British decline is not inevitable
John Bew writes an exclusive essay on how Britain saves itself
Good morning. This is Tom McTague, editor of the New Statesman.
There is no one better to explain the nature of the present upheaval facing the United Kingdom than Professor John Bew. An advisor to four Prime Ministers and governments formed by two political parties, John has a deep understanding of geopolitics, Westminster and British history that may be familiar to readers of the New Statesman from previous essays as well as his award-winning books on British politics.
In our cover story this week, he takes readers on a tour of the great disruptions that rocked the British state in centuries past. Each time, governments – eventually – responded with creativity and nous to the crisis facing them, forming new and durable political settlements. Today, John argues, Britain faces what he calls “The Fourth Great Disruption” – a many sided crisis that has felled government after government in recent years.
.You can read an extract of the essay below, and you can click through to read the piece in full. The New Statesman is available only to paying subscribers at the moment – but the good news is that we are still running a £1 per week deal. Thanks for reading, you can write in by replying to this email.
The British governing class and the fourth great disruption
The fidelity of our political and official classes to the current order comes from an assumption, deeply ingrained in the generation who are coming close to retirement, that liberal or social-market economies were the only possible future and that the rest of the world was destined to become more like us. It is partly why austerity – like appeasement – had far more political support than we care to remember. It is why we spent 0.7 per cent of GDP on development assistance at the start of the last decade and barely 2 per cent on defence. It is why, after 1989, we added even more international and human rights law on top of the international legal order crafted out of 1945. It is why Brexit was such a psychological shock to this world-view. It is why we sometimes look like the last man at the bar at Davos, nursing a cocktail as the lights go off and facing a treacherous and icy route to an unclear destination.
So as one world collapses around us, what are the shape of things to come? Here are some hard truths. The current social contract – particularly around welfare, health and pensions – is unsustainable on current levels of growth. A domestic and international legal system that does not allow us to control our borders has lost legitimacy at home. We have the highest energy prices in the Western world, just at the moment when energy is vital to our ability to take advantage of relative national strengths in technology. And there is currently no route to higher defence spending – which is inevitable unless the nation is content to continue on a path towards greater insecurity and irrelevance – without major cuts elsewhere in the public spending stack.
At moments of relative political equilibrium these are problems of policy for specialists in each of those areas. At moments of great structural upheaval, these are grand strategic problems that can only be confronted as a coherent whole.
Have a good week, and see you on Saturday. Thank you.
Empires rise and fall. The "British Decline" started in the early decades of the twentieth century. Spare me your hand wringing. Just another charlatan trying to squeeze a few coins from the those gasping at a circus. Shame on you
Regarding the John Bew article on growth, the lack of planning is obvious. It appears as if the State was a household where no plan was made to pay bills, meet the costs of education of the children, or to go on holiday. We just finished 14 years of Tory rule where no concern was felt for the maintenance of the State. Brexit is just the worst example of this lack of concern. Suddenly there is a majority for populist parties and the Tory and Labour parties are not in the top two positions in the polls. The results of the elections on May 7th may resolve a few of these issues. Regarding growth, which died a death in the financial crisis of 2007/8, the lack of purpose to encourage enterprise or provide the funding for growth to be generated needs to change. I accept that most of the available venture funds are being sucked into AI but much of that will be lost when the products are released and many are left on the shelves. There is a need at government level to prevent venture capital buying up startups developed in Britain and taking them to America. There is a need to identify companies which are vital to the success of the State and prevent them being taken over and the tax base moved to low tax countries. Rejoining the EU should be a matter of priority, rather than just something worth doing. In all of this, it is a matter of grave concern that so many of the population are suffering from the increased cost of living and bad housing. Time to wake up to priorities.