2024 will be dominated by the prospect of the most competitive election in recent times. Media attention will inevitably focus on what each party will offer as their policy platforms take shape.
What will Sunak’s Conservatives do to retain his inherited Red Wall majority? By what strategy will Labour balance the need to be fiscally prudent yet distinct from the current Government? What will the Liberal Democrats do to break through?
But a deeper question for the country isn’t just what the parties would do in office, but how they would do it. The limitations of our Westminster and Whitehall model have received attention recently – the Covid Inquiry laying bare the dysfunction at the heart of Government and outsourcing scandals demonstrating a cosy relationship with the private sector.
Yet discussion of the problems often majors on personality and partisan hype.
The underlying issue is that our rigid centralised governance system is simply not capable of responding with agility to the complexity of life in the 2020s.
Individuals entering high public office cannot rely on a statecraft through which a target is set, a lever is pulled, and an outcome delivered. Perhaps they never could, but in previous eras of more available public investment, the consequences were hidden – today they can’t be ignored.
Our NHS is in meltdown, yet NHSE appears incapable of responding. Councils are on the brink of financial unviability, but this hasn’t really registered as a problem in Treasury cost control calculations. Houses need building, and still the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities can’t get funding out of the door.
Our top-heavy method of running the country is not fit for purpose. Whoever wins the election, by whatever platform they do so, their entry into office will quickly be met with another challenge: how to deliver on their promises in practice.
Jessica Studdert is deputy chief executive at New Local
X – @jesstud
