The Number 10 “reset” offers a chance to take on the populists by delivering for all places
Restoring trust in the government, everywhere, is key to winning voters back - insights from CPP's Head of Research and Analysis, Daniel Turner.
10 October 2024
6 minute read
This weekend saw confirmation that the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Sue Gray has resigned, to be replaced by former Head of Political Strategy in Number 10 – and election campaign supremo – Morgan McSweeney.
What might this rejigging of Downing Street mean for the early direction of the government?
The best clues we have come from journalist Tom McTague’s portrait of McSweeney from earlier this year: a policy approach of delivering well on communities’ basic expectations. He gives the example of the “eyesore gardens policy” McSweeney helped implement in Barking in the 2000s – which saw the council clean up rubbish dumped in gardens by rogue landlords and charge them for the service - as a step to restoring trust in local government and taking on the BNP’s threat to Labour at their root.
McSweeney’s influence has been clearest in the Prime Minister’s major political interventions since July’s election. In his ‘Fixing the Foundations’ speech (in response to the racist riots of the summer), Starmer said that those riots betrayed a sickness in the country; as well as its cure, through ordinary people “clearing up their community”.
We should welcome this earnest focus on fixing the basics.
It’s not just sound politics; it’s backed by the evidence too. Research this summer from economist Thiemo Fetzer and colleagues identified a relationship between rising vacancy rates on high streets and local support for right-wing populist parties in the UK.
If the new government cannot reestablish basic levels of confidence in the state, it will not be able to enact a broader reform agenda. The British Social Attitudes survey shows that, since 2019, the public has both become more concerned about buckling public services and inequality, and less willing to pay more taxes to fix those problems. Why? Because they are losing faith in the state as a vehicle for collective action and collective progress.
But Number 10 shouldn’t miss another important detail from McSweeney’s experience in the 2000s: reclaiming trust started not from Westminster politics or a Whitehall initiative but with the local authority and local councillors.
The place-based nature of support for populism is important. The physical and economic texture of a community is key in determining support for the far right. When that texture frays, support for anti-mainstream politicians rises. Crucially, this is true even for individuals who are doing well. Tax cuts or benefit increases to top-up incomes won’t cut it, if local employment is dropping[1]; public services are deteriorating[2]; or high streets stagnating.
Nor should we expect a turnaround to be quick or easy. A feeling of being “left behind” as a region can be passed on generation-to-generation[3], and experiencing decline in your youth can leave you more open to populists even decades later[4]. At least some of our current political impasse is part of the long-shadow of the early 1980s experience of deindustrialisation – what economist Rodríguez-Pose and others have called “the revenge of places that don’t matter”.
Reinvigorating struggling regional economies is the second, longer, harder path to taking on the populist right. Some argue that this challenge is in tension, at least at the margin, with the government’s goal of maximising economic growth. Why spend money on community centres in Mansfield, they might say, when that money could be supporting new tech spin-outs around Cambridge?
The Prime Minister and Chancellor need to resist that argument, because – at least in the long-run – it is flawed.
First, because so many of our regional economies – especially the urban areas of the UK outside of southern England – can and should be more productive than they are. CPP’s research shows there are economic clusters across lagging communities that could be supported to deliver national as well as local growth.
Second, because any short-term growth spurt will quickly unravel if it doesn’t stem the rising tide of populism. Populists almost always harm the economies they manage[5]. Statecraft aimed at undermining their support is a long-run growth plan.
That’s why a key test for the Government in the Budget later this month, and next year’s Spending Review, will be setting out a credible vision for growth in all parts of the country.
I’ve focused here on the economy, but in no way do I want to downplay the very real sense of fear felt especially by ethnic minority communities across the UK this summer. We can draw some hope, however, from the growing body of evidence that the UK is one of the most integrated and racially tolerant countries in the world, and is becoming more so – even as our peers in France or Germany see racialised divides harden. We may have one of the world’s best opportunities to build a democracy and society that goes beyond ‘race’, if we can rebuild a state capable of delivering the goods.
It's clear that the Prime Minister and his new Chief of Staff are convinced of the case to act. They need to hold the line – criminalise the far-right; fix the foundations – and to be ambitious about the economic potential of our regions. Get it right, and we solve the linked challenges of low growth, low trust, and rising intolerance. Get it wrong, and the viability of social democratic government in the UK may be seriously undermined.
Tackling the roots of populism isn’t a difficult choice at all for the PM: it is mission critical.
References
1) Fetzer (2019), “Did Austerity Cause Brexit?”.
2) Dickson et al (2024), “Public Service Delivery and Support for the Populist Right”.
3) McKay (2019) finds evidence for the UK that perceived local decline (independent of personal finances) reduces faith in effective political representation. McKay et al (2024) expand that to five European countries, to find wider trends that poorer regions feel discriminated against. Greve et al (2022) find a similar result for Germany, arguing for the role of regional “collective memory” of declining welfare driving populism; as do Dorn et al 2023, finding regional decline – not individual circumstance – matters.
4) Wuttke et al (2022), Have Europeans Grown Tired of Democracy? New Evidence from Eighteen Consolidated Democracies.
5) Funke et al (2022), Populist Leaders and the Economy.