the envy of the unvaccinated world? But beware James! Times are changing and the electorate is a very fickle beast.

Mr Sunak’s budget last week was not a good omen for a government that has so far failed to learn the lessons of Coronavirus. Mr Sunak’s sunny optimism can make bad news appear just tough news for tough people. His default mode is the breezy nonchalance of genetic imperturbability. Destined for stardom, yet Mr Sunak had, within a day, to admit the true facts of his budget. The NHS heroes of the pandemic were being offered a measly 1% pay rise. The UK will give Yemen about £87m in aid this year, down from £164m in 2020, costing thousands of lives in that benighted country. Which reminded everyone of an earlier cut of the overseas aid budget from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%.  Boris pleads that such decisions are due to the “current straitened circumstances”. But here is the message. Underneath the one off success of the vaccination programme, and the smiling confidence of Mr Sunak, we have an English Nationalist government terrified of the ERG and Nigel Farage and intent on pursuing an extreme right wing agenda to please them.  

The Institute for Financial Studies (IFS) agreed that Mr Sunak presented himself as the ‘generous benefactor’. It goes on to say however, ‘Santa Sunak’, purveyor of billions today looks more like Scrooge Sunak cutting spending and raising taxes to the tune of nearly £50 billion relative to his pre-pandemic plans of March 2020’. In other words, we are looking at a return to a £30bn ‘Austerity Mark 2’ relative to previous plans. The long term freezes in tax allowances and thresholds raise £9 billion. The rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25% is of historic proportions.

Let’s face it, Mr Sunak has been forced to put the UK on Ultra-Keynsian steroids. Our economy is now a bloated whale stranded on a lonely beach somewhere in mid-Atlantic. The UK’s emergency borrowing requirement this year is of wartime proportions. Only twice in the last 120 years has it been greater, during the First World war (27.8% of GDP 1916-17) and the Second Worlds War (27.1% of GDP 1941-42). This year (2020-2010) it will reach 16.9% of GDP. This is serious. Our Second World War debt was only paid off thirty years after the end of the war. 

Once Mr Sunak’s steroid treatment is removed James, our nation’s massive underlying problems will be re-exposed. The gulf between care and the NHS,  the need to properly fund the NHS ( in 2017 the UK spent 9.6% of GDP on health in 2017 while France and Germany spent 11.3%), the need to address the north south divide, the failure to fund our schools, the neglect of our local authorities and the elephant in the room, climate change.  The list is endless but at its heart is the need to have an overall recovery plan at the centre of which should be the question of inequality. Our nation still suffers under its enormous burden of inequality between the rich and poor. The cultural expression of this as suppressed behaviours and lack of expectations amongst the poor, has been baked into our nation for centuries,

Your polling figures may be up at the moment James, but the world is changing and much of this is due to the Coronavirus. People have been exposed to the benefits of science lead policy and the selfless giving of many in our population. Hopefully, the demand for more government and better government is here to stay. Since your party has traditionally stood for less government and its associated deficiencies in compassion and care for others, Mr Sunak has got a big internal battle to fight if he wants to address the UK’s major internal problems. His budget last week suggests he may not want to. The jury is still out on the real Mr Sunak!

Kind regards, 

BH - Your concerned Constituent.