Andrew Dunne

Britain needs to reckon with the fact that it is not just a developing country economically, but also in political culture. - There are widespread perceptions of corruption. - Governments are not capable of pulling off large projects without enormous consent generation schemes through established interest groups (NGOs) and massive side payments - The government is not trusted with expropriation tools - Even left-wing governments cannot raise broad-based taxes (and the far left opposition don’t make the case for broad-based taxes, but that they can extract loads of money from the rich and other scapegoats) - Even right-wing governments cannot take away state welfare entitlements - There is a dizzying array of inconsistent privileges - Parties are becoming less ideological and more tribal. There are explicit ethnoreligious parties standing, and bloc voting is becoming more and more common. - Everyone thinks that all politicians are liars - Almost no one is willing to take a hit in the interests of the country, and no one is expected to. I think all of these things are connected, and I also think it’s foolish and self defeating to pretend we are Britain of the 1950s, or Denmark, and that we can simply implement the most efficient policies by deciding to — we just need more political will! Instead, we need to be realistic about what a country in our situation can achieve. We need to come up with ways to steadily build state legitimacy and state capacity, by stigmatising dishonesty and using the tools of the past, which worked when we were last in this situation. The government can’t be trusted to spend money, so taxes need to be hypothecated to things voters want if we want to raise more. Large projects need to involve more specific deals with losers, overriding objectors with local support not (nonexistent) national fiat. Anything controversial needs to be approved in a party’s manifesto, or in a referendum. If it can’t be voted through, it cannot be implemented. If the voter doesn’t want it, they need to be convinced, or it can’t be done.