Nearly a year ago the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) set out its understanding of the transformed international environment this country now faces, and called for the government to lead ‘a national conversation’ on how we should respond. Yet since then there has been silence from the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and only muffled warnings about Russian activities from the Defence Secretary – to the intense frustration of Lord Robertson and General Barrons, two of its authors. Robertson has accused the government of ‘corrosive complacency’ in its passive response.
We desperately need a number of intense national conversations on a range of awkward topics. Westminster politics is stuck in a morass of negative point-scoring: not only on security and foreign policy, but also on public investment and the level of taxation needed to fund economic and social recovery, on how to reduce current levels of inequality and the still-widening gap between the South-East and the rest of Britain, and on the demographic challenges of our ageing population.
The SDR spelt out that the ‘special relationship’ with the USA is over, and that Britain’s international influence and security will now depend first and foremost on closer cooperation with our European partners while doing our best to maintain a lower degree of US commitment. The re-emergence of ‘geo-economics’, with both the USA and China disregarding the conventional rules of open trade, means that hard bargaining between major players has replaced multilateral negotiation – and the only group of countries large enough to stand up to the USA and China open to the UK is the EU. The SDR also noted the complexity of the hybrid threats to Britain’s security, within the UK as well as outside, and called for a ‘whole society’ response: that is, to engage and mobilise British citizens in recognising and responding to subversion and also to civil emergencies, far from the present passive expectation that the government should protect us all.
The government is similarly silent about explaining to the public at large why it is in the UK’s fundamental economic, political and security interests to move towards rejoining the EU. People in Brussels and EU national capitals will not take seriously a British government which doesn’t dare to persuade its voters that the ‘Reset’ is a national priority. With the Tories in denial and Reform actively opposed, any rational European negotiator will hesitate, in case the next election brings another switch. Pro-European ministers and politicians must first win the argument if they (and we) want to win re-entry.
The absence of a national conversation on taxation and public spending has left the public debate to the mercies of Tory spokesmen and the Daily Mail, endlessly calling for tax cuts without spelling out what cuts in spending and investment programmes these would involve. The hostile environment we now live in finds the UK competing with China and others, spending far higher proportions of their GDP on research and development and productive investment, and on education and training; yet no- politician here is making the case for higher investment to bring sustainable growth. Parliament’s confrontational approach to budgeting produces much heat and little understanding of the hard choices involved. MPs (sometimes even our own) call for more police on the streets, better public transport, shorter hospital waiting lists and more without accepting that all these cost more – which is why waiting lists remain and police numbers are again threatened.
Liberal Democrats, with Steve Webb in the lead, did our best to address the social care crisis getting on for 20 years ago. The Tories in coalition resisted his proposals. Theresa May later tried again, but the Labour opposition joined with the Mail in dubbing her proposals a ‘death tax.’ So here we are, with the proportion of over-65s in our population continuing to rise, with the costs of the ‘triple lock’ for pensions weighing down the welfare budget, with private equity companies making money out of privatised care and without any open discussion about how we pay for and manage a society with a shrinking proportion in work and a higher proportion of vulnerable elderly. On regional inequalities, Boris Johnson raised expectations by promising ‘Levelling Up’. But he never put serious money behind that, and his successors have dribbled out little more than small grants for local regeneration.
Faced with Labour timidity, negative attacks from right-wing media, and the oppositional rhetoric of Reform and the Conservative, can and should we try to fill the gap? Voters often complain that politicians are not being honest with them, but resent politicians telling them that hard choices have to be made. Our successful campaigning style in recent years has focussed on retail issues rather than broader themes, on criticising government more than outlining alternatives. Labour’s drift over the past two years, and the threat of Reform’s illusions gaining a grip on a third of the electorate, leaves a large gap in the political debate that Andy Burnham is unlikely to fill. And if we anticipate that we might find ourselves negotiating to become part of the UK government in three years’ time, we’d better spell out the approach we would want to take before we try to construct a shared programme.
* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.