In order to beat Reform, centre and left leaders need to stop being useless

Stop running campaigns and do some proper governing instead

It is commonplace to suggest that Reform UK are on the way to forming the next government here in Britain. Their rise in the opinion polls has stabilised at 30% - not enough to be sure of winning an election, especially if there is anti-Reform tactical voting. But there is over three years to go until the next election, and my fear is that unless the other parties (Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives in particular) buck up their performance, Reform will be able to advance to 40% plus and win convincingly.

This is because Reform are playing a long game, establishing a narrative that the other parties will struggle to combat. This is that the established political parties are out of touch and incompetent, and that it’s time to try something different. It’s no use trying to establish that Reform are also out of touch, and would be staggeringly incompetent themselves: the established parties need to demonstrate that they can be trusted to run the country properly.

There are three areas which are helping Reform build this narrative: immigration, welfare and public services. Immigration is the most significant, but the others bolster the case. Exhibit A is the thousands of people crossing the Channel by small boat. It’s no use complaining that the numbers are relatively small , or trying to deflect criticism into claims that the country needs immigrants, or that critics are racist. The state cannot be seen to outsource immigration policy to criminal gangs. And the numbers are becoming significant. Meanwhile every crime committed by somebody with dark or olive skin is now getting highlighted and blamed on irregular immigration. No matter if this isn’t true, that violent crime is trending downwards and that crimes committed by others are glossed over. The narrative is gaining traction - and across all age-groups. Reform are investing significantly in appealing to younger people, including those that will be brought into the electorate by reducing the voting age to 16. Many young men are being drawn in by an anti-feminist vibe; young women can be told that it’s become dangerous to walk the streets because of all the predatory male asylum-seekers. Doubtless most young people won’t fall for this, but they don’t need to for Reform to win.

Welfare is a newer line of attack. There are two sub-themes. The first is that disability benefits are being handed out too lightly; the second is that lots of them are going to foreigners. In fact there is no crisis in working-age benefits: the rise in disability benefits is just another phase in the whack-a-mole contest to try and reduce benefit payments by reducing entitlements, rather than by making society a better place. There is a worrying increase in younger people out of work through mental health issues - but that is much more complex issue. And as for foreigners: this is part and parcel of needing them to be part of the workforce and paying tax. Ripping up agreements with the European Union, part of the Reform plan, is unlikely to go well. Still, the government seems to be flailing when it comes to welfare, and talking about it only builds on the “time to do something different” narrative. The subtext to Reform’s narrative is that taxes don’t need to go up because all we need to do is cut waste.

Meanwhile public services don’t seem to be coping. Problems persist with the National Health Service; the police don’t seem to be on top of crime; courts, probation and prisons are overwhelmed; the continued squeezing of school budgets is creating a crisis in special needs funding (another whack-a-mole policy). This builds on the general narrative of incompetence.

How did we get here? I share the widespread view that this has a lot to do with the professionalisation of politics. Success in politics has come from effective political campaigning, and this is most effectively carried out by politicians who have been in the political system for all their adult lives. Some of the skills acquired there are transferable to running the country, but not enough. This isn’t enough of an explanation: the prime minster, Sir Keir Starmer, is not a long-term professional politician, and he is no more effective than anybody else. There also seems to be a problem with the professional civil service. This is staffed by clever people with high professional standards, but they also don’t seem to be very good at actually running things. One problem seems to be the huge divide civil service ethos makes between “policy” (the important bit) and “implementation” (just logistics). Effective management involves a close integration of the two. Far too much time is spent in resolving policy issues without reference to practicalities, and then sweeping practical problems under the carpet. It doesn’t help that British government is one of the most centralised in the world, and that this is baked into the mindset of both politicians and civil servants, however much they protest otherwise. This is government from 30,000 feet; you get lovely, clear views from up there, after all. Meanwhile both politicians and civil servants blame each other for lack of effectiveness. They are both right.

The professionalisation of politics, and the focus on campaigning rather than governing, was clearly visible when Labour swept to power in 1997 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But both leaders were really interested in governance and effective policy design and implementation. After an initial lack of focus (especially in Mr Blair’s case) a pretty competent government emerged, with public services becoming more effective, even if they didn’t look all that efficient - at times seeming to be a job-creation scheme for management consultants. But they failed to grasp the risks arising from the expansion of financial services, and its implications for tax policy, which meant the the great financial crash of 2008-09 hit the country especially hard, and wrecked government finances. Even so Gordon Brown, by then prime minister, and his chancellor, Alistair Darling, did a pretty decent job of managing the immediate aftermath.

Then came the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of 2010-15. Its record is mixed. The overall trajectory of its austerity policies was surely right (and indeed closely followed the plan set out by Messrs Brown and Darling) - although it is an article of near-religious belief on the left that this was a disaster and crime against humanity. Schools and university policy was effective; the energy transition to renewables was turbo-charged. But reforms to the NHS were over-ambitious; reform to the criminal justice system catastrophic; the winding up of Sure Start centres for families with young children has proved a disaster; nothing much was done about housing supply. Overall things went well enough for the Conservatives to be re-elected in 2015, even if the Lib Dems practically disappeared as a serious political force. Labour’s counterattack stalled.

Then things really fell apart. The Conservatives were eaten by the fight over membership of the European Union. Brexit was a radical policy that ushered in the more radical elements of the Conservative Party, who declared war on competence under prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. For them government was campaigning by other means, and political loyalty triumphed over ability. By the time Rishi Sunak took over, it was far too late. Competence had been purged. And even some of the more able ministers, like Jeremy Hunt, indulged in reckless policy driven by campaign priorities.

Alas while this was going on Labour were focusing on the political priority of winning the next election at all costs, rather than what they would do afterwards. Ed Miliband was swept along by the rage against austerity; Jeremy Corbyn indulged in hard left fantasies; Sir Keir Starmer promoted colourless incompetence on the basis that it was safer. The hard left was crushed, but the soft left, with its allergy to hard-nosed policy choices triumphed. The result is government drift while little progress is being made with the country’s longer term problems. The government is more preoccupied with its campaign strategy for the 2029 election than the tough choices it needs to make now. And it is terrible about communicating a long-term vision.

Meanwhile the Tories are still consumed by their lurch to populist fantasy, leaving a huge gap in the political centre-right. The Liberal Democrats are no better than Labour in their allergy to hard policy choices, and focus on campaigning rather than governing. At least their now vastly increased parliamentary party contains a good number of people who have the right mindset for effective policy leadership. The Greens, meanwhile, are disappearing down their own populist fantasy path. The hard left are taking incompetence to new heights with their failure to establish a new political party.

What needs to be done? The difficult stuff needs to be taken on and the focus needs to be on long term solutions. One way or another the small boats crisis needs to be resolved. This will upset liberals. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, does seem to be on the case. Her reforms to the asylum system, making it much harder for refugees, are not as cost-free as people on the right suggest - but if they have an effect on the incentives to make the crossing, they will be worth it. It is still possible that they will be sabotaged by their own side. Asylum cases and deportations need to be speeded up dramatically. The “one-in, one-out” scheme with France needs to be greatly extended. I wish I could be optimistic about how effective these policies might be. If arrivals could be shipped offshore quickly, with only a trickle ultimately let through, alongside a regularised channel for a limited number of refugees, this could have a huge impact. Alas there is no obvious offshore centre for them to go to. The previous government’s Rwanda scheme did not have the necessary capacity. After that, policy turns to pushing boats back mid-Channel. That is very uncomfortable territory indeed, but increasingly it will be what the public demands. It’s hard to see how we can persuade the French government to take more aggressive action to stop the flow - they do not have as much at stake. This could get very nasty - but I think Ms Mahmood is right: that if effective solutions are not found, about 10-20% of the electorate will move decisively towards the populist right and they will become unstoppable.

Beyond that parties that are serious about governing the country need to focus on four things: tax, incentives, process and human engagement. Note that I’m not jumping on the bandwagon that says “growth”. Growth is like happiness, is happens when you focus on other things. Talking about prioritising growth merely brings out dodgy short term schemes that won’t help in the long run, like airport expansion or deregulating finance.

By tax I mean mainly getting the level of tax right. Alas this means it needs to be higher to support the level of public services that we want, and middle income citizens need to pay more. It is a simple fact of life that what we pay people to carry out public services rises faster than general inflation (it’s known as the Baumol effect in economics). Attempts to contain this have run their course and funding needs a reset. That means some combination of raising income tax and extending the scope of VAT. Politically this is toxic but if the country wants Scandinavian levels of public services and social security, then it needs Scandinavian levels of tax. Of course if society was better ordered there would be less need for public services and benefits - but that is a long road.

In order to bring that better ordering of society about, government needs to look at the incentives built into the tax and benefits systems, and order them more effectively. We have an overly complex system of tax as the result of layer upon layer of short-term measures to raise revenue. Similarly attempts to “reform” benefits have usually been counterproductive. Property developers have little incentive to build more of the right housing in the right places - they are primarily dealers in land. They may complain that the planning system is against them, but this is smokescreen - which isn’t say that planning doesn’t need serious reform. All this needs some pretty big reforms that will often create short-term funding gaps, or protests from vested interests. Abolishing stamp duty and taxing land are fairly obvious things to do.

Apart from incentives, leaders ned to be mindful of process. By this I mean looking for where systemic blockages are and tackling these first, through simplification and targeted funding. For example there are huge indirect costs arising from the lack social housing. The woeful state of courts, prisons and the probation system is fuelling crime - and this needs to be fixed in preference to increasing police powers or having more police officers on patrol. And usually the worst process problems occur across the departmental boundaries that define day to day life in government.

And on top of all that we need to recognise the need for human engagement. At heart a lot of society’s ills are caused by a relatively small number of people with complex needs. These people need to be engaged with by the state at a human level, and help designed to resolve these needs rather than pushing them off onto somebody else. This runs wholly counter to the general trend of government management, which wants to save money by not using the expensive, skilled professionals that this requires, trying to solve problems in theory rather than in practice. What is needed is management at ground level, not from 30,000 feet.

All this requires a radical rethink of how the state should be run. I think it is also best delivered by strengthened regional and local government - though this will not deliver results by itself (as the experience of Scotland and Wales shows). But it can be done: there are plenty of people out there that know what needs to be done and can be empowered to do it. What is lacking is adequate leadership at government level. And while the road is long and hard, it is not beyond imagination to build a programme that delivers some early results, and so help maintain public support.

I have not lost hope that the Liberal Democrats can be persuaded along this path. I increasingly despair of Labour, though there are many good people within it. Perhaps the Conservatives can be saved, but there is little sign of it. I see no equivalent of Emmanuel Macron emerging to stop the rot - though his is a cautionary tale too. I live in hope that the British public will rally around a sensible programme of public reform. They will not rally around a muddle purely based on what it isn’t.