The King’s Speech yesterday prompted an unnamed minster (Times, 8 November, Aubrey Allegretti) to say ‘it is time for the chancellor to be bold and decisive. He’s got to announce more measures that will stimulate growth’.
The speech was silent on housing supply and silent on power distribution, two drivers, currently barriers, of domestic growth and economic productivity., The PM is also quoted as saying he wants to change Britain ‘for the long term’, including reforming the housing sector’. It will be interesting to learn if Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor will manage to put two and two together and make a long term five? To do this he has to work with, not work against Sir Keir Starmer. No evidence yesterday of understanding that long term policies need long germ delivery programmes, which are far beyond the power of the next government on its own.
Britain needs grown up leaders on both sides of the democracy divide to hold out their hands in co-operation, whilst facing down their myopic activists. Fingers crossed. Decades of division are destructive around the world.
Ian Campbell
8 November 2023
