Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Shelter’s claim that Britain needs 3 million new affordable homes at the rate of 300,000 new builds a year is both timely and on the ball. The present system, in which a handful of new social housing is completed each year, while millions of families live in rented accommodation they cannot afford which has to be subsidised by the government, is economic vandalism of the very worst kind. Because it enriches the well off at the expense of the less well off , who do the essential jobs which make civilised life bearable, but are not highly paid. Additionally it sucks endless cash into fixed assets and starves investment in new wealth creation. This knocks on to produce low productivity per capita and  cash strapped public services.

So a bold plan to reconstruct this lopsided and nationally damaging economic model, by building affordable homes on a scale not seen since the 1950s, eloquently promoted by Lord O’Neill on the BBC World at One, is very welcome. It is a big pity that our fractured and dysfunctional government will do nothing more than talk about it.

The NHS is chronically underfunded, the more so if you include social care. The much trumpeted £20 billion a year extra  to be reached over five years is really inadequate, as the government very well knows. The budget of roughly  £125 billion sounds a lot but in the context of the entire health system it is not.

The problem is and always has been that you cannot provide an infinite service on a finite budget, so this is not really a problem of amount. It is a problem of structural funding where the resource does not expand as demand does. Until that problem is faced up to and resolved, the whole NHS argument will continue, because ever more problems of underfunding and understaffing will present themselves, whatever short term fixes are organised.

Therefore what we have to look for today in the much trailed and leaked 10 Year NHS Plan is a new funding model which relates income to demand, rather than the reverse. Such a model can be, as it is now, a public service, but it would require dedicated rather than general taxation to pay for it. With the government’s two flagship responsibilities, Universal Credit and Brexit in varying degrees of chaos, indicating a systemic failure of governance, we must not raise high hopes. Better a pleasant surprise than yet another disappointment.

You can well ask. Never has the political situation in this country been more confused and uncertain when a major constitutional and economic change is bearing down upon a parliament unable to agree about anything. May still thinks she can get her deal through the House. Perhaps. But Perhaps not. Then what?

A crash Brexit. Meaning what? Is the government ready for that? Are the measures in place to prevent a national emergency? Can we move smoothly from being in the EU to being out of it? What happens to Northern Ireland? What about the ports? You know the list. It goes on forever.

As for May’s political future, it is impossible even to guess whether she has one. She appears to be disaster proof. She governs without a cabinet, or one that is organised into a collective body. Instead she has a rampaging collection of ministers speaking with many tongues, a lot of them forked. None of them can agree. Best of all for May is that none can agree who could replace her. So possibly she will go on. Not on and on. On just for a bit.

But in the end Brexit will either happen in some form or it will be stopped. Then it will be conclude one way or another that cobbles together a majority both in parliament and the country. But it will not be over because a substantial minority will be bitterly upset at the outcome. That will make reuniting our country the political, social and economic priority. Even the Union itself will be damaged and in need of repair. A party itself bitterly divided like the Tory party cannot possibly provide the national leadership the mess will demand, not least because, through their disunion, it is  a mess of their own making.

Trump is obsessing about his Wall. His redneck base loves it. But the majority of Americans are repelled by it because walls are a very un-American idea. That fact and the desire for an affordable national healthcare system providing universal cover no matter what infirmities you have, is the reason that the Republicans lost the House and lost it big(ly). It is also the reason there are now more women and more ethnic minorities represented in the House than ever before. Not only will that make a huge difference to the quality of the debate on Capitol Hill, it will also make it more relevant, because these new congress people are there because they speak for the issues which matter to the mass of ordinary Americans. There is, however, a telling statistic which should terrify all modern day Republicans. Over 90% of their members in the House are white male. In the case of the Democrats white males account for less than 40%.

Apart from his Wall, Trump has a full in-tray. He has to fix a credible deal with North Korea, he must sort out his confused policy in the Middle East, he has to negotiate a workable trade deal with China, he should stop antagonising Europe and what is his administration’s policy on Russia?

Domestically, apart from restarting the government, he has to fix infrastructure renewal without further delay. It is easy to get a short term economic boost from tax cuts and de-regulation, but those things pass through the economic system fast like a dose of prunes. What comes after will determine Trump’s presidential future. If he keeps the economy rolling with rising living standards and record jobs, it could be quite rosy. But if that all falters, he does not have one.