Governments like to act as if high spending is something they’ve inherited, something that’s happened to them, rather than a choice they’ve made. Sunak and Hunt had a case to make when they inherited spiralling debt-servicing repayments, made worse by Liz Truss’s mini-Budget which saw markets demand a far bigger return for what looked like an increasingly risky investment in the UK.
But their announcement for a multi-billion childcare subsidy in the Budget last year made clear that spending was the top priority.
This doesn’t happen by mistake: successive Tory governments don’t accidentally end up out-taxing and out-spending Blair and Brown. That kind of state growth has to have some kind of effort behind it.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been warning for years now that you can’t, as ageing demographics catch up with us, keep your healthcare and pension promises without significant tax increases.
The public have figured it out, too. Practically every debate these days is framed in terms of supporting the state. Why ban cigarettes for the next generation? To keep young people healthy, working longer for the state and making fewer demands of the NHS. Why get people back into work? To increase the tax base, boosting revenue for the state.
Even the most personal and existential questions feed into the same narrative. How to frame the issue of falling birth rates: who is going to pay for the healthcare bills and the pension pots? It’s not obvious, to me anyway, that this is the core purpose behind having children. Yet it’s the reason cited over and over again for why couples need to have more kids.
A poll from YouGov just a few weeks ago showed more respondents supporting extra cash going to public spending rather than tax cuts. This could be an indication that the public is convinced by the Tory push for a bigger state (though stated versus revealed preferences often suggest this isn’t so clear cut).
It could also be an indication that the public are simply resigned to Big State Toryism: if they are going to be taxed at record levels, they’d at least like to be able to access some of those services, like the GP.
