The state has become a monster. Weak-minded politicians in the previous Conservative government allowed it to expand by 25% since lockdown. That’s bad enough, but the Keir Starmer’s Government is adding to this at a pace.
No sooner had our benighted political class got rid of the stultifying Brussels Eurocrats that they replaced them with a home-grown “dead hand” weighing down on national finances, enterprise and wealth creation.
An army of work-from-home heroes practising for retirement while tending the garden, shopping and taking the children to school. It is hardly any wonder that public sector productivity has flatlined.
While the Conservatives might have allowed this paltry state of affairs by accident or through weakness, our current government is deliberately building the new Jerusalem in the shape of a Marxist state, sending people to the clink, the British gulags, for thinking in the wrong and having the temerity to say so.
The overblown state is creaking at the seams, now crowding out the private sector for investment while flatlining in productivity.
The gold-plated pension schemes, paid for by taxpayers who themselves have to find the money for their own pensions, are quite unsustainable, unfunded and ultimately unfundable. They will bankrupt the country.
Not since Mrs Thatcher has the state been cut and no serious attempt has ever been made to cut red tape, an ever burgeoning rule book of “gotcha” rules.
These things cost huge amounts of money which could otherwise be spent on productive endeavour and to generate taxes to pay for quality services.
A new, incoming government must cut the state to promote economic growth, innovation and wealth creation and also to claim back the building blocks of our free, democratic, capitalist society.
Fortunately, we now see a real life experiment in this, which will undoubtedly be instructive for the UK. The incoming US President has appointed Elon Musk as his head of government efficiency.
No doubt the policy wonks and pen-pushers are quaking in their boots. Musk successfully cut the fat and bureaucracy out of X. He has claimed he can save the US taxpayer two trillion dollars.
No doubt there will be risks and hiccups and likely a shortfall against this target, but he has a chance of freeing the animal spirits of enterprise, innovation, wealth and growth. In other words, he can make America great again.
Who will make Britain great again? Certainly not the current failing and flailing anti-growth coalition. We desperately need our own Elon Musk.
John Longworth is an entrepreneur and businessman, Chairman of the Independent Business Network of family businesses and a former MEP
