The Inactivist State

The big story of the week has been the long-expected cancellation of phase 2 of HS2, the high-speed railway lines between Birmingham and Manchester and Birmingham and Leeds (the latter had already been scaled back in 2021). Rishi Sunak's talk of taking "tough decisions" after years of govermental dither and delay has failed to change the perception that his administration is weak and knackered, while Keir Starmer's refusal to commit to restoring HS2 to its former glory has been judged sober and responsible in the circumstances, though I doubt anyone seriously believes he will change in his mind in office as many still believe he will do over Brexit. The merits of the original plan were always highly questionable, both because the positive return on investment depended on the northern legs being delivered and because high-speed rail should be about covering very long distances (London to Leeds really was the minimum) rather than creating what is now effectively a fancier version of the Metropolitan line. 

The chief argument for cancellation, however, wasn't a flawed concept but spiralling costs. This has been attributed variously to incompetence, greedy bosses and inflation, but arguably the biggest issue was the gold-plating of the London to Birmingham line to satisfy voters in Conservative constituencies. Had the project started with the northern branches, the economics would look very different today and a decision to proceed with the final southern leg would have likely been positive (and if undertaken by a Labour government with no seats to protect in the Chilterns, might not have resulted in such indulgence). But this is all history and counterfactuals. What I really want to focus on is not HS2 but what this week's decision says about the capabilities and will of the state. At the 2019 general election, both the Conservatives and Labour offered a vision of state activism: the one focused on "getting Brexit done" and launching the ship of state on the ocean of free trade; the other on public investment to repair the damage wrought by austerity and a green transition to combat climate change. At the general election next year neither party will be offering a comparable vision of state activism.

The idea that a Boris Johnson-led government would be activist, leveling up the North and securing trade deals all over the globe, was always dubious, and not just because of the man's own laziness. Beyond cosplaying Churchill demanding "action this day", his record before enetering Number 10 was one of opportunistic rebranding (the London bike-hire scheme) and accepting the kudos for projects long planned before his arrival on the scene (the London Olympics and, arguably, Brexit). Insofar as he made things happen during his time as Mayor of London, it was largely by giving the green light to property developers, though the notorious garden bridge over the Thames proved (ahem) a bridge too far. Johnson has always been a conservative, albeit of an optimistic rather than pessimistic cast: in love with tradition and antiquity, substituting conviviality for social justice, and convinced that problems can be overcome by a positive attitude. Faced with the opportunity of heading an energetic state during the Covid-19 pandemic, he dithered over lockdown and oversaw a culture of indulgence and greed at the heart of government.

State activism is only an issue in a democracy when it might lead to an assault on property and power relations. For that reason, the restraint of democracy inevitably produces conservative governments whose chief feature is a reluctance to undertake anything novel coupled with energetic maintenance of the status quo. When they display activism, it tends to be in those areas that do not threaten to advance democracy, and often act as a bulwark against it, such as defence spending and the criminal justice system. New aircraft carriers and jails are no less activist than new railway lines and hospitals, but while the latter are seen as the response to a public demand, the former are not, even allowing for the media's determination to ventriloquise one. For all the differences in style and rhetoric, four of the last five Conservative Prime Ministers have shared a common characteristic in their aversion to state activism, while the one exception, Liz Truss, was unceremoniously booted out of office when she tried to actively manage the economy. 

Cameron and Osborne's (and let's not forget Clegg's) austerity was inactivism as a government-wide standing order. The purpose was not to shrink the state but to weaken it and allow it to degrade. The vision was that this would encourage people to reduce their reliance on public services and thus walk away from the state's "teat", a vision that also inspires Rishi Sunak, a man who doesn't appear to have ever used a public service in his life. While you will still hear many claim that Jeremy Corbyn lost the EU referendum, it was Cameron's insouciance that did it, though in this he was simply continuing a tradition from the 1980s by which governments deliberately failed to make the case for the European Union, preferring to employ it as an all-purpose whipping-boy. Theresa May's activism never extended beyond the Home Office's "hostile environment", while her attempts to grasp various bulls by the horns as Prime Minister (social care, the Brexit deal) invariably led to panicked retreat at the first sign of opposition.

There are exceptions to this rule of conservative inactivism, such as when the state must be employed by capital to violently revise social and economic relations, as in the 1980s. Breaking the NUM was as much an example of state activism as the creation of the London Docklands and the market-making deregulation of the City. That phase of activism pretty much came to an end with Margaret Thatcher's fall. Indeed, her departure was arguably triggered by British capital deciding that the time for change was over (the last great achievement being the EU Single Market), hence the elevation of a Prime Minister, John Major, whose administration was characterised by careful reversals (the Poll Tax), willing subordination to markets (the ERM), and policy triviality (the infamous cones hotline). His ultimate failure sprang from his inability to restrain those parts of his party ("the bastards") who wanted the careful reversal extended to the Maastricht Treaty.

1997 presented an obvious contrast in the way that New Labour embraced activism as a style, but as history would show, the substance of its programme of "reform" was either the maintenance of order under cover of progressive rhetoric or the further pursuit of capital-friendly reorganisation. It's also easily forgotten how much Blair and Brown's message, particularly in the early years, concerned assurances of what they wouldn't do, which makes the sight of Blairites today warning Starmer over his "caution" frankly hilarious. 2024 won't be a re-run of 1997, but the offer to the electorate will be essentially the same, both in its modesty and its assumption that a change of management is all that is required. At the fag-end of Tory administrations, Labour has a tendency to talk about "wasted years", as if they would have got more done, but in reality what they are criticising is neglect - a failure of stewardship - rather than missed opportunities.

Democratic state activism, in the sense of an increase in popular control and a consequent decline in inequality, ran out of puff in the early 1970s. The result of this has been a gradual degradation in the social fabric, inadequately offset by intermittent public investment that turns out to have been primarily opportunities for new private profits (PFI and its variants). The exception that proves the rule has been London, but the basis for that has not been a metropolitan bias by central government but the relative political power of the capital compared to other cities and regions and how that can impact on people's lives, for example Transport for London. But even in the capital there is a sense of drift after the heady years of activism under Ken Livingstone (and Boris Johnson floating on the vapours of his predecessor's work). Despite the hysterical Islamophobia of the right, Sadiq Khan's tenure has been one of cautious management and a reluctance to expand the scope of the mayoralty or the assembly.

The Tories have spent this conference week claiming that they will stop various bad things that were never going to happen anyway, such as a tax on meat and the need for 7 dustbins. Many of the government's critics have derided the triviality, but this misses that the focus on such mundane matters that would (if true) affect everyone is an attempt to celebrate inactivity and thus an appeal to genuine conservative values. It might seem bizarre that this has led to the Tories insisting that the country is near broken and that only they, the party of government for the last 13 years, can be trusted to remedy this, but again this is to underestimate how persuasive a promise to do nothing can be. It is also to ignore that Labour are pitching the same message, having matched the Tories on most commitments and equally on most refusals to commit. The implication is that if the country is broken it can be fixed by changing the management team but otherwise by hardly departing from Tory practice. There's a lot more inactivism to come.