The word “radical” derives ultimately from the Latin radix meaning “root” (every so often my classical education demands an airing – yes, radix is “root’s” root). It retains an air of this in our current usage. A radical reform is a root and branch reform, one which rips up that which has gone before and ushers in a new dawn in which things are done in a new way.
Humans are, uniquely as far as we know, categorising animals – when we come across a new phenomenon, we like to lump it in with others and invent a new name to describe the new group. Thus with the change in right-wing politics seen over the past decades (since, perhaps, Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America in 1994). It was similar in some respects to what had gone before, but it was sufficiently different to merit a name of its own. Those who disapproved chose Far Right, those who disapproved more chose Hard Right, those seeking at least the appearance of neutrality chose Radical Right.
For a long time, the Radical Right were easy to ignore. Gingrich came and Gingrich went and the world moved on, his approach becoming a fringe politics for fringe people. Fruitcakes and loons, one might say. But if centrists were laughing then, they are not laughing now. Brexit was, fairly or not, portrayed as a Radical Right project (news, perhaps to my Corbynite chum, the only other person from our year at college I know to have supported it…). Trump got to the White House and then, he got back to the White House. Boris Johnson may have been the Brexiteer who mentioned Cincinnatus, but it is the other figurehead of the campaign who has left his plough and is currently leading the polls.
One might, therefore, expect a new dawn to have broken. The tables would have been overturned, the old ways thrown out. We would start over with a clean sheet of paper. A new contract for a new society.
In Trump’s case, this is partly true. The tariffs are a complete break with what had gone before – the free trade system which had made everyone more affluent but had left many feeling poorer. The border controls are less perhaps a new idea, more a return to an old idea which had been forgotten for a while.
The Big Beautiful Bill currently wending its way through Congress is, however nobody’s idea of radical. Western democracies have defaulted, or devolved, into systems whereby governments shuffle resources to their voter bases, paid for by taxing those with the temerity not to vote for them, or, if that proves impractical, tapping up the debt markets. Thus, with Trump. His Bill will reduce taxes on Social Security recipients – mainly the elderly (think of the MAGA-grannies patronised by Channel 4 reporters during the election for their botox and bigotry). The wealthy will receive a tax break. On the other side, changes have been made to the SNAP food programme, disproportionately used by ethnic minorities and the National Debt will rise by $3tn.
Trillions are big numbers. A million seconds ago, we were still in May, a trillion seconds ago, we hadn’t got round to domesticating the dog. $3tn is a lot of dollars, and it goes on top of the $36tn America has already borrowed. Never in the field of human finance was so much owed by so few. No matter: the system demands that the winner’s side gets goodies, so get goodies they must. Is Trump tearing up the system or just keeping it working the way it does, but tweaking the beneficiaries?
Some in MAGA-world, to their credit, appear aware of this. Elon Musk may have many problems, but the two he has talked about most are America’s run-away debt and its lack of children. He attempted to solve (partially) the former with DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) and the latter the more traditional way. As one might expect, he was not overly impressed by the bill, suggesting that such legislation could be big or it could be beautiful, but it could not be both. As has happened since the dawn of civilisation, his erstwhile boss was displeased but has, so far, contented himself with selling his Tesla, not suggesting his former underling might wish to commit suicide. Progress.
Even Musk’s radicalism, however, was limited. DOGE focused on saving a billion here, a billion there and firing those ideologically unaligned with the old regime. It is the overwhelmingly popular entitlement spending which is the driver of America’s deficit, and about that, nothing has been done and nothing is planned to be done.
What starts in America rarely stays in America. Reform UK, the golf-club turned political party, has picked up the mantle. It too has a DOGE. It too is going to slash spending. Just this weekend, the council it controls in Staffordshire announced it would no longer fund a Pride parade, saving £1,700. The benefits of this will not be immediately felt in council tax payers bills…
Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves is a truism and, like most truisms, not actually true. There is no point in haggling over the last penny when you split the bill in a restaurant, if you hand out a fiver to everyone you see when you leave.
And Reform likes handing out the fivers. It will scrap the two-child limit on benefit payments. It will reinstate the Winter Fuel Allowance. It will change tax allowances. You want money? You want money? Everyone gets money. £50-80bn worth according to the IFS – that’s quite a lot of cancelled Pride parades.
Like his orange chum over the pond, the perma-tanned Kermit of British politics is radical in somethings – leaving the ECHR – radical-ish in others – the immigration cap will merely reduce numbers to what they long were – but when it comes to the money-go-round that now counts as the British economy, he is resolutely conservative. No-one can question that the job of the government is to funnel money from some to others.
At a recent press conference, the IFS analysis was pointed out to him. They’re government-funded, he replied – a response but not quite an answer. There was some waffle about saving money and the Bank of England, then a pivot to pointing out the multi-trillion-pound unfunded pension liabilities of the British state. No matter that these made his own plans yet less feasible – Prime Minister Farage will still need to pay them – as long as there was blame to be spread around.
Trump is often accused of wanting to recreate the America of his youth, and there is a similar retro air to Reform’s policies. No new pylons will be built in Lincolnshire, harrumphed the Deputy Leader after the recent election. No matter than these might be quite useful for the economic growth which would, in its turn, be quite useful to keep the show on the road. Nothing can interrupt England’s green and pleasant land. If the American wants to bring back the world of Happy Days, Reform seems to offer an eternal Darling Buds of May. Money will no doubt be found for a village bobby to clip the youth round the ear when they go scrumping.
Radical might be to suggest that, actually, you cannot have it all. The government is not there to pay for all the things you want, to act as a force-multiplier to your earnings. Radical might be, like Australia, to impose additional taxes on those who earn a lot and don’t have medical insurance. More radical would be to apply the same to education. But that would stop the money-go-round, and no-one will vote for that.
What cannot last forever will of course stop. Britain already pays more to borrow money than any other G7 nation, a sign that the strangers on whose charity we rely are becoming less charitable. Jamie Dimon, boss of JP Morgan, recently warned that he expected the bond market to “break” in the foreseeable future. Sustainably having it all is, like perpetual motion and faster than light travel, nice in theory, but impossible in practice. Yet that is what the “radicals”, like their mainstream opponents, offer. They are, thus, less the dawn of a new age, more the dying spasm of the old. It is what comes after that will be truly radical.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.
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(Photograph: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Difficult to argue with the author’s reasoning and logic. It really is frightening what lies ahead. Farage may rout the political establishment but nothing he says convinces me he is prepared to take on the big issues that are foremost of peoples concerns.
Agreed, and that is why Reform is unlikely to ever deliver.