Westminster’s Everythingism problem: Why trying to solve everything all at once has ruined politics
The belief that every policy can be used to deliver every other policy is rife in Westminster, and it’s costing us real progress, writes Joe Hill
From the outside, Westminster can be very confusing. Plenty of policies are announced, yet hardly anything changes. This government, and many before them, have championed economic growth as their top priority, but it has continued to prove elusive. Instead, we get a whole bunch of other policies which are, at best, tangential to growth.
The government can plan to build a high-speed railway from London to Manchester, and instead end up spending £100m on a tunnel for bats. A project to build a nuclear power plant in Anglesey gets sidetracked by a plan to increase the number of Welsh speakers in the area. Financially-stretched public services, in desperate need of efficient budgeting, are told they need to “buy British”, even when that will cost hospitals and schools money they don’t have.
The rise of Everythingism
How did we get here without policymakers realising what was happening? In short: Everythingism.
Everythingism is the belief that every policy can be used to deliver every other policy, everywhere, all at once, and that there are no trade-offs from doing this. Everythingism is why nothing works.
Because of Everythingism, policymakers get distracted. Trade policy stops being for getting cheaper goods, but instead for reshaping the global economy. Planning policy stops being for getting high-quality housing near the best jobs, but becomes about creating local jobs, hiring more apprentices and enhancing biodiversity.
Everythingism is the belief that every policy can be used to deliver every other policy, everywhere, all at once, and that there are no trade-offs from doing this
Now none of these objectives are bad. And inevitably the government of a G7 economy will have lots of objectives to work on. The problem comes from trying to deliver them through specific policies which are often ill-suited to the objective in question. Because, usually, there’s a trade-off involved in trying to use one policy to target lots of different objectives. Sometimes that trade-off is worth it, but often it isn’t. It’s rare that Westminster ever counts the cost of those trade-offs, but we all pay the price.
The largest trade-off? Growth
Growth has fallen victim to Everythingism. For years policymakers in Whitehall have expected growth would just happen because they were told that other policies, pursued for other objectives, would naturally deliver growth as well – a “win-win”. Net Zero? It will deliver growth, look at all these new service sector jobs it will create. People working less? That will also deliver growth, because workers will be more productive when they do clock in. More spending on public services? That’ll deliver growth as well.
You can read any of these statements in government policies from the last decade, so you might be forgiven for thinking that the economy was growing at full tilt. But the reality couldn’t be further from the truth – real wages have been stagnant for 16 years. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that if trends of low growth and high spending continue, by the mid 2070s public debt will be over 270 per cent of GDP.
To the initiated, the policymakers who make these pronouncements are doing good ‘joined-up thinking’ about growth, and they should be praised for recognising complexity. But to everyone else, they are doing Everythingism.
For decades, Everythingism has given us every caveated version of growth under the sun. “Green growth”, “smart growth”, “fair growth”, even “levelling up”, but the numbers haven’t changed. For once, how about we focus on getting just any growth first, and then working out how we use it?
It is tempting for many to believe in the Everythingism fantasy. But we can see the consequences of that attitude in the OBR’s forecasts. It’s time to try something different. If we reject Everythingism, we can start to get the economy growing again.
Joe Hill is policy director at Reform think tank