dor do political parties agree because they agree on their goals or their fears? Phil Tinline argues in his book The death of consensus that it is shared nightmares, not aspirations, that create unanimity in politics. This might explain why a new consensus seemed to be forming earlier this year, epitomized in The Economist by the character of Mrs. Heevesan acronym for the Conservative Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and his Labor shadow, Rachel Reeves.
Both politicians were temperamentally ill-suited to their parties’ radical political experimentation under populist leadership. Neither would accept the characterization on which they strongly agreed. But faced with an inflationary shock, both Mr Hunt and Ms Reeves retreated to a cozy consensus of solid money, pro-business policies With elections likely next year, this agreement period is coming to an end. That’s not bad.
Mrs. Reeves this week laid out her political dividing lines in a speech and politics paper in Washington. He accurately pointed out the original sin of austerity. Workers are right to argue that only an activist state can green the economy and dilute harmful business concentration. Creating an independent industrial strategy council, disbanded by the Conservative government, on a statutory basis is a good idea. incubated by the Public Policy Research Institute. Stronger “collective bargaining rights” to tackle economic insecurity and low wages are also welcome. This is territory conservatives can only occupy with empty rhetoric.
Mr Hunt, on the other hand, laid out a Panglossian view of Britain’s economic success in the pages of the Telegraph last friday It is true that Great Britain, according to the Bank of England, will avoid a recession this year and that the country’s growth prospects have improved. But online readers of the Telegraph seemed less impressed: many saw Mr. Hunt an interventionist politician and fiscal as tall as his shadow. The chancellor’s sunny take is an attempt to change that view.
Conservative voters say pollsters that the economy is the most important issue facing the country, followed by immigration and then inflation. They seem more convinced than the rest of the country that the prime minister will deliver on his promise to halve inflation. Although it is coming down, the cost of living crisis remains persistent, with grocery prices jumping 19%. But that may not bother the rich Tories base. Own their homes flatly means they are also insulated from the painful medicine of higher interest rates prescribed by the Bank of England and endorsed by Mr. Hunt, to reduce the rate of price increase. A core Tory vote sees a prize in lower inflation – fiscal space for Mr Hunt to offer them a pre-election gift such as cuts. inheritance tax.
The Tories and Labor now have different nightmares. The voters of the latter to worry that the challenge of inequality remains unsaid. The gains from growth brought about by globalization were not widely shared. Not only the regions lost, but also the lower income groups. No other large European country is uneven like Great Britain. The Resolution Foundation calculates that, as a measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient, Britain in 2027 would be more unequal than the US today. Under Ms Reeves’ tax rules, this grim future could be avoided by levying taxes on wealth and using the money raised to repair public services. Unfortunately, the parameters of political debate remain firmly fixed to avoid saying it out loud. This has to change.
