We are the authors of two arguments recently described as competing visions for Britain’s economic future. On the one hand, “A Fair Day” makes the case for building a state that can act—rather than just compensate—to restore the idea that hard work and doing the right thing will create a better life. On the other hand, “Manchesterism and the Manufacturing State” argues that public power should intervene to reduce the cost of the essentials of life. Some have cast these as two camps ready to fight. We see them differently. For us, they are not extensions of old arguments, but the expression of a new tradition: one that treats the revitalization of the country’s economic dynamism and confronting those who draw from it, as a prerequisite for democratic consent.
The public has no interest in a battle of the labor tribes. Blairite, soft left, hard left, old right: these are labels for a world that has outlived its successors. No one, opening an energy bill, waiting for a bus that never comes, paying half a salary in rent or wondering why a job no longer buys a secure life, asks which of these is helping them. They are asking whether politics can still change the conditions of their lives. These people and this question are our focus.
Our diagnosis is the same. Britain pays too much for the basics because the state has lost control of the foundations of ordinary life and enterprise. Housing, energy, water, transport, care and local infrastructure have become too expensive, too fragile and too extractive. The government then spends more and more compensating people for the costs it has failed to source. This is the preservation of decline, and left unabated it leads to only one political outcome: a total takeover by the forces of populism.
The answer is where our ideas can converge. This lies in remaking what the state is about – not handing out while the pie shrinks, but creating the conditions for cheap and reliable essentials, where input is rewarded, output is disciplined and Britain can build the productive assets it needs. A state that aims to be productive before it is capable will fail. It will give its new public corporation the same planning delays, legal shenanigans and procurement failures that already stymie reforms. But a state that recovers its capabilities and then refuses to use them for its people has won a barren victory. One of us has written about how the state regains the power to act, the other about what to do with that power where the market has stopped serving the public. A state that wants to be productive must first become capable. A state that has become capable has no excuse for not being productive. We believe in the power of markets. We want more challengers, more productive risk-taking, more scalable firms, more entrepreneurs building in Britain – rather than selling early and leaving.
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But we are also clear about market failure. This is why we insist that where false capitalism is at play in structures that can never be meaningfully competitive for ordinary people, and where the resulting prices cascade throughout the economy, public power must act directly. First, however, we need bold reforms to remove the structural blockers that currently feed the ration. Practically this means combining the reform machinery with the delivery institutions. We need to remove the veto that stops the building of houses, grid and infrastructure. Then we need to make sure that construction actually happens and that the profits are passed on to families and firms. In water, for example, this means creditors, not the public, bear the brunt when failed ownership models collapse. In energy, it means public capacity that can help anchor prices and lower system costs by competing, alongside major market reforms and faster grid delivery. In terms of housing, this would mean serious planning and land value reform in line with regional public housing corporations able to build at scale.
None of this is a license to the fantasy economy. Borrowing to pour money into a broken system is not radicalism. It is a surrender to a lack of vision. A truly ambitious government should invest to build income-generating assets that lower the cost base of the economy, under independent scrutiny and a structured capital framework, alongside reforms that make Britain cheaper to build. Two arguments, written separately, turn out to indicate a solution. An honest day’s work should once again buy a decent life. Keeping this promise will require a state that can build, enable and provide. A country of shared foundations, competitive entrepreneurship and thriving innovation. Market fundamentalism versus total state control is the ultimate battle. Those who would rebuild it are wasting time that this country simply does not have. Old allegiances were made for a world that is gone. The opportunity before us is to leave them there and build something new, equal to the moment and worthy of the British people.
(Further reading: Six things we learned from the Mandelson files)
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