Will Hutton’s cunning plan for Labour 

Not surprisingly, Lloyd George, as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908-1915) in the Liberal “great reforming government” that fought the Tory-dominated House of Lords to create national

insurance and an old-age pension prior to the First World War, is an early example of what Hutton calls the politics of balancing the We with the I.   Then comes the Christian socialist, RH

Tawney, who influenced much more than Anglican social thinking after the War.  Tawney’s friend from Toynbee Hall days (1903) and Liberal hero, was William Beveridge, whose expertise in

social insurance was taken up by Atlee’s 1945 Labour government.  The other big name amongst the founding fathers of Hutton’s political economy is John Maynard Keynes, who bequeathed

Keynesian economics and the core belief that government intervention can stabilise economies.   Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933-1938) which sought to remedy the Great Depression,

economic recovery, reform of the financial system and help for the unemployed and impoverished, was profoundly influenced by Keynesian thinking.

Hutton describes how Harold Macmillan’s one-nation conservatism, support for the welfare state, his Keynesian approach, mixed economy with some nationalised industries and strong trades

unions, represented a retention of a post-war consensus dominated by the thinking of his three heroes.  The Conservative belief that the free market, individual freedom and a minimal state

is the correct formula for growth stands out in stark contrast to Macmillan’s approach. It was finally dropped by Margaret Thatcher, who wished to counter a “culture of dependency”,

denounced the idea that people should turn to Government to solve their problems, and for whom there was no such thing as society.  “There are individual men and women and there are

families, and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first”.  Take away Thatcher’s pragmatism, add the last 14 years of government, and we end up

with an extreme right-wing version of Toryism and its discontents that almost destroyed the Conservative Party.

The second half of This Time No Mistakes, detailing policy prescriptions for reform and how we might escape from the present economic and social crisis, shows an extraordinarily deep grasp

of our multiple problems, both financial and social, and the policy work of different ministries.  The wide sweep of Hutton’s proposed reforms and institutional innovations, from

restructuring pension funds to incentivising socially purposeful businesses committed to more than benefiting shareholders, makes them impossible to cover within a brief review like this. 

Just read them. They may well have influenced the thinking of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister and should be the subject of a national conversation.

The rub is that most of Hutton’s proposals require funding, either from government or private investors, perhaps with the former leveraging the latter.  The UK’s current debts are eating up

too much government revenue and Starmer is self-limited by tight fiscal restraints to funding small-scale initiatives with maximum impact.  Rachel Reeves is already having to find some

wriggle-room.

Credibility and stability are the necessary first aims in the Labour plan.  Hutton’s comprehensive analysis and prescriptions possibly foreshadow much of what is to come.  It looks like

being a long haul. 

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