The FT has a headline this morning that says:
The article that follows is predictable. The fear is of a backlash against public investment. The bias is to the car. And with the far-right now setting the agenda for both the Tories and Labour, hardly surprisingly rail bosses are worried.
But then who isn't?
And isn't the headline far too specific? Isn't it the UK as a whole that is in managed decline? That is how most people very clearly feel about it. To suggest that this is just an issue for our railways is far too specific .
So, what can be done about this?
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we need a new pro-people economic policy. We have had policy for bankers and big business for forty years now. It has failed. This new policy starts with low interest rates.
And the government needs to spend more, not least on employing more people to provide the essential services that the UK once enjoyed, but now lacks. And they need decent pay.
Then we need to invest more. We have no choice. Not only is the infrastructure of this country worn out due to neoliberal neglect, we also need to become sustainable and we are a long way from that as yet.
As a result we need to accept that the richest in this country will need to pay a lot more tax. If we are to reverse decline that has to happen.
My contribution is the Taxing Wealth Report. It shows that raising the required tax is possible, with ease. What that means is that decline is an option, not a necessity. Most of politics is a long way from appreciating that. As a result they have no answers to the questions now posed to them. That's depressing. But it need not be this way. It will just take quite lot of courage to change things, that's all.
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Labour List has published Labour’s policy stances across a range of issue. A long yet incomplete list of what needs to be fixed in Britain. Little commitment to detail. New Green and Workers Deals.
https://labourlist.org/2023/10/labour-national-policy-forum-final-document-summary-policy-manifesto-party-conference/
The release of CPO property north of Birmingham suggests scorched earth tactics by Sunak, as do other moves with contracts, further privatisation, etc. The suggestion they have the private money to finish the line into Euston shows their priorities.
I live near Lichfield (15 or so miles North of Brum), where the massive disruption and destruction of country side has occurred, but no line as yet. Speculation here is that the properties/land will be sold off – probably to Tory donor zombie estate building giants. The Tory county council is still wittering on about potential benefits!
Interesting to see Labour’s response. I’m not full of hope that they’ll talk up transport nationally, especially the North, and accept HS2 as is.
If construction is already underway it’s part of HS2 Phase 1 which is unaffected by the U-turn. Phase 1 includes a section of line connecting Birmingham to the existing line to provide access to and from places further north.
Might a relevant alternative phrase be, “Planned and managed decline”?
The situation we are in concerning HS2 is very complicated indeed leading to plenty of cognitive dissonance.
Firstly there is the issue as to whether HS2 should have been attempted at all. I say not. The way it was conceived was as a budget line – not a proper project – so that the government could say it was investing in rail or some form of investment.
Yet this same government promised to electrify the Midland Main Line and then dropped that as well as a number of other routes – the Trans Pennine route for example which is very busy indeed and terribly under-invested in.
I’ve been on the high speed lines all over Europe and many shadow existing routes but stop at fewer places.
Secondly, passenger demand is high – but is it? Most of the trains running are smaller with fewer coaches. Nearly every train I’ve been on recently has been busy. A standard locomotive hauled intercity train used to have eight coaches; many local trains had three. Trains these days are much shorter and seating capacity is not as dense as many of the older trains.
Prior to HS2, network capacity was being reduced or kept at the reduced levels that created a false grasp of running costs to attract privateers (the taking up of a lot of track and therefore capacity) on many routes. How much of that capacity has been restored?
And there is poor imagination and use being made of existing routes. The Settle and Carlisle line needs looking at again and in my view should be electrified – powerful electric traction would make mince meat of the route and its engineering and create high speed pathways.
As for all network electrification – I’m all for it, even to the far north. If the Swedes and Norwegians can run railways in winter climates, so can we – or should I say, the Scottish. But the government won’t do that, because the Rolling Stock operators have invested heavily in diesel and need to get a return on their latest dirty carbon investments.
But as Richard alludes to a lot, the bigger threat to rail is not from the cancelling of HS2, it’s the general poor attitude to investment that seems to be gripping all of Europe at the moment as we struggle with the notion that even though 2008 was a private banking fiasco, somehow it is related to public investment and the (false) choice is to either bail out banks or invest in public services and social security systems – ‘people’.
So, we have continuity for the banks and dis-continuity for what is social and economic infrastructure, courtesy of the Bank of England and the European Central Bank – both dominated by Neo-liberal ‘ethics’ and staffed by too many ex-private bankers.
And to make matters worse, it looks like we are going to have another PPI or Channel Tunnel scenario if HS2 is to go to Euston.
The wanking bankers win again. It’s got to stop.
https://weownit.org.uk/blog/rail-privatisation-top-30-failures-30-years
It needs renationalisation.
Recent data has illustrated the degree to which the UK us underinvested compared to other countries. A few days in France provides stark anecdotal evidence. As you have said previously the UK has been asset stripped and services flown into the ground. There is a remedy which you have quantified. We need the vision and commitment to deliver it.
I think we DO need to be in managed decline. Managed decline of….
1) Use of limited physical resources
2) Expectations of our global influence
3)… and more, no doubt
Our current politicians won’t say this for fear of the electorate…. they still bang on about “Growth”.
But “managed decline” does NOT mean a managed decline of our quality of life or well being! Indeed, that quality depends very much on managing the decline of the things that are unsustainable. We need a political leader who will state this as fact…. and then propose solutions (perhaps harvested from this blog).
The last 40 years have been driven by the idea that “‘grow the pie’ and everyone gets more”. First, not everyone has got more; those with already big slices get even bigger slices, those with crumbs still get only crumbs. Second, we now know that the pie cannot be grown without limit… and we are at/beyond that limit now.
So, at a fundamental level, we need to bake a different pie – one that does not destroy the planet. Also, that second (or even third) slice of pie delivers very little to the eater. Overall well-being would be best served if everyone got a slice…indeed, NOT eating a third slice is probably good for those denied it!
Well said
And right
That is not the decline we are getting
Rather than use the word ‘decline’ we should be sticking to the word ‘change’ as this is scary enough to the petrol heads & NIMBYS we are having to deal with, but other than that I agree. Green should be proposed as changing from one growth mode to another more sustainable one.
Your bit about the pie is spot on because the current ‘pie’ on offer is an extractive one, which was in my opinion anyway always been the private sector’s aim – to use investment as a Trojan horse as a means to gain ownership to extract rents – like we have seen in PPI and even the Channel Tunnel. The great dirty truth that time has reified about Thatcherism. We need as you say a more redistributive pie in our national economic diet.
Making comparisons though with France & Germany does not hide the fact that having travelled on TGV and ICE networks as late as 2019, I found them to be rather tired and I’m still of the opinion that as public investment fatigue hits the EU or as it waits for next private banking crash, this will remain the case.
If so, what stands out for me is (1) how half hearted we have become about public infrastructure investment and (2) private banking collapses and subsequent bail outs have now to me at least become normalised as to be expected as a consequence of the current not-very -redistributive growth pie you speak of above. Central banks seem to accept that crashes are the price we pay for growth – limited in distributive benefits though it is – and this anticipation retards public spending and indeed continues to press it down into the arms of the bankers who have it all sewn up?
At the end of the day, whats the difference? Whether dolling out cash for crashes, or dolling out for decent public infrastructure, healthcare, social security – the money still has to go out the door. It’s just as things stand, a very small cabal of people are benefitting from this arrangement and using their influence to continue to do so in broad daylight.
Anyway, all this talk of pies is making me hungry – time for breakfast.
We do need to get the basics of your TW report in front of Labour – and get them to respond.
At least get them to engage them with the thought that there may be some low hanging fruit – to open up possibilites – but they seem reluctant to engage with that.
I am not optimistic that they will engage on this
Have you seen this, Richard? What should happen now?
https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?e=00443cdc17&u=f1c42fae5214b3ee59aab75ab&id=d7b9326610
Good Law Project.
I have
It is unclear what happens next
They will not be asking for tax from 1987 onwards, that’s for sure
We have to await HMRC. I suspect they will appeal, unfortunately
They might also just ignore it given the nature of the hearing
I agree. I wasn’t thinking about HMRC getting all the tax back.
What I did think was that it would be armour for your taxing wealth ideas. The more people know about this, the better for your ideas.
Noted
And thanks
I am back on that on Monday
Richard,
“They might also just ignore it given the nature of the hearing”.
I am not clear exactly how you are responding here; are you proposing there is sufficient leeway in the application of the tax, that it is in some way discretionary which way HMRC interprets its determination?
This concession (for that is what this tax arrangement was) has been operated without legal backing since 1987, so yes, I am saying that.
Before the Supergun scandal (another Parliament deceiving Thatcher blunder of 1990 nobody remembers), HM Customs was run by an independent Board, reporting to no Government Minister whatsoever (I know they took great pride in their unique independence in Whitehall). Customs had extraordinary independent powers accessible to nobody else in Britain. It was because of this, it blundered into a Government-Security Service operation that was arming Saddam Hussein clandestinely (and effectively lying to Parliament), among other things; and blew the scandal wide open. I thought this gross failure of supervision* had ended with the political blowback from Supergun (Scott Report).
Reading your comment, Richard I visited the UK Government website HMRC to clarify just how their activities are overseen: “We report to Parliament through our Treasury minister who oversees our spending. The Treasury lead on strategic tax policy and policy development. HMRC leads on policy maintenance and implementation. This arrangement for policy making is known as the ‘policy partnership'” (gov.uk HMRC ‘About us’).
Policy Partnership? I have no idea what that means; but probably both ‘it will never happen again’ and ‘nothing has changed’.
I suspect the poor sods on PAYE, or Universal Credit will not be offered much discretion.
* You may well ask which Party needed supervision most; HMRC, Government or the Intelligence Services. The answer is – this is Britain. You can’t trust anyone.
Much to agree with
Incidentally, I always thought ‘The Concession’ was a putt Nicklaus gave Jacklin to tie the Ryder Cup in 1969; but then however implausible, I am just an old sentimentalist.
Managed?
Look almost anywhere in this country and you can see the damage caused to our economy and our society by the Thatcherite decision not to fund basic infrastructure over the last 44 years.
If at the age of eleven you were fortunate enough to have a good geography teacher one of the first things you would have learnt was the necessity of infrastructure for the development of an economy.
I live within 15 miles of four very similar market towns.
Fifty years ago they all had light industry and were thriving hubs for retail, local administration and nationalised services.
Most of that has now gone but two of the towns, mostly as a result of good fortune, have seen major improvements in both road and rail infrastructure and, as near as anywhere is outside of London, are still just about surviving and developing.
The other two have not been so lucky. No new roads and no improved rail lines. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that they are both dying. They both recently featured in the top twenty worst places to live in Britain.
If you could somehow persuade Rishi Sunak to talk honestly and openly, I wonder if he has any idea of these realities.
Perhaps he could write a pamphlet and call it, “The view from my Helicopter”
Beautifully and succinctly put! A beacon shining in the darkness!
Richard,
Labour has announced it will require primary school teachers to supervise the brushing of their pupils teeth as part of a proposal to “rescue” the nation’s dental health.
Why doesn’t Labour have the confidence to state:
1. that in order to “rescue” the education of the 93% of our children who are state educated that Labour will be raising the funds to start replacing the school buildings that the Tories have seen fit not to replace and increase funding for the state system; and
2. if the markets, media, Tories think this is ” not economically sound” get real, without this the UK faces a very poor future.
Of course there is little chance of this happening.
It’s a ‘cosmetic’ solution.
Many towns are without NHS dentists or they are not taking on new patients.
Properly funding the dental service is the real solution.
Labour’s refusal to countenance the fundamental change of direction needed to improve the lives of ordinary people plays into the hands of the Tory Fascists because it will feed disillusionment with the political system in general and could lead to victory for an even more openly Fascist party in 5 or 10 years time.
As if we didn’t know it already, Starmer’s remarks on HS2 this morning (just a week ago I heard a Labour spokesman clearly commit to building the project in full, regardless of Sunak’s decision) underline the pausity of political choice available in Britain. This case – tax more to spend more and tax the rich the most – should be mainstream, seems not just forelorn but almost utopian at the moment.
I noticed headlines saying “HS2 will not extend to Euston without private funding”.
I read this as meaning that the Euston branch will be built only with private funding in order to reap private profits. Terminals must be cash cows, as we see with airports with hundreds of thousands of people each day paying exorbitant prices for basics.
“The Uk rail industry is fearful of the future”
What UK rail industry? There is no British rail industry. A couple of foreign companies, but that is all.
There has been a TOTAL failure since late 1960s to, for example, electrify the businest lines.
When I did a report on rail in circa 2008, I noted that perhaps 34% of UK’s rail network was electrified (and that was high due to the 3rd rail nonsense in the south east).
No gov has properly invested.
The book “The Wrong Track” outlines the disaster that is the Uk rail system & the imbeciles that had the power to make a not-great situation much much worse.
All symptomatic of a goverining elite that never had the plot to lose it.
We lost the plot on rail from Beeching onwards.
Hi, Mike,
Do you mean “On the Wrong Track; how ideology and incompetence wrecked Britain’s railways”, by Christian Wolmar?
If so, yes, an excellent but very concerning read.
“They never had the plot to lose”.
The perfect definition of Neoliberalism.
From a 2014 report in the National archives
Employees aged 21 in 1995 earned 40% more after adjusting for inflation by the age of 39 than those aged 21 in 1975 did up to the age of 39
Whatever the policy you are complaining about richard i suggest we want more of it!!!
Having worked in high tech industry throughout the period you mention, I would be very interested to see that statistic explored.
I and all my friends fall into exactly the cohort you mention and neither my or their experience tallies with that statistic, but who knows we could all be wrong.
I cant imagine that as an accountant you can work out how much needs to be spent to keep the UK’s physical ‘infrastructure’ in good order. If we are not spending that amount then the public realm is deteriorating.
As a Green Councillor on Sheffield City Council on Wednesday 4th October i presented a motion on funding public services in local government. I asked the Council to note and consider taxing the richest 1% through The Taxing Wealth Report.
It was politely listened to. Labour tried to dismiss it by claiming it had not been published yet. LibDems voted against because it would raise taxes full stop.
However the Council are wanting a presentation when the report is complete.
I had some supportive comments at the end of the meeting. One of the councillors saying they would have suppoted it if they wernt whipped by their party.
The Council is in no overall control with 14 Greens.
I am reasonably optomistic that many of the Councillors are wanting to take this forward.
How do I contact Richard to follow up?
Also I am happy for our motion to be shared and used wherever it can get a hearing.
Bernard
I would be delighted to assist
Contact me at richard.murpy[at]taxresearch.org.uk
And I would love to see the motion.
Thanks for your support.
In order to combat climate change it seems traffic must be taken off the roads and put on the railway. I was under the impression that was the plan. It is clear the Tories have abandoned cutting emissions altogether. The UK not too long ago was boasting about advances made in wind and solar energy. Boris used proudly tell us how successful we were. An about turn has taken place with little comment being made in the mainstream media. I came into the world just as Britain was starting to recover from the nightmare that my parents and grandparents had experienced in the 1930s. It looks likely I shall live to see that nightmare return. I have been telling anyone who will listen that todays Tories are quite deliberately turning the clock back . I have watched the video by Danny Dorling on YouTube. It is really worth watching. He sets out the in awful detail how our country has fallen behind in every essential area. European countries are leaving us way behind . The truth is Britain has become a laughing stock. University education is the most expensive in the world. It was free when my youngest son attended not so long ago. When I talk to my grandchildren about my life in the 1960s they think I am making it up.