Age of disruption
Legacy of GFC and Thatcher reforms
After the great financial crisis, the UK has underperformed and never fully recovered. Many parts of the UK have never recovered from repeated shocks. Failure to address the imbalance has created deep scars. Nations around the world share similar problems but tried to fix them. Economic inequality has major negative outcomes. The UK is looking at two lost decades of wage growth, and dozens of structural problems that are hard to fix. Deregulation with light touch regulation has created low competition. State intervention has become a sticking plaster for fundamental problems.
Margaret Thatcher’s early years saw unpopular reforms first before sharing the benefits later. Of course, the reforms she did, caused huge amounts of pain. She accelerated trends against unproductive industry and sold off public owned assets. Took years before the fruits of the reforms took hold. Therefore Thatcher benefited from the business cycle returning back. She did however cause a massive set of problems for future prime ministers. She created a class of income poor but asset rich workers. Thatcher did create regulators that went with the light-touch approach.
A dream turned nightmare with unproductive vested interests returning. Markets have become dominated by small groups of companies with little or no competition. Public-owned companies have become private unproductive companies with no competition. Weak labour market regulation did create cheap labour by the backdoor. UK workers on average are poorer than European workers. Globalisation saw many benefits, cheap goods created a wave of low inflation. Central banks believed they had control over the levers of inflation.
New Labour riding the Thatcher wave
New Labour decided to ride the wave Thatcher helped create. Economic boom allowed for lower taxes, Blair did some unpopular reforms. Labour did however invest into public services, day to day spending funded by tax increases. Brown like many others had fiscal rules to help guide policy. Party did loads to help the poorest. Leaving in place the fundamental changes that allowed more homeowners to exist and inflate the asset prices further. Some of the more difficult reforms ended up being to scrapped. Blair and Brown funded infrastructures projects to boost growth. Much of new Labour legacy destroyed outside handful of reforms. Brown supply side reforms like minium wage have stood the test of time.
Open secret the conservatives wanted to cut spending, blamed New labour for the great financial crisis. Brown allowed Cameron to craft a narrative Labour spending was to blame. Financial crash was caused by bankers, inflated assets with high risk borrowing. Bubble burst with assets falling in price, banks cut lending due lacking the cash to cover the losses. Financial sector was bailed out before it would seize up. Reform came to reduce the risk in the system, patch work but better than nothing.
Cameron / Osborne ideology debt rules
Cameron / Osborne solution was cutting public spending. Poorest in society ended up taking the bulk of the burden. The pair reduced the size of the state to kick start the economy. Not exactly kicked started the economy, helped to stall the recovery until they slowed down the pace of cuts. Various economic numbers have stalled or failed to meet the historic trends.
Conservative’s self-made rules have been changed before, no reason why debt-to-GDP could not be stable. The choice was made ratio of debt-to-GDP has to come down. Rules are designed to create some stability and credibility behind a political choice Tories have chased from 2001 onwards. George Osborne’s office of budget responsibility has highlighted the choice before. Osborne decided to promote tax cuts for the middle class and wealthy when he could get away with it.
UK like many other nations enjoyed record low rates on borrowing for over a decade during a period of low growth. Failed to invest during this perfect time, much needed reforms got ignored or kicked into the long grass. The UK is set to have lost two decades of economic performance and face huge drags in growth. Result is public services without capacity or resilience needed against shocks. 12 years of pain for no real benefit. Client journalists have repeated the lie that things must be this way. Alternatives do exist but nobody must be informed about them.
Boris Brexit size hole and Truss gone
Cameron failure over party management, ruined his career and caused brexit to happen. Three prime ministers in a row grasped the brexit mandate. Briefly Cameron held an EU referendum, lost it and quit. Unable to control eurosceptic flank, too a gamble and lost.
May flirted with eurosceptic flank, tried create internal coalition within the party that could support brexit. She took a gamble for an election and lost her majority. Once again failing at party management after crafting hard red lines making any deal impossible.
Johnson came along with Irish sea border deal nobody could support before and passed it. Clown was crippled by crisis, poor at party management. Party animal that was Johmson, lied and cheated his way to the top. Defeated by his own hubis, whole government resigned and forced Boris to quit.
Truss quickly came to power and quickly resigned. One budget promising growth without hard work, tax cuts for the rich. Helped to cause market turmoil pushed up borrowing costs and caused mortgage rates to skyrocket.
Rich Rishi has come yet another Oxford graduate who has his fingers over this mess. At the time of writing he still prime minster.
Age of disruption came from with the conservative
Various choices therefore, the result is a shortfall of about £35 to 50 billion, extra money is wiggle room. Just in case the magic growth fairy fails to visit. Structual weakness UK has underperformed and never fully recovered. Moron risk premium has now been applied to the UK. Goverment job is lender of last resort against shocks that happen, things like covid or recessions. More growth means less tax revenue is required. Brexit created trade barriers helping to fuel already poor growth of the UK economy has resulted in a bigger shortfall. Increasing growth means more tax revenue but supply-side reforms like a more liberal planning system are badly needed.
British politics has created a toxic trap, incentives against doing painful but much-needed reforms. An endless cycle of cutting just means worse public services that cost more in the long run. Big failure over last couple of decades have been not building enough. Anti growth coalition Liz Truss talked about includes Tory voters, mainly older homeowners who block things getting done. Older voters dislike doing what is required to help younger workers who fund their retirement. Poorer workers now is storing up poorer retired pensioners in the future. Older voters who are insulated took a gamble on brexit. Breaking that cycle is important and necessary.
Question and answer
Current drags on UK growth are dysfunctional housing market, poor infrastructures and planning system. Liz Truss was right to focus on the UK poor performance and lack of growth, Tories have helped fuel that.
Housing market has become an asset that sucks money from more productive things. Bursting that bubble requires slowly decreasing prices, needs bold tax reform and changing incentives.
Infrastructure like roads, homes and other services needs to be built. In order to sustain the current growing population or even aging population. At the same time
Planning reform that allows stuff to built takes forever to build anything in the UK due locals blocking. Cities unable to expand due green belt or locals blocking developments. Sometimes good reason for delays, like environment issues or flooding concerns.
Politicans are reflecting what voters tell them they want. Often that is dangerous and contradictory. Leaving many good set of policies in the bad sell pile. Channelling Cameron here with some hard truths that are unpopular could allow us to break that cycle. Does mean breaking the long term hold certain groups of voters have over politics. The planets sake rebuilding the system is needed. Otherwise the planet may give us giant shock and even bigger disruption.
Dysfunctional British parliament is a symptom of the British voters contradictory desires. Liz Truss asked the right question but gave the wrong answers. World is growing older and UK won’t remain attractive problems remain.