A Manifesto for a revitalised UK

Westminster: the heart of the problem

This post was drafted last summer after the resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and as we were witnessing the small caucus of Conservative Party members selecting his successor. I never posted it because my life was put on hold for many months but on rereading it today, I thought it had as much if not more relevance than it had last year.

The last few weeks (August 2022) have merely confirmed all that has been going wrong in the UK since the 2008 banking crisis. Successive regressive governments under Cameron, May, and Johnson have allowed or shown a dependency on a self-serving financial sector, a disregard for public services, a London-centric approach to resource allocation, a dismissal of localism, a perpetual austerity, too much dependency on the United States, a disdain for Europe, and an unrepentant disregard for the widening gap between rich and poor.

Westminster government needs to become more in touch with the realities of the world and the growing inequalities and poverty in the UK. Brexit and COVID-19 have amplified all the other reasons for the decline of the UK outlined above. It has trashed the UK's reputation on the world stage by retreating from collaboration and ceding the soft power that stemmed from Commonwealth connections, our membership and influence in the EU, International Aid, and the respect for trusted institutions like the BBC as well as our scientific and cultural organisations. We are in dire straits and the current Tory leadership elections have simply confirmed that neither of the final two candidates to be PM have the ability to lead us out of the doldrums at any time soon.

Watching or listening to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak is an exercise in despair as they refuse to say much other than to 'tax less' as they seek to fill Boris Johnson's boots and boasts. He will no doubt be enjoying the sunlit uplands of Tuscany, or wherever he can cadge a residence from one of his cabal of donors, whilst penning articles that celebrate his achievements and undermine his successor. No doubt he will break the rules on taking on other jobs so soon after being usurped by his party and he will return to writing pulp fiction for one of the right-wing newspapers

What is needed are not more soundbite policies with no chance of ever being delivered but some clear principles and long-term policies that are not an attempt to safeguard a few red-wall seats. Here is a starter list of what I would welcome and vote for. I doubt that any of them are in the mindset of our next PM, whoever he/she is and the question for the opposition parties is how committed are they to fundamentally modernising the broken machinery of government and democratic deficit that we have allowed to permeate a crumbling Westminster. 

• Rejoin the EU, if they would allow us. Failing that I would certainly expect any government to seek to rejoin the EU Trade Agreement and customs union. Like the majority of the current electorate, I regret the decision and the conflicts that have been caused by leaving the EU. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, Brexit has resulted in a 4% reduction in the UK's GDP, with Covid causing a further 2% reduction. The consequences are the loss of over a million people from the workforce, delays in the production and delivery of products, shortages and inflation of goods, as well as the loss of environmental regulations that cleaned our beaches and improved air quality. 
• Restore the Erasmus and Horizon programmes with other European countries. Travel has been stymied by the loss of the Euro Health Insurance card, as well as documentation overload and complex customs arrangements. The sense of belonging to a wider community of interest (the EU) with a collective set of standards from human rights to environmental, financial and manufactured product regulations never figured in the simplistic arguments foisted on the electorate by the Brexiteers. Despite all the suggestions from politicians that we should accept that we have left and move on, this would merely embed the mess that Brexit has created. It would be an act of political cowardice that glorifies the myths already dismissed by the majority of the electorate as well as most economists and academic studies.
• Establish a written constitution for a Federal UK. The next most important commitment must be consolidating and enhancing the powers of the four nations in the UK and embedding English Regions and Councils with devolved powers. This should involve a large-scale devolution away from Westminster but extend to the most local level of democratic control possible. Some powers should return to the EU to ensure compatibility with our neighbouring countries to ensure the consistency and safeguarding of environmental and fiscal regulations.
• Introduce a proportional voting system that reflects the voting intentions of its citizens. A government that has an 80-seat majority when only 29% of the electorate voted for it is neither democratic nor sustainable. Having no single party in power will lead to more time debating and refining legislation but it would prevent doctrinaire top-of-the-head policies such as deporting refugees to Rwanda or delaying legislation on building standards for tower blocks that resulted in the Grenfell Tower disaster. Collaboration among politicians with different perspectives is a more robust way of securing effective scrutiny. The present models that hive off scrutiny to non-executive bodies or bicameral bodies mean that effective scrutiny can often be ignored by the government or lost in action.
• Following these devolved changes, there should be opportunities (referendums) for the people of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to determine whether they wished to remain part of a more devolved and less centralised United Kingdom that is embedded in a written constitution or become independent countries. It is clear in Scotland at least that Westminster in its present guise has lost most of its credibility. Conversely, the SNP is faced with the Scottish GDP and its spending widening considerably since the last referendum in 2014 owing to the loss of North Sea Oil revenues. The choice should be between a revised and explicit written constitution for the UK and properly specified independence proposals. 
• Legislate to remove the tax havens in UK overseas territories and crown dependencies The three most significant tax havens are the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and Bermuda with Jersey and the former colony of Hong Kong also in the top ten. Along with Guernsey and the Isle of Man, they account for 29% of corporate tax abuse. They are used by global companies to reduce their taxable profits as well as hedge funds. The EU tax good governance is an international initiative to strengthen fair taxation and global tax transparency to tackle tax fraud, evasion, and avoidance. It was one of the less publicised arguments for Brexit. but there is an essential moral responsibility to significantly reduce tax evasion by global companies, criminal organisations, and extremely wealthy individuals.
• Support the proposals being made by the EU to ensure that tax from global companies is paid in the country where the business is conducted, not the low-tax countries that have manipulated their tax rates to acquire additional tax streams.
• Restrict foreign ownership of UK-based companies. By 2019, 66% of UK-listed shares were owned by foreign investors. The US owns a bigger share of UK companies than the UK whilst  China, India, and Middle Eastern countries are increasingly dominant in the investment and ownership of UK businesses.
• A more progressive taxation system must be introduced. This could be achieved by not uprating the tax thresholds at the higher bands. A supplementary tax could also be paid by companies on all earnings that exceed the minimum wage paid by the company by a factor of 10. In practice, this would be a company tax on anyone earning, approximately £150k per annum. Companies and their boards would have to decide whether these larger remunerations were necessary. Comparison with other nations suggests that the UK pays far higher salaries to top earners than other European countries. It may have attracted senior managers to be based in the UK but this in turn has been instrumental in busting the housing market and made the quest for levelling up another malfeasance.
• Tax rates and benefits for the self-employed should be standardised with Pay As You Earn rates. This has become more important as companies' sub-contract work and flexible working become ever more significant
• International Aid should be reinstated at 0.7% and the UK should focus its Foreign Policy on the use of its soft power through International Aid, a more active role in the UN and its various agencies, the BBC World Service, its charitable organisations, and the use of the English Language.
• Climate Change targets should be enforced along with a comprehensive funding package to insulate the housing stock, encourage community-owned solar farms and onshore wind turbines Investment in tidal power, hydrogen fuel for heavy vehicles, plant and equipment, and for the installation of district heating schemes, air source and ground source heat pumps. 
• Air travel within the UK should be restricted to island flights and longer-distance routes. Commercial flights for distances of less than 250 miles should be eliminated. Taxation on aviation and marine fuel should be introduced and the duty on fuel duty for agricultural and construction vehicles should be phased in to encourage the transfer to alternate carbon-free fuels.
• Legislate for new housing to be net zero with a mechanism to enforce this for both social and private housing
• A cap on private house rents should be established and enforced whilst there would be an encouragement of locally run social housing developments including the repurchase of vacant private rental properties.
• State ownership of railways and water companies should be legislated for in the first year of a new government. The poor performance of these essential functions since complex privatisation and franchising were introduced is deeply damaging to customers and the environment. The regulators have been dilatory in their fight against profiteering and dubious practices.
• Community Care Plans should be produced by all Councils with a commitment by the government to provide additional funding. The NHS should not take responsibility for community care. It would be a low priority in competition with powerful professional groupings within the health sector.
• Regions and Councils should have the power to establish community land banks managed locally for the benefit of communities

I could go on but the most important requirement is that there is a recognition of the need for radical reshaping of our democratic institutions and engagement with citizens. Collaboration between parties is essential, but equally important is the imperative of involvement of the devolved governments, councils, and communities.