NEWS EXTRA THERE ARE NO QUICK FIXES
Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs, offered the conference insight into why short-term policies are getting us nowhere.
PROFESSOR ANAND MENON, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College London, and a regular commentator in the national press, joined the BMF conference to share his insights into the issues that are stunting growth in the UK economy, and the change in approach that is needed to correct our current course. “In this country, over the last two decades, people haven’t felt better off” Menon said. “People in work have not felt better off, because wages have basically flatlined. One of the reasons for that is a chronic problem with productivity
“We have struggled compared to all competitor economies to increase productivity in this country, and one of the reasons for this is that our politics has become increasingly dysfunctional.”
The issues
Menon used the example of how recent governments have dealt with the issues within the healthcare system.
Menon explained: “In 2024, under Boris Johnson, the government ploughed money into the health service. They actually delivered on the promise of £350 m a week extra for the NHS, but productivity flatlined. This illustrates two key failings in the way we do politics which get in the way of all sorts of economic policy.
“The first is short-termism; The money the conservatives spent, was spent on more doctors and nurses, short term things that show up immediately in statistics. What they didn’t do was invest in the longer term. We have far less equipment in our hospitals compared to any European country. With fewer scanners per head, you can hire as many doctors as you like but you will still have to wait 6 months for an MRI scan.
“The second thing is
adversarialism. In modern politics you get points for disagreeing with your opponent. One of the reasons the NHS is so strained is that we don’t have a social care system in this country, As such, we have people in hospital beds that don’t need to be there but are stuck because there is no system to release them in to. “And why don’t we have a social care system? Because politically we can’t get to an agreement on it.
“Our current Prime Minister put forward a plan in 2010, a perfectly good plan, and the Tories called it a death tax. Hearing this, the Labour Party panicked and pulled the plug. Then, in 2017, Teresa May put forward a plan for social care. It was very similar to Andy Burnham’s plan, but the Labour Party called it a dementia tax and the Conservatives backed down. “It was functionally the same plan, addressing the same problems, with largely the same solutions. But this advesarialism in all areas of politics means ‘if they say X, we are going to say Y.’ Through these failings, decisions aren’t reached, nothing is fixed, and the economy doesn’t grow. “This means that our economy has barely grown since 2008.”
October 2026
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“People in work have not felt better off, because wages have basically flatlined.”
Dissatisfaction
Menon posited that politics affect our economy, and our economy affects politics, claiming that when the economy struggles, you see trust in politics fall.
“Trust in politics now is lower than it has ever been since Ipsos started asking the question. We no longer see which politician is the most popular, but which is the least unpopular.
“This is significant because the more people feel disconnected to politics, the more likely they are to experiment with populism. “The people who vote Reform and the people who vote for Restore are the ones who feel most economically insecure. Economic insecurity is the bane of mainstream politics.
“Distrust in politics feeds in to how people vote and that feeds in to the economy in turn.
“When it came to the Brexit vote in 2016, the poorer parts of the UK were disproportionately likely to vote to leave. There were perfectly good reasons to vote for Brexit; to control your own rules and regulations and control immigration, but a lot of people voted in protest towards what they saw as a decline in the standard of living.
“When people feel their standard of living is getting worse, they protest, and the irony is that they often protest in ways that make that situation even worse than it was to begin with.”
The solution
The solution then, Menon explained, is to focus on the larger longer term infrastructure problems that lie at the heart of the issue. He continued: “We know the solution to social care. It will involve raising taxes, but we know if we fix that, several positives will come of it straight away.
“The NHS will start working again, 130 thousand beds will be freed up, productivity will increase, young people who are suffering from health complaints which have kicked them out of the workforce will be treated, and many will be able to rejoin the workforce. This will free up the money that councils have tied up in social care, due to their statutory duty to provide social care for anyone who needs it. If you free up money that is being wasted by councils on social care once we have a national system, all of a sudden, local conditions start to improve too. “There are lots of issues like that; you can liberalise the planning rules far more effectively than Starmer’s government did and start housebuilding again. There are loads of ways to generate growth in this country. We just need a political climate that is capable of delivering.” BMJ
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