Brexit Britain is overwhelmed by pettifogging bureaucrats.
Hamstrung by red tape and bottlenecks the UK is being overtaken by its rivals
It may seem the least of our worries, but it is none the less powerfully symbolic of a nation in seemingly irretrievable decline – the proliferation of potholes on our roads. Yes, potholes, of all things. Perhaps it is the rheumatics of approaching old age or some such other distortion of memory, yet it can surely never have been as bad as this. It is also hard to think of any other European country where the problem is as acute.
Few car journeys – either in town or country – are made these days without risk to undercarriage or wheel from some wretched pothole.
There are lots of excuses, the peculiarities of the British weather being the most commonly cited. These make our roads particularly susceptible to deterioration.
Central government is also widely blamed. Local authorities accuse the Treasury of creating a “pothole postcode lottery” in cutting their highway maintenance budgets by £500m since 2020-21. The last Budget earmarked £200m to help correct the problem, but thus far it seems to have made little or no difference.
In any case, our growing failure to correct such an obviously fixable contagion makes a useful metaphor for everything that’s wrong with today’s Britain.
Like getting a passport or driving licence renewed, or securing an available slot for a driving test, nevermind seeing a doctor face to face, referral for urgent cancer treatment, or timely attending to in Accident and Emergency, the whole country seems to have ground to a halt. Can it really be worse here than the rest of Europe? Yes it is, business leaders with international exposure repeatedly tell me.
The whole country is drowning in bureaucracy, planning constraints, work-from-home paralysis, lack of get-up-and-go, the nonsense of equality, diversity and inclusion diktats, and dispiriting dependence on an increasingly moribund state.I exaggerate, perhaps, but only a little. It is the same sort of national malaise that infected Britain in the 1970s, that one largely caused by overmighty unions, but this one essentially by government failure.In a speech to a Centre for Policy Studies conference this week, the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, drew attention to some truly alarming projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Britain’s long-term trend growth rate, the OBR recently said, had fallen to as little as 1.6pc – if this sounds bad, it is actually one of the more optimistic such projections – yet largely because of demographic pressures, state spending, even excluding fast mounting debt interest payments, would continue to grow at around 2pc a year in real terms.If state expenditure grows more strongly than the economy, then it means both higher taxes still and even more borrowing.Without action, the OBR projected, public sector debt would surge to 217pc of GDP by 2071, more than double where it is currently. Alternatively, it would require tax rises of £200bn a year by 2071 in today’s money, or a doubling of the basic rate of income tax and the main rate of employee National Insurance.These are admittedly only projections, which in practice won’t happen because they can’t; the markets wouldn’t tolerate such extreme levels of public debt – we are not Japan, with its massive savings and current account surpluses – nor would households be willing to cough up the extra taxes. Even on current planning, the UK tax burden is already on course to reach its highest level since the Second World War.Yet the all too obvious alternative solution, which is higher growth, is nowhere to be seen. Nor are the measures needed to galvanise it.In practice, the reverse is true. At every turn, there is another stumbling block or deterrent. We may not be able to compete with Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act on the mega-bucks subsidies and tax breaks that are beginning to turbocharge America’s green transition, but nimbler, faster and more investor-friendly approval processes should surely be possible.Seemingly, they are not. If they were, then the investment would flow. But instead it takes anything up to seven years to get a new offshore wind farm up and running including associated transmission infrastructure, against little more than a year in the US and many parts of Europe.At every stage, from landfall to the required substations, and the new pylons to carry the power from where it is generated to where it is used, there are planning objections and bureaucratic constraints. Why invest in Britain when it is so much easier elsewhere? A different sort of obstruction stands in the way of future North Sea oil and gas development – punishing and wholly destructive net zero commitments. Labour, which at this stage is likely to form the next government in little more than a year’s time, plans to entirely ban new oil and gas development, effectively signing the industry’s death warrant. No such stupidity emanates from otherwise ultra-green Norway, or indeed from the US, where oil and gas reserves are still considered a key part of energy security.Never mind the jobs and skills that will soon disappear to other jurisdictions if Labour goes ahead with its ban, the move will further add to Britain’s already widening current account deficit. Nor will it even reduce Britain’s emissions. Even if Britain were to meet its net zero targets – in reality, not a chance – fossil fuels will continue to have a long future ahead of them. But rather than partially catering for the nation’s needs ourselves, we will instead be forced to import the stuff from Saudi Arabia, Qatar or other somewhat suspect and unreliable regimes elsewhere.This is economically an extraordinarily destructive strategy, and worse, it also effectively destroys any future Britain might have in what promises to be a key green technology – carbon capture.The skills, geological knowhow and infrastructure involved in pumping carbon into depleting oil fields is substantially the same as that used in extracting it. But again, what’s the point in sustaining such a capacity if the industry that currently sustains it is to be closed down. The approach adopted by Downing Street’s Conservative incumbents is little better. Many industry insiders say they might as well go the whole hog and like Labour ban future development, such is the deterrent effect of the windfall profit tax regime.For business as a whole, there are still lots of reasons to invest in Britain, not least its skills base and higher educational system, which continues to churn out well trained people whose talents are in strong demand in today’s knowledge based economy. But increasingly, there are not enough of those reasons to tip the balance.By making trade with Europe more difficult, we’ve only further undermined our attractions.Both Brexit and Covid should have been used as an opportunity for root-and-branch reform of our public services and stifling regulatory environment, making Britain fit for the 21st century. But instead those opportunities have been squandered in missteps and demeaning political theatre. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be laughable. DT
