My main concern is the economy TBH. We’ve been stagnant since 2008.
I’m a techno optimist at heart. I want a high skilled workforce and an economy that encourages innovation. I think housing and infrastructure are holding us back and making us poorer and if we solved them a lot of the problems would go away.
I think a lot of the problems with small boats and public services are purely down to the incompetence of government post 2016 and especially post the 2019 intelligence purge.
There’s lots of things I’d like to see changed. The education system needs reform, we should be transitioning to a clean high energy society with nuclear, I want homelessness and child poverty reduced massively. Those last two are Labour priorities. I want them to do planning reform but we’ll see how they do against the vested interests in this country.
I want the NHS to start using its advantages in data collection to increase innovation and reduce costs and I want us to stop being such fucking pussies about “our data”, I want govt to massively increase data access especially for things like PAF (Labour have said they might do this) to increase innovation. I want high density cities connected by high speed rail.
I want a government that recognises our international strengths in computing, media, and education rather than rails against them.
But most of all I want competence in government to do the basics right because that matters more.
Some interesting ideas at a glance.
Very interesting you mention the economy because economic management probably won't change under Labour. For all the laughing and joking around Liz Truss's tenure as a squatter in No. 10, it sent a massive warning shot to Labour as well. Any 'unfunded' public expenditure (or tax cuts) promises will spook financial markets which could trigger a crisis in bond markets/pensions capable of bringing down a government. So anyone voting Labour on the belief there will be big increases in public expenditure will probably be disappointed. We don't have the currency strength or economic dynamism of the USA - an example you've raised before. Hence Labour has shelved/scaled back plans such as their green prosperity plan.
Personally, housing is perhaps the single most important long term issue in this country. The reason being is because the cost of getting on the property ladder is raising for young people and because of the costs of associated with having a mortgage (amongst other things), it's putting young people off having families which is disastrous for the long term demographic trends of this country - impacting things like the NHS and pensions. Planning reform, I agree, is absolutely necessary and the Tories will not touch it. Again, with net migration so high, that's putting an undeniable demand on housing and it doesn't seem like we have the resources to build 515k houses per year to meet demand as well as maintain spending on other public services.
On the high wage economy, again I agree. How do you think we can get there? A high minimum wage, in reality, only impacts a small % of workers and won't move the dial. Productivity is barely growing and has gone backwards in the public sector which again puts pressure on public expenditure. This is an issue in the private sector too and companies not investing in automation and machinery is holding this back. Immigration plays a part here (according to the CPS) and ironically, Herts made the argument that the NHS needs cheap labour to function which is an accidental argument against the sustainability of the NHS. An example given of this and a microcosm of the economy; the amount of automated car washes halved from 9k in 2000 to 4.2k in 2015 followed by an increase in handwashing sites to 20k. The issue is no longer limited to the right as left-leaning governments in Canada, NZ (both main parties agree) and Australia accept the 'need' to reduce migration.
On the NHS, agreed. The only thing I'd add is that if we want to maintain the funding model for the NHS, there needs to be a growth of the private sector and the tax code actively incentivising (particularly young people) people to take out policies by offering tax breaks and removing VAT on PHI and so on. To be clear, separate from NHS services as to not penalise low income or the elderly. As for the NHS itself, I think outsourcing has been a failure since it's put the incentive on the private sector to reduce costs rather than improve service. The market 'competition' is for government contracts rather than for service and value added to patients/consumers - that hybrid model is partly why our railway system is so dysfunctional (separate issue). Hence the idea to organically grow a more active private sector to take the burden away from the NHS but I'm under no illusions that this in of itself will fix everything.
I think that's about it from me because no one needs more of an essay here.
There's a lot going on here so will leave it at that.
