As everyone knows, the UK goes to the polls on 4^th July and this week in the office I’ve been discussing what the first thing each of us would do if we were in charge of UK policy (I also asked my parents).  The answers highlighted the breadth of concerns and priorities of voters.  Also, no-one in our office had decided who they were going to vote for, which makes the current polling look at risk from our small sample.

The top priority for the WKM Prime Minister was as follows:

Crime

One respondent said they would get tough on sentences for crimes that seem to be more frequent, such as knife crime. The average sentence length for knife crime in the UK last year was 7.8 months, which feels far too short.

Business taxation

One respondent said they would enforce corporate taxation for sales in the UK irrespective of the domicile of the business to ensure global firms pay the same rate of tax as UK firms.

NHS

One respondent said that they would focus on making the system more efficient through the use of more technology to reduce waiting times.

Public pensions

One respondent said that they would change public sector pensions to defined contribution rather than defined benefit for all new starters; moving the risk from taxpayers to individuals (and saving a fortune in the process).

Immigration

One respondent said that they would focus on reducing illegal immigration and the number of deaths caused by small boats in the English Channel.

Reform of MPs

One respondent said that they would cut the number of MPs in half and increase pay to try and improve the quality of MPs.

Some of these are clearly easier to sort than others and some are more likely to happen than others.  It highlights the importance of the parties to be clear on their policies and to ensure their communications are on a wide set of policies.

There is no silver bullet to sort out issues in the UK.  The next government’s budget is going to be constrained.  Taxation is already high as are borrowing levels.  Current polls show that Labour are likely to win the election.  The last time that the government went from Conservative to Labour was 1997, when the UK debt to GDP ratio was 45%.  Today it is hovering around 100% (depending on how you calculate it).

My own view is that after several years of relying heavily on government support, through the pandemic and then through the energy price crisis of 2022, the size of government and the public sector has to shrink and there has to be more support and focus on the private sector.  The UK has to improve productivity, innovation and workforce skills, irrespective of who the next government is.

The one wish that the private sector has for the election is that there is a clear winner.  As we are seeing in South Africa’s elections, a hung parliament is not good for the economy.