Miriam Cates is MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge.
Ancient rulers did not lose sleep over poll ratings. Beyond ensuring loyalty from their fellow elites – and a sufficiently violent deterrent for any who would challenge their reign – kings, emperors and dictators had little need for popularity amongst those they ruled. I doubt Henry VIII cared very much if his policy platform appealed to the C2DEs, or that Napoleon fretted about his approval ratings with the under-25s.
Mercifully, however, in 21st-century Western democracies politicians cannot afford to ignore the wishes and preferences of their electorate. Every adult is entitled to a vote, a free choice over who gets to make and enforce the law of the land. And we no longer have to wait for rulers to die or be defeated in battle to get rid of them; in the UK, general elections take place every five years.
Democracy is a vast improvement on what came before. But can voters trust that their candidates will offer policies that serve the long-term best interests of the country, rather than their own interests in hanging on to power?
The truth is that all political leaders, whether democratic or autocratic, want to be in government. Some may have bad motives (wanting power for its own sake), others more noble ones (believing they have something to offer in service of community and nation).
Of course most politicians – like most human beings – have mixed motives. The ‘sweet spot’ in a democracy is when politicians offer ideas that are both right for the country and appealing enough to get them elected. After all, there’s no point having good policies if they’re not popular and you won’t be popular without having good policies. Democratic politics is, by its very nature, populist.
The serious flaw with the democratic model (which, as Churchill famously said, is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried) is that popular policies are sometimes not the right ones. Again, human nature lets us down; as voters we are likely to choose politicians and policies that offer us short term gain, even if they are not in our long term best-interests.
How often do you choose a chocolate biscuit over a piece of fruit? Politicians have to be biscuits, not banana, if they want to get elected – and there are few better examples of chocolate-biscuit politics is the pension ‘Triple Lock’.
This is a hugely popular policy with older people, and the right policy for now. But our current demographic trajectory means it is likely to be unaffordable in the long term.
There are strong arguments for ensuring that pensions always rise in line with inflation. Many pensioners are living on tight budgets and have no way of raising their income.
But the state pension is paid directly from the taxes of those currently working (it is not, despite common misconceptions, a contributory scheme) and as the number of pensioners increases, working people will have to pay higher and higher taxes while waiting longer and longer for their own pensions (if they get one at all).
However this policy is so popular – and its beneficiaries such numerous and reliable voters – that any party that proposed scrapping or even reforming it would be committing political suicide.
Or take the New Labour policy of creating ‘independent’ bodies to manage the public sector, and giving more power to the courts. Tony Blair sold us the idea that ‘taking the politics’ out of managing health, the police, or even Parliament itself would prevent those nasty self-interested politicians from interfering with our institutions. So far, so popular.
But the reality of the Blairite legacy is that the overreach of regulators and arms length bodies (governed by unelected officials) has made it all but impossible for elected representatives to take important decisions in the national interest.
At elections, people think they are voting to change how the NHS is run, or how tech companies are regulated, or how immigration is managed. But too often change requires ministers to wade through a thick treacle of quangos and human rights laws. Few make it out the other side.
Mass communication, social media, and extraordinary media cynicism have removed any rewards for offering policies that need more than 250 characters of explanation. This is perfectly illustrated by the twittersphere’s reaction to the Conservative Party’s announcement of plans for a new National Service scheme (of which more later).
Parties that offer popular commitments to build more houses, cut waiting lists, or nationalise energy companies may be correctly identifying voters’ concerns. But without being straight about the root causes of the problems and the trade-offs required to solve them, no real progress can be made.
Britain is stuck. Populist (in the real sense) politics is now so entrenched – we have avoided the real issues for so long – that few politicians dare to talk about the true causes of and solutions to the challenges we face. There is scant short-term reward in highlighting problems that will take more than one electoral cycle to fix.
In the current political climate, it seems unlikely that any political party could simultaneously argue for the right solutions and be popular enough to be elected. The disincentives are compounded by the relatively low turnout of voters under the age of 40, reducing the incentives to pursue policies that appeal to the young.
Despite the Labour Party’s puerile claims, we cannot blame it all on Liz Truss. Rather the cause of our economic problems – slow growth, anaemic productivity, high public debt – are numerous and structural and have been decades in the making.
Since the 1970s, the UK has had a below-replacement birth rate, which means that each emerging generation is now around a third smaller than the previous one. This is putting enormous pressure on the labour market, on social care and is forcing up the tax burden.
Since 1997, Britain has had a negative balance of trade: we buy more than we sell, and plug the gaps with foreign debt and by selling off national assets. Our bloated higher education system is costing the taxpayer a fortune and producing insufficient benefits for young people.
Housing price inflation has resulted in a direct transfer of wealth from ordinary workers to banks and wealthy property owners. High levels of immigration have put unbearable strain on wages, housing and national cohesion.
Solving these problems requires bold solutions. We need to re-invent our welfare system to support families. We must build large numbers of new houses and slash immigration to the tens of thousands. We must channel resources into growing our manufacturing base and military. We must jettison dozens of quangos and repeal Blairite human rights and equalities laws so that elected representatives once again have the authority to govern.
Few of these policies would be popular in the short term. So could they ever happen?
The Prime Minister’s announcement of a new ‘National Service’ scheme gives me hope. It is certainly a bold move, but as a policy it might just hit that democratic sweet spot. It is a policy that seeks to solve problems not just symptoms, by offering young people much-needed opportunities to gain skills, competence and resilience, and boosting the size of our under-strength armed forces – and, if properly explained, promises to be popular.
Politicians habitually underestimate the ability of the electorate to understand complex issues. But the people I speak to on the doorstep are generally well-informed, rational, and understand the trade-offs that are required to address Britain’s challenges. Voters will not always choose the chocolate biscuit. Let’s have more bananas.
