The Conservative Reader
Issue VII: "undeveloping countries", how to change an economy, the asylum crisis, how to support families, net zero trade-offs, and a new job for Will
We think conservatives need to talk more and get better at sharing ideas. So we are starting this newsletter so we can share with you the best newspaper columns, policy reports and books that will stimulate thinking and promote new ways of doing things.
We will send an email out every Friday lunchtime, so please do look out for it. And expect plenty of content about the things we think make conservatism such a compelling body of thought: identity and belonging, community and commitment, market economics, national resilience and good government.
Best wishes, Nick and Will
Towering columns
Noah Smith asks if Britain is an "undeveloping economy":
Watching the experiences of the UK, Japan, and Italy raises the uncomfortable possibility that there’s such a thing as an “undeveloping country”. Standard economic growth theory suggests that once a country gets rich there’s no going back — getting poorer would require willful disinvestment or the forgetting of technology. But the world is more complicated than those simple models, and countries in the past have certainly seen their living standards go into long-term periods of secular decline. So it’s worth worrying whether the end stage of a some countries’ economic lives is not a permanent spot at the apex of development, but a long slow slide back into middle-income status.
When we look at a bunch of data indicators for each country, though, we find that their problems are much more nuanced than the headlines would have us believe. Each country comes out weak on some indicators but surprisingly strong on others, suggesting that undevelopment isn’t a general or inevitable phenomenon — and pointing the way to policies that can help each country recover.
Rian Whitton insists it is possible to change the nature of our economy:
No one who likes industrial policy thinks Britain can match German industrial output. But on a number of metrics, from capital equipment to R&D spending, we are close to or below the world average. Improving our manufacturing position relative to Germany, especially in light of its recent troubles, is attainable and desirable. Bell and others argue specialization is sticky, and that what countries are good at now is predictive of what they will be good at in the future. The stat he uses is: “of the top 10 products the UK specialized in back in 1989, seven were in our top 10 in 2019.”
Simplified, you can change your economy by 30% in 30 years. So maybe you can change it by 50% in 50 years? This indicates the economy is far more malleable than is being suggested. But it also neglects that all the truly consequential economies have, at one point in their development, dramatically changed what they are good at. If we concede we cannot do this, we will have to accept a more mediocre status.
A group of thinkers from across conservative family propose ten economic reforms the Tories can get behind:
There is a widespread belief that the Conservative Party cannot agree on necessary economic reforms, and that the fiscal context means it is impossible to get anything substantive done. We disagree. We represent a broad spectrum of centre-Right opinion, and include among us co-authors of both the 2017 and 2019 Conservative manifestos. Some of us believe the market should be freed, and some that it should be constrained. Some of us distrust government intervention, and some believe it urgently necessary. But we have come together to propose an agenda that is realistic, pragmatic and attainable – as well as ambitious and significant.
Philip Johnston argues that the crisis in the asylum system is down to the sheer numbers of people coming here - and outdated laws and treaties:
The real difficulty is not one of process but of legal obligations. The failure of the system to cope is a function of the number arriving, not of administrative competence – even if the latter is sometimes absent.
Politicians demanding the instant removal of young Albanian men arriving in their thousands by boat across the Channel are themselves being dishonest because they know that, under international treaty commitments, the UK must consider an application for political asylum however unfounded it might appear. If it is not justified then clearly the case should be quickly dealt with and the applicant deported; but things are not straightforward. The more people who come in, the harder it is to process their legal claims, the more clogged up the system gets, and the longer the legal backlog becomes.
Fraser Nelson says Rishi Sunak’s beliefs can be boiled down to honesty about trade-offs, and he should make a start with net zero:
There is another line of argument, should Sunak want to take it. The environmentalism argument has been splitting for some time, between what you might call the “dark green” jeremiads of Greta Thunberg and the “bright green” message of tech and enterprise. Thunberg always saw economic growth and development as the problem. While launching her new book, she has taken her argument to its logical extension. She now defines herself against the “system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order”. This is the familiar, classic j’accuse against capitalism.
But there is another vision, perhaps best articulated by MIT academic Andrew McAfee. His research draws the opposite conclusion: that capitalism – together with tech and public awareness – has allowed the Western world “to tread more lightly on the planet”. The capitalist’s basic desire to cut costs, he says, means we have learnt to make things cheaper and do “more with less” (the title of his book). His research forms an uplifting and convincing corrective to the “dark green” narrative that has dominated environmentalism for so long.
Wonky thinking
The Centre for Social Justice proposed 100% transferable tax allowances and the creation of a new ‘Family Credit” to help parents care for their children:
Our polling shows most families do not prefer more financial support to place children in formalised settings. 81 per cent of parents of young children (age 0-4) said they agreed that parents should be helped to stay at home for longer, rather than being brought back to work quickly. This was agreed with by 74 per cent of parents with school age children and 58 per cent of the general public. 78 per cent of parents with young children said they would like to spend more time with their child than they currently do, not less, citing finances as the main obstacle to doing so. This was true of 80 per cent of mothers and 76 per cent of fathers. 44 per cent of parents with pre-school children said they would like to stop working altogether if they could, and 47 per cent said they would like to reduce their hours if possible. There is widespread support for pro-family policies that would help to facilitate this. 61 per cent of parents with young children would support a parental budget provided by the Government to choose how to spend, while just 33 per cent said they would prefer support to make formal childcare cheaper. 41 per cent believe boosting the Marriage Allowance would be a good idea, versus just 20 per cent who disagree, and 53 per cent would like to have more parental leave.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies examined what is behind the exodus of older workers from the labour market:
When looking at only the cross-sectional data, it is tempting to conclude that deteriorating health amongst the older population has been the key reason for higher levels of economic inactivity and lower levels of employment. A closer look at the data suggests that in fact there seem to be two distinct issues at stake: increasing levels of ill-health amongst the older non-working population (which is concerning as an issue in its own right), and increased levels of inactivity driven in large part by people leaving work for non-health related reasons – in particular because they have decided to retire.
Book of the week
Book of the Week in this issue is the classic conservative text, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which Edmund Burke made the case not only against revolution, but the case for the qualification of freedom:
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it, and exist in much greater clearness and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.
Quick links
One in six of the population was born abroad, according to the census.
The chief executive of the National Grid said we need to build seven times as much infrastructure in the next seven to eight years as we did in the last 32.
The Bank of England increased interest rates to three per cent, predicted a recession that will last until 2024…
… and said that long-term interest rates are higher because of policies in the abandoned Budget, not just global factors.
A departing Guardian journalist accused the newspaper of censoring content about antisemitism and transgender ideology.
Will became deputy chief of staff in Number Ten.