Democracy

Does the OBR run this country?

philmullan Democracy, Economic policy, Politics, State intervention , ,

The UK desperately needed something bold and innovative from this week’s spring budget. The nation’s infrastructure is literally crumbling, the energy grid is overloaded and local authorities are going bankrupt. The economy and public services are simply not working.

Of course, it would have been naive in the extreme to expect any answers to these problems from the current moribund Tory government – even as a General Election looms. And, given the UK’s stagnant economy, any chancellor would have struggled to conjure up the resources to fix all of this now in a single budget. Still, chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s budget was a paltry affair, even by his past standards.

Some have blamed the paucity of the chancellor’s budget statement on the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the ‘independent’ watchdog that determines whether the chancellor is sticking to his so-called fiscal rules.

But we should be wary of demonising the messenger. And any suggestion of ‘external’ constraints on the government should be rebuffed, as it lets our elected leaders shirk responsibility for their own decisions.

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The tyranny of government-by-spreadsheet

philmullan Democracy, Economic policy, state

The budget statement used to be a government’s big opportunity to unveil its political programme and allot society’s resources accordingly. It was an annual moment of huge political significance. Yet, from the late 1980s onwards, it has become an increasingly managerial exercise, drained of any broader political vision. Today’s budgets represent a triumph of technocracy over democratic politics. In the run-up to this spring’s budget on 6 March both Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves are continuing this practice of wanting to insulate economic policy from democracy. Surely we could re-politicise and re-democratise the pre-budget discussion.

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The slow decay of the British economy

philmullan Creative destruction, Democracy, Economic growth, Politics, The longest depression

The sense that Britain isn’t working anymore has too many facets to shrug off as undue gloom and doom, as the current government tries to do. The significant thing about all the shocks that have hit Britain’s economy in recent years is its relative lack of resilience. Compared to its developed peers, Britain has been less able to cope with external blows, and been slower to pull through.

Why is the British economy stuck in this rut? The historical economic explanation is not hard to fathom. Britain’s peculiar decrepitude is founded upon a greater dependence on aged capital in both the public and private sectors. But this historic atrophy in production and wealth creation doesn’t explain why so little political effort has gone into attempting to shake up its unusually outdated structures. Specifically, why has Britain’s political class of all stripes been so reluctant to make the hard choices needed for a better future?

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No one voted for Rishi Sunak’s austerity

philmullan Brexit, Democracy, Economic policy, Politics

The Brexit vote in 2016 shook up the British political class far beyond its relations with Europe. Before Brexit, before the referendum, successive governments had become detached and distant from those they represented – now they were forced once again to listen to the people. It was quickly recognised that the vote to leave the EU, in going against the government’s own advice, reflected a widespread disenchantment with the consensus of an out-of-touch elite.

Ever since, the governing Conservative Party has faced the difficult task of positioning itself in relation to this populist upsurge. Under Rishi Sunak, however, the latest Conservative government seems to have given up this struggle entirely. Instead, it is returning to type – to a form of managerial governance just as remote and unpopular as anything that went before the Brexit vote.

Read the full article here.