Robert Colville runs the Centre for Policy Studies, at one time said to be Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think tank, and he writes occasionally for The Times. He has a piece in the Sunday edition with the catchy title: We need to kick our addiction to state bailouts. Our future freedom depends on it. It’s about our attitude to the government here in Britain. He, being well to the right, thinks we need a lightly taxed and lightly regulated economy with everyone doing their own thing unencumbered by rules and without the government reaching into the pockets of taxpayers.
However, research carried out by the American pollster Frank Luntz and funded by the CPS shows - surprise, surprise - that this isn’t how most people in this country think.
“The questions we asked showed that two-thirds of Britons believed the state’s job was to protect most people against most risks, as opposed to acting as a safety net when people needed it. They saw regulation as providing security rather than hassle. The policy they most associated with “economic freedom” was “better public services”, beating “more prosperity” and “lower tax”. And the main lesson people took from Covid, when forced to choose, was that co-operation and compromise should be the highest priority, not individual freedom and responsibility.
“Once you start viewing politics through this framework, it starts to explain a huge amount about how we are governed. In particular, for all that Tory politicians rail against the relentless expansion of the state, it is an expansion that a huge number of their voters are pretty comfortable with.”
I don’t know why Colville should need an expensive pollster to work this out, but apparently, he does.
Anyway, the 'revelation' leads him to the conclusion that there is a yawning and increasing gap between Conservative philosophy and public opinion on the role of the state.
“And this also leaves the Tories in a political trap. The party is desperate to cut taxes. But the British state has been expanding for more than a century, regardless of party. In the coming decades, that expansion will go into overdrive, as an ageing population consumes ever more health services and benefits (such as a triple-locked state pension). All of this will need to paid for by a workforce that will shrink relentlessly by comparison, unless we jack up net migration even further — and even that would probably just kick the problem a few decades down the road."
“To actually shrink the state, the Tories — or indeed any ruling party — need not just to work out how to make government work more efficiently, but to pick some things that it is no longer going to do. But that is something that even many Conservative MPs struggle to come to terms with, let alone their activists and voters.”
What he’s noting is the Tory party's current problem in their mad pursuit of policies that the majority of voters don’t want. Colville doesn't offer Sunak any solutions - mainly because there aren't any - but this little gem caught my eye:
“Arguably the single greatest problem with the British economy, and our single biggest obstacle to growth, is that we bury innovation and risk-taking under a mountain of form-filling, hoop-jumping, consultation and regulation.”
No, the single greatest problem is the stubborn belief among many right-wing think tanks that regulations are stopping companies from innovating and thereby stifling economic growth. He drops this in as if it's an established fact - and for people of his ilk, it is. But it doesn't make it true.
Other countries manage to innovate within the rules and regulations set by democratically elected lawmakers while we in Britain spend our time kicking against the rules and complaining. This is our biggest problem by far.
Mutual enforcement.
The Daily Express has a typically overblown article about the Northern Ireland Protocol: Huge breakthrough in Brexit standoff could see power-sharing return in Northern Ireland.
Ignoring the fact that the NIP problems have been resolved as far as London and Brussels are concerned by the Windsor Framework and for the UK government it isn't an issue except for the DUP's refusal to rejoin the power-sharing executive.
Nevertheless, David Jones at the Centre for Brexit Policy is launching a ‘new’ report intended to resolve the NI protocol 'problems' by eliminating the Windsor Framework altogether and replacing it with another system - mutual enforcement. This is at the heart of the Express article.
However, the whole idea has already been rubbished by those who realise what it means.
I see mutual enforcement is being pushed in certain quarters again, notably by Donaldson & Bryson Here’s an excellent thread from the brilliant @hayward_katy to explain why Mutual Enforcement is a non starter & worth sharing with the Brexit Ultras & others pushing this nonsense https://t.co/x3bTDpcYIt
— John Fitzpatrick (@Johnmfitzp) June 25, 2023
More than that, the Centre for Brexit Policy has already published a report in February 2021: Correcting the damage caused by the Northern Ireland Protocol: How Mutual Enforcement Can Solve the Northern Ireland Border Problem. And this was itself I believe an updated version of one first seen in 2020. Selby for Europe covered it at the time HERE.
And note that David Jones was the man behind the plan in 2021. It is nothing more than a rehash of something he was pushing two years ago which the EU has already rejected as unworkable.
And just to show what a rabbit hole we are all disappearing down, Lord Moylan, who seems to fill his day tweeting random insanities gives us this:
