My wife thought I was mad when I suggested that the closing lines of the (pretty awful) Netflix mini drama "Hostage" meant that the idea of honest politicians confronting the public with the truth of our situation is now in our Zeitgeist. In the drama, the PM resigns and calls a General Election so that she can get re-elected after she tells “the truth”. To me, a project that attracted millions £s, took months to produce, has been signed off with that punchline by a leading media company, has clearly passed through the Zeitgeist membrane.
What would such a manifesto look like? What is it that politicians are too afraid to put in their manifestos? That’s going to be the subject of this post and quite a few to come.
Interrogate the policies for yourself using the Policy Analyst free AI tool.
The social contract
Top of my list would be reframing the social contract. The promise that we give each other is that in the event that our own efforts fail, we (the rest of us) will provide the necessary support to prevent anyone falling into destitution and to provide them with the foundation on which they can continue to make their contributions (what ever those are). Nothing more, nothing less. We do this because it is in our self interest that every member of our society is contributing. The fulfilment of that promise is basically a set of services: shelter, food, transport, education, information, care, and legal infrastructure. And, in theory, we get a choice: we can either provide the services, or we can give people money (so that they can buy those services themselves in a private marketplace).
The truth is: we do not have that choice. We cannot use money as a displacement for our responsibility to deliver on the social contract. Handing out money distorts incentives, will always be conditional (because that’s the nature of money!), and is, therefore, incomplete, ineffective, and actively discourages contribution, crushes ambition, and debilitates agency. On top of all that: cash benefits are eye-wateringly expensive. We have managed to create a “social security” system that actively destroys our social contract, and pollutes our politics to boot! Any society with millions of able people not enabled to make their contribution every day has a seriously dysfunctional system – that much should be bleeding obvious.
Policy: replace our “welfare” benefits programs with public services, phased in over 5 to 10 years.
Results: instant recognition as the only country in the world that has got a grip on its long term spending; at least 200 million more hours of some kind of contribution every year; soaring productivity; safe and secure population; an explosion in innovation; the most flexible, well trained labour in the world; and competitive businesses.
Incomes Taxes
Any tax system that taxes income from labourers and employees more aggressively than it does passive incomes and capital cannot possibly advertise itself as "making work pay". If we want people to contribute more and we want higher levels of productivity, then we have to stop taxing working people more than we do anyone else!
Merging the four primary incomes taxes (IT, NICs, IHT, CGT) into a single progressive system that is levied equally across all forms of income is obviously the solution. Marry that with a commitment to spend all revenues from that tax on public services and you have the basis for re-establishing strong reciprocity and the degree of social cohesion that matches the challenges of the coming decades.
Policy: National Contributions. See paper – I wrote that over Covid but it stills applies. Updated values and rates available at the Policy Analyst.
Results: a simple, obviously fair tax system that establishes a strongly reciprocal social contract. A clear and transparent political obligation to set the rates and boundaries of a common incomes tax that applies equally to everyone.
Property Taxes
Can there ever have been something so obviously ripe for reform as property taxes in the UK in 2025? This is commonly accepted across the political spectrum, touted by every think tank and academic, and yet never makes it onto anyone’s manifesto: reform Britain’s regressive and hated twins, Stamp Duty and Council Tax, the Poll Tax’s rotten cousin. A system born of sheer stupidity in the hazy miasma of the early neoliberal period. ‘Ooo, people consume local services, so let’s tax people!’ Fucking genius! (I guess someone said, at the time). A local property tax based on taxing people – what could possibly go wrong?! And now, after 3 decades of political cowardice, it just gets worse every year.
It’s not complicated to figure out how to bring in a straight 1% property tax across all property and land in the UK. It really isn’t! Can’t figure out how to deal with people who don’t have any income? Have you thought about a lien on the property? Can’t figure out how to help all the people who will have higher property taxes than they do now? Have you thought about reducing people’s cost of living by more than you increase their taxes? I mean, have we put even a little effort into making the transition work?! Some relief for those who grow our food and care for our ecology? Why not?
Policy: Scrap Stamp Duty and Council Tax and replace with a 1% property tax on the value of all property, including land. 2% on second homes. Liens available for everyone in any year where their income is less than 3X their property tax obligation.
Results: transaction volumes up 25%; productivity up by 0.4%; labour mobility; housing price affordability; sustainable local government finances1. And, importantly, everyone with an average valued property who uses the full gamete of new public services will save more in their cost of living than it costs in additional property taxes.
Next?
That's my top three, but there's plenty more. The basic principle here is that you have to look at how all of these policies interact with each other. You can't just look at increasing property taxes alone, without also considering how you might reduce people’s cost of living. Our social security policies must be part of how we modernise our tax system.
This failure of imagination is probably partly due to the hyper specialisation that we have developed since the Fossil Revolution in the 18th century. We've ended up with policy silos that prevent progress in any one of them because nobody understands that we live in a system in which all of the parts interact. It's called "system change" for a reason! (Many can’t even conceive of a whole system, and therefore what on Earth needs to be changed.)
Got questions about how all of this would work? Head over to the Policy Analyst and ask away. This entire policy framework is loaded in there and it stands ready to answer any question you'd like to throw at it.
based on consolidated analysis of recent papers from Miles/Monro, Leuing, Muellbauer, Plender