IEA Communications Officer Harrison Griffiths has argued in CapX that there is nothing pragmatic about economic policies that perpetuate Britain’s decline.

Harrison wrote:

“The Prime Minister has promised caution and pragmatism, and last week’s ‘steady as she goes’ Budget was no exception. But there’s nothing sensible about perpetuating the status quo. Britain is in decline, and we will not escape it by reflexively turning to higher taxes and increasingly elaborate spending plans.

“By arguing that damaging tax increases are necessary to balance the books, the Government has essentially admitted that growth is being sacrificed on the altar of fiscal ‘prudence’.

“We have been locked in a zero-sum game between ideologues on the Left who favour turning Britain into a country subsumed by health spending and those on the right who would decimate state support for sectors like health, pensions, housing, and childcare without giving the market an opportunity to provide more competitive and sustainable funding solutions.

“The solution to British decline will not be found in finding a middle ground between that false dichotomy, but in challenging its premise. Overhauling the high-tax, high-spend, low-growth economic consensus might be thought of as radical, but without doing so Britain will continue to decline. There is nothing pragmatic about allowing that to happen.”

Harrison’s full piece can be read here.