If the current opinion polls are to be believed, between them the Conservative party and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Ltd company command the support of 44% of the electorate. In our first-past-the-post voting system, it is likely that number would elect a far right government with a sizeable, perhaps even a landslide, majority. Given that those most likely to vote for right-wing parties are old, it is interesting to consider what they – we! – would end up voting for. The right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange gives us more than a hint of what a right-wing would do in office.
Policy Exchange was founded in 2002 primarily by Conservative MPs Michael Gove and Francis Maude. It is a free market organisation, very much opposed to what it would call the state. That all sounds a little soft and fluffy until you consider what opposition to the state means in practice.
In a recent paper, Policy Exchange expressed its belief that public spending in GDP should be reduced by three percentage points, bringing it down to pre Covid levels. All well and good. Who actually wants wasteful public spending, right? We need to live within our means, don’t we? Let’s look at what they are proposing:
- Freezing the state pension for three years
- Abolishing the triple lock and raising the state pension age to 70 for anyone currently under 55
- The abolition of the winter fuel payment
- The end of free prescriptions
- The withdrawal of pensioner bus passes for all but the poorest
- The introduction of a £20 charge for GP appointments
- The removal of childcare subsidies
- Cuts to disability benefits
- A freeze to all welfare payments for three years
- The removal of free school meals for young children
Ah yes, that wasteful public spending. What did you think it meant? Stop government departments over-ordering paperclips? No. It means severe, even crippling, cuts to some essential services and some not so essential. But here’s the thing. Policy Exchange reflects mainstream conservative – and Conservative – thinking. For the far right, like Badenoch’s Tory party and, especially, Farage’s privately owned business, masquerading as a political party (Reform UK Ltd) , these would represent small beer indeed. Farage himself has proclaimed himself a supporter of the US medical system where one takes out insurance for healthcare purposes and the abolition of our big state NHS, which is currently free at the point of use.
To call the electorate stupid would itself be stupid and patronising, so I have to assume that the 44% referred to earlier are committed to the low tax, small state, which would entail at the very least the cuts demanded by the Policy Exchange. Millions of pensioners would suddenly have to pay prescription charges (taxes), they’d have to pay bus fares like everyone else, they’d lose the winter fuel payment once and for all, they’d have to pay £20 per GP appointment and their pensions would be permanently reduced in real terms. When I hear a senior citizen say, as I heard one say just last week, “The sooner Nigel Farage gets in the better”, I assume he has taken the above into account.
At a time when the only political debate appears to be about stopping Johnny Foreigner coming over here, claiming our benefits while simultaneously taking our jobs (they’re not and they’re not by the way), the real life consequences appear to have been forgotten or simply ignored. But maybe not. Those opinion polls also say migration is the second most important issue affecting the country, after the cost of living, perhaps we would accept mass repatriation of people who live and work here legally at the cost of losing all those benefits we enjoy from the state?
I favour the big state because the big state means a strong and properly funded NHS, high quality schools, adequate funding for our armed services and police, dignity on old age, a social care system that works for all and even reducing bloody pot holes. You know, all that government waste which actually isn’t waste at all.
The next general election will be in just under four years, so there’s plenty of time for us to consider how we want our country to go forward. In a very honest report, Policy Exchange has set out the mainstream right’s wish to see major cuts to public spending. It may be that by 2029, a new Tory/Reform UK Ltd government will be elected to enact Policy Exchange’s ideas.
“The sooner Nigel Farage gets in, the better” is certainly one view. It certainly isn’t mine, but what the public gets what the public wants and if the mood is that Policy Exchange has the right vision for the future – and 44% of us seem to think so at the moment – it might be an idea to start saving. Either way, I know a good food bank we can use and we will probably need to.
