Labour have shown UK is screwed (Image: Getty/PA )
Occasionally, out of nowhere, something crystallizes the mess this country is in. Something that makes you despair. Something that makes you mumble, “We really are screwed”.
One of those moments happened just last week. It was immediately after Tory Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, very reasonably said Britain needed to “lift its game “on productivity and develop a better work ethic to compete on the international stage. Not terribly controversial. Not exactly inflammatory. Not a dog whistle.
In fact, it desperately needed saying. More than three million Brits are claiming sickness and incapacity benefits, a million more than before lockdown. About 3,000 people a day are signed off work, mainly owing to mental health issues. By 2030 the taxpayer will have to fork out £100 million a year to pay for their benefits – that’s the size of the education budget. We alone among the G7 countries have a lower employment rate than before the pandemic.
No wonder Britain is forced to borrow billions every year and pay it back at extortionate rates of interest. No wonder our growth rates hover at around zero and public-sector productivity has been stagnant for 30 years, despite the Internet revolution. No wonder we have to import so much cheap foreign labour, making our overcrowded island even more densely populated and straining our public services to breaking point, while the tax burden is higher than at any time since the war.
Philp was right to say it all and should be applauded, even if his party is as responsible as anyone else for this mess. It’s about time we started getting the truth from our politicians, however uncomfortable, even if they should have done much more when in government.
But did the country take his comments in that constructive manner? Did people listen? You’re having a laugh. In fact, judging by the insane reaction you’d have thought he’d suggested we all start drowning puppies and skinning kittens.
Labour screeched that Philp had “a brass neck” and was “blaming the public”. The LibDems howled that voters should take his sentiments “with a bucketload of salt.” A columnist in the Independent described his comments as a “rehash of this most irritating of debates”. The TUC referred to him as “patronising”. Social media, of course, was brutal.
How utterly depressing. And it shows that Britain is now in such peril that we’d sooner shoot the messenger than admit we have a major, exorbitantly costly problem that needs to be addressed as a matter of extreme urgency.
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Quite simply, we are in epic denial. As any alcoholic knows, you can’t fix the problem unless you first acknowledge it. And Britain refuses to do so. We prefer to look the other way, living beyond our means, demanding an ever-smaller workforce pays ever-more tax to foot the bill for everyone else. We prefer to be kind to be cruel, writing people off as too ill to be employed, and disincentivising work when we should be pulling out all the stops to make it pay.
It’s not ordinary people who are to blame. I don’t point the finger at those on sickness benefits, or those retiring at 53 because there’s no work incentive. I blame successive governments for allowing it all to spiral out of control, majoring on rights while ignoring responsibilities.
Well, one day we’ll face an almighty shock. And the longer we leave it, the more painful it’ll be. So, we must get on with it, get ruthless with the sick-note culture, support people back into work and end our cheap-labour fixation. Philp is right, we must up our game