There is, however, a still more fundamental cause, one I have not ceased to articulate: our managerial system of government is breaking down under the weight of a welfare state we cannot afford and which fails to meet expectations.
Promises made to successive generations cannot be met from our productive output. The gap has been filled by debt and by the systematic debasement of the currency since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. In the nineteenth century, a pound in 1900 bought roughly as much as a pound in 1800. Since 1971, the purchasing power of money has collapsed. That is not a coincidence. That is policy.
I put this thesis to Rishi Sunak in a private meeting. He readily agreed I was right. The room of some thirty MPs looked crestfallen, until someone said, “But we can’t do anything about it before the election” whereupon everyone relaxed and reverted to type. That moment encapsulates our problem precisely.
Liz Truss understood the fiscal reality and tried to act on it. She was also, simultaneously, spending enormous sums on an energy bailout. The bond markets noted the contradiction and drew their own conclusions. She was unlucky with undiagnosed structural problems in bond markets while caught between two incompatible imperatives. Her underlying diagnosis was not wrong.
It turns out reality is not optional. You can ignore it, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring it. Rachel Reeves and the whole nation are discovering this now, after the Chancellor brought welfare cuts to MPs who told their constituents for years that austerity is a choice and said, “No thank you!”
Starmer’s current crisis sits at this junction: a government elected on the promise that “change” would be painless, running head‑first into the arithmetic they declined to discuss.
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