Six issues AWOL from this election

It is often said that there aren’t any big issues in politics anymore. Politics, it is said, is now about different approaches to managing essentially shared positions on, for example, the level of tax and the nature of society. This managerial politics explains much voter apathy. It also explains the collective reluctance to deal with some of the knottiest challenges we all face.

Six massive (and neglected) issues are outlined below - pensions, tax, energy, family life, poverty and the rise of China. Issues that are hardly featuring in this campaign but which have huge implications for the future.

(1) In the last few days the issue of pensions has been raised by the Conservatives but it has not become the central issue that it deserves to be. The British people need to be saving £50 to £60 billion more every year to enjoy a secure retirement. Labour’s £5bn a year stealth tax on pensions has made a serious contribution to the pensions timebomb but Brown and Blair have neither been held accountable for this mess nor are they facing pressure to offer any solutions. For more on the pensions crisis see this piece*.

(2) Another ducked issue is Britain’s looming energy deficit. Just as Labour’s manifesto has kicked the pensions issue into the long grass, so Labour has ducked the issue of nuclear power. Energy efficiency and renewable power sources are only partial solutions to Britain’s rising energy needs. Restarting Britain’s nuclear energy programme may be the only way that we’ll meet global warming targets and keep the lights on. Two articles (here* and here*) make the case for nuclear power. Shouldn’t this election campaign be debating the pros and (serious) cons of nuclear energy?

(3) The tax burden is another neglected big issue. The Tory promise of £4bn of tax cuts does almost nothing to reverse Gordon Brown’s tax juggernaut. As The Business declared this week: “The Tories are not going in the opposite direction from the other two parties – they are merely the slowest ship in the same tax-and-spend convoy.” There is a lot of inflated talk about the politics of fear. If Conservative politicians wanted to legitimately frighten voters they should warn voters of how Britain will bleed jobs if it continues to pile tax burdens on British workers, inventors and businesses. The argument that lower taxation is essential for the competitive position of the British economy is simply not being heard in this election.

(4) Only the Archbishop of Canterbury has had the courage to talk about the importance of the family. This memo outlined how Rowan Williams had identified the breakdown of family structure as a root cause of much poverty and crime. The Conservative manifesto didn’t mention marriage once – even though family breakdown is a major contributor to rising demand for government services, school indiscipline and rising crime (three big Tory themes).

(5) The reality of twenty-first century poverty is also being neglected. Recent data suggests that Labour will miss its child poverty targets. Labour has moved people from just below the poverty line to just above it. It has not, however, tackled poverty’s hardest cases. This failure reflects Labour’s weak approach to drug use, an indifference to family structure and the politicisation of an increasingly grey voluntary sector. Tory policies on school choice and stakeholder funding of the voluntary sector are part of a hugely undersold UK brand of compassionate conservatism.

(6) The rise of China has been creeping onto the news agenda but not the political agenda. A recent editorial* in The Australian reminded its readers that Napoleon Bonaparte “famously said the world should let the Chinese giant sleep, because once woken it would shake the world”. “The giant is up and energetic,” concluded the editorial. A Chinese motor company played a big role in the MG Rover affair. Tony Blair made a crisis call to China’s PM in a last ditch attempt to save Britain’s last major car producer. The tensions between Japan and China are bubbling away this month, just as the EU’s desire to restart arms sales to Beijing was creating headlines last month. The growth of undemocratic and totalitarian China is, perhaps, the world’s biggest foreign policy challenge. But who is addressing it?

Comments

[Derek Buxton]

Do not forget the biggest elephant in the room .... the EU. Once in their power, as if we weren't, whitehall becomes irrelevant, all laws will be made there as over 50% are now. By unaccountable, non elected officials. This situation must needs be dealt with ASAP or England disappears.

[Cllr Graham Smith]

This is probably the most significant article I have seen written over the past week.

Unfortunately, like the 8-track system, Betamax and other examples too numerous to mention, that which is excellent is all too often squeezed out by that which is profitable - the cheap and tacky gaining market share at the expense of the quality product.

I fear the issues raised here are just a bit too hard for the typical 21st century British voter to want to deal with, especially whilst Mr Blair and Mr Brown keep up their fairy-tale act of pretending that "it can only get better." For many of us, it has got a hell of a lot worse since Mr Brown decided to run down our pension funds, trash our gold reserves and become increasingl dependent upon buying electricity from France in his fanciful flight to magical Euroland.

[Gareth]

And what about the West Lothian Question? The Conservatives have hardly made much of a fuss over that, while Labour and the Lib Dems just continue to ignore it.