We’ve had the answer for two centuries now
In a paper recommending the New Manchesterism we are told that:
The diagnosis has been available for nearly a century.
This is incorrect. The diagnosis, even the solution, has been known for two centuries now.
Britain faces a compounding crisis — of living costs, economic performance, and public finances — that grinds on without resolution. The causes run deeper than bad luck or the business cycle, as austerity, ageing infrastructure, a cumbersome planning system, global energy shocks, and the long tail of Brexit have all contributed to stagnation. These connect through a single failure: the inability to build, invest and provide necessities at the scale required.
We’re not sure we’d use quite that emphasis but we’re happy enough with the base idea. Britain’s problems stem from no one being able to ever do anything. Therefore we’re short of things that have been done. Sorting this out so that more people can do more things seems sensible, for then we’d all enjoy more things that have been done.
The New Manchesterism then suggests that government should do all those lovely long term things that markets can’t or don’t and thus will the land of milk and honey return.
We do tend to think that the long term isn’t something that politics is going to look to. Not when a Prime Minister with a stonking majority gets - well, likely will - killed off by a chippy northerner after 2 years and how many days is it?
Rather than return to the ideas of a century back, that The Lanyards should have more control, we suggest Real Manchesterism.
Its most famous activity was the Anti-Corn Law League that called for repeal of the Corn Laws that kept food prices high. It expounded the social and economic implications of free trade and laissez-faire capitalism. The Manchester School took the theories of economic liberalism advocated by classical economists such as Adam Smith and made them the basis for government policy. It also promoted pacifism, anti-slavery, freedom of the press and separation of church and state.
One advantage of The Real Thing™ is that it observably worked. That move to free trade in 1846 was exactly what marked the end of the Engels Pause and thus drove the rise in living standards of the second half of the 19th century. We should do that again and, as before, we’ve already the house magazine for the movement in The Guardian.
Looking at Britain and stating that the problem is that no one can do anything seems sensible enough to us. Stating that the solution is that The Lanyards take over the production of what they prevent anyone else from doing strikes us as ridiculous. The answer is to get rid of the vetocracy of The Lanyards.
If we’re going to have Manchesterism then let’s have Manchesterism. Accept no substitutes.
Tim Worstall