Everything will get worse

Britain’s problems may have solutions, but they will be slow and painful. Things will get worse before they get better.

British politics is in a “battle of ideas”. Ever since Tony Blair’s long essay on everything the government was doing wrong, intellectual rivals have tried to come up with their own solution on how to govern the country. From fighting inequality to harnessing the AI revolution, each has different prescriptions, but all have the same problem. Things are going to get worse.

British politicians are optimistic: things can get better, solutions are there to be found, and “Great” Britain is begging to re-emerge. If only we increased housing, lowered immigration, and subsidised the right sort of folk, things would swiftly return to order. Sadly for us, even if we were to do everything right, things will take a long time to get better, and not before they get worse.

Everyone agrees there is a huge housing shortage. One group says Britain is over 4 million homes short. Prices are high and rents suffocating. In response to this, there has been a spate of political energy. This has resulted in more mottos than houses. London consistently misses its housing targets, and although we get piecemeal reforms from the government, the truth is depressing: the gap is still going in the wrong direction.

Even if things were to improve and magically the nation’s planning issues were erased for housing, there would still be the building time for over 4 million homes. From location to sewage, water, transport, or the workforce, actually getting the homes built is probably a decade, if not decades-long, project.

There might be headwinds to prices in London as the graduate job market fails to recover, but the overall picture is depressing. This is not meant to be a happy piece, but with the impasse on planning decisions exemplified by a recent decision in Peckham, there are few reasons to be optimistic in the long run. Slogans may actually become successful supply-side reforms, but the effects on building housing and prices will be a long, long time coming. The fact that housing targets are being missed year after year means things will get worse before they get better.

Across the economy, we see a similar picture. Energy, another area which was included prominently in Blair’s manifesto, faces the same problems as housing. The infrastructure which would make energy cheaper would come with the same lag, even if every supply-side reform in the book was passed tomorrow. Nothing will be easy, and silver bullets do not exist.

Even if we overcame the difficulties we face in just three years and, from 2029-39, replicated our greatest recent period of per capita GDP growth from 1993-2003, we would still be a long way off America and barely equal with Germany and Australia. No one realistically thinks this is going to happen, nor should they. The idea that Britain is going to recover the wealth it needs to solve its democratic problems in even the medium term is, sadly, far too optimistic.

The economy is one thing, but other issues won’t come with quick or easy solutions. Immigration, the most important issue for the right of the political spectrum, is another area where any solutions will be at least as long as they are difficult.

Even the 2nd Trump administration, with far greater institutional latitude than a British government could imagine, has failed to meet its maximalist deportation goals. Although numbers have increased, two US citizens protesting were shot dead by law enforcement in Minneapolis, at huge political cost.

Reform UK promises to deport 600,000 people in the first five years of being in government, but this would take Manhattan Project levels of competence and state support. Decreasing legal immigration is far more achievable, as Labour have already shown, but this isn’t enough to quell public sentiment on the issue. Deporting enough people to significantly change public perception of the issue is a genuinely unprecedented task. Everything will be a lot harder and a lot slower than any politician can realistically promise. This will be a problem.

A society not only trapped in a zero-sum economic cycle but recognising that fact will be radically different. For the middle class, social mobility will mean children being worse off than their parents. We are already seeing this move towards nepotism in the graduate job market, but as panic to maintain position ensues, this will be widespread across society.

British politics has to reckon with the fact that even if things get better, which is far from guaranteed, they will probably get worse first. Rents will remain high, jobs will be harder to find, and angst about migration will still be ever present. Any serious solution will take far longer than the democratic cycle, so how can any party stay in power despite almost inevitable disappointment? Faced with such an environment, having as coherent a coalition as possible, while still big enough to win an election, is vital. Politicians shouldn’t look to the centre ground but to the consolidation of force.

Those arguing for changes to British society, be it through economic reforms, immigration, or any other issue, will have to sell a mission. They won’t need voters but adherents. The task will not be to change government, but to change society itself.