There would seem to be a dominant narrative around that Britain is in decline and that only a RADICAL shake up can shift the nation's downward trajectory, but could it be that all of this sometimes almost apocalyptic talk of decline overestimates public terror whilst distracting us away from the genuine work that's needed to turn things around...?
And maybe we don't need to change that much after all...?
Reform UK is loving it...
A couple of decades of the UK flatlining on the back of successive global crisees (which are the norm BTW) has meant BOTH main parties have had a nice run at FAILING to IMPROVE the life chances of MOST people.
The tories failed, and now Labour is failing too, it seems that middle of the road politics is not up to the job of turning the UK's fortunes around...
And along come Reform UK and offer us the solution we need to sort things out... basically stopping migration and then tax cuts combined with improving public services.
That's clearly nonsense!
Is life in Britain really that bad...?!?
Granted we've got our challenges... immigration, rising welfare costs, an ageing population, the struggle to pay the national debt, and the fact that the government's got very little wiggle room in terms of increasing taxes.....
But MAYBE for the most part, the challenges the UK faces can be met by determined reform, and NOT the actual REFORM UK "(GENIUS branding on their part mind there!)
But what could we do....?
Being honest with people would be a start.... we need a government with a properly global outlook.... our two main challenges - inward migration and climate change are not isolated. We need to think and have policy that is MORE not less global, and not just focused on trade either.
Stopping immigration ISN'T going to turn Britain's fortunes around. Granted we need to be more in control of it, but that's also a global issue, but even if we stopped ALL migrants on small boats and all other illegal entries, we'd still be struggling!
Here's my big idea... make people WORK for benefits...(unless obvs if their on top-up and also working) as a friend of mine says, they've got eyeball tech now, so even someone in an iron lung can do SOMETHING!
Rebalancing taxation - I think we need to lift the minimum tax threshold by a few grand, and also introduced a radical inheritance tax, children don't deserve the fruits of their parents' labour, simple as that.
I'm pretty happy with our tax regime otherwise.
Tighten up public private contracts is something else - too many private companies have been extracting from our taxes. It's not that hard to do this!
Also massive infrastructure investment on the back of this.
Anyway, just thinking out loud!