A couple of years ago, think tanks and economic experts in Britain began to agree that the country is in what they called a ‘doom loop’ in economic growth and services.
The Institute for Government, it seems, was the first to draw this conclusion and it was quickly followed by the Institute of Public Policy Research.
“The UK is in an investment and growth doom loop. Chronic under-investment, public and private, is delivering stagnating growth and a struggling economy”, said the IPPR.
They found that UK underinvestment in infrastructure, research and development, skills and training had spanned several decades and successive governments, dating back to 2005.
The Financial Times took up this theme, showing how Britain lagged behind other G7 countries. Since the economy is stagnant, there’s no money to rebuild the public services the Conservatives have wrecked. Starmer’s new government will end up switching money needed for investment into shoring up crumbling schools and hospitals, which we’re told need £12 billion to repair.
If you don’t invest you fail to grow and the loop spirals downwards further. It’s the same with services. The NHS and social care need immigration to staff them but immigration is a hot potato so if you don’t allow migrants to staff hospitals and social care, those services deteriorate further and so on and so on.
So what’s any of this got to do with here? Simple: this place is wholly dependent on scraps from the British treasury and there are going to be fewer scraps available in the coming years – yes, years.
Starmer adopted the same strategy to get elected as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in 1996-7. Like them, Starmer, fearful of Conservative media attack dogs scaremongering about “Labour tax and spend”, has promised no tax rises and strict borrowing rules. In fact he’s sticking to the Conservative fiscal policy which was designed to run down services further and to make further cuts to benefits.
It took Brown two years to extricate himself from these constraints and it may take Starmer longer. In the meantime he is depending on investment by private companies underwritten by public money to develop infrastructure and produce growth in the British economy.
What that means is using public money to guarantee private profits. Good luck with that. Private companies do what is good for private companies.
Here the effect will be continuing reduction in real terms of the annual block grant, continuing deterioration in services and zero development of infrastructure.
No date for the construction of the A5, no date for completion of the A6 and traffic jams extending at the never-to-be-built flyover at the Westlink/M2 junction.
The health service will continue its inexorable collapse while private hospitals are built across the north to service those who can pay. More people on the growing waiting lists will die waiting in pain. Consultants in their droves will head south to treble their income working in Sláintecare.
At present, for the optimists rejoicing in a new Labour government’s benign attitude to the north, we’re in limbo – ‘a place or state of rest’, the Catholic church used to describe it. Those optimists hope that the British Chancellor’s first budget in the autumn will show the way out of limbo to a brighter future, maybe even a partnership with Stormont.
Catch yourselves on. There is no money and the Chancellor isn’t going to borrow any to invest here. Besides, the north is at the back of the queue.
There is no money and the Chancellor isn’t going to borrow any to invest here. Besides, the north is at the back of the queue
Starmer’s priority is to show the voters in the north-east and north-west who returned to Labour that he can change their lives. This place isn’t on his to-do list.
Even if Stormont got 125% of what the Barnett formula entitled them to, it wouldn’t approach what’s needed for health never mind education.
Then again, there’s no plan how to use any money since there’s no programme for government in sight. It’s hand-to-mouth and borrow from Peter to pay Paul for the foreseeable future.