The Economist USA 03.21.2020

(avery) #1

50 TheEconomistMarch 21st 2020


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I


n 2012, inthe midst of David Cameron’s
austerity campaign, a clutch of newly
elected Tory mps published “Britannia Un-
chained”, a book lamenting Britain’s
“bloated state, high taxes and excessive
regulation”. The authors included Priti Pa-
tel, Dominic Raab and Liz Truss, now
home, foreign and trade secretaries respec-
tively. Later, Boris Johnson would advertise
Brexit as a liberating mission for a nimble
nation. His supporters dreamed of turning
Britain’s face away from Brussels and to-
wards Singapore.
They were swimming with the tide, for
the horizons of the British state have
shrunk over the past 40 years. It intervenes
in fewer markets and owns fewer indus-
tries. Limits on executive power have been
embraced: state aid and competition laws,
human rights legislation, and the expan-
sion of judicial review.
But since 2016 this trend has reversed.
Brexit is one reason: £6bn ($7bn) in funds
and some 20,000 officials have been dedi-
cated to the project, partly reversing cuts to
the civil service headcount. The govern-
ment prepared a bail-out fund for busi-

nesses and emergency ferry capacity in
case of a messy exit. The free movement of
people will be replaced by an occupation-
based visa system, representing a shift to-
wards state planning in the labour market.
The second factor is Mr Johnson’s plan
to level up poorer parts of the country. In
the budget on March 11th, Rishi Sunak, the
chancellor, announced £640bn on infra-
structure spending over five years, the
highest as a share of gdp since the 1970s.
Public spending as a share of gdpunder Mr

Sunak’s plan was due to settle at 40-41%,
higher than any recent point outside the fi-
nancial crisis. Jesse Norman, a treasury
minister, says Brexit and big spending are
linked. “It’s a Burkean understanding that a
nation is a moral idea: a group of people
bound together by a moral affinity. It’s that
legitimating sense of self that underwrites
a nation’s capacity to tax.”
Failing railway franchises have been re-
nationalised with little murmur in recent
years. Controls on energy prices, de-
nounced as Marxist by the Tories when
proposed by Ed Miliband, then Labour
leader, in 2013, were implemented by The-
resa May and will be kept by Mr Johnson.
He plans new taxes on social-media com-
panies, and new rules over online content.
The third factor is Mr Johnson’s aver-
sion to restraints on ministerial discretion.
He hopes to reform judicial review to pre-
vent the courts being used to conduct “pol-
itics by other means”, and wants to review
human-rights laws to ensure “effective
government”. He skips scrutiny hearings in
Parliament and plans to loosen European
Union rules on state aid and procurement.
But covid-19 is likely to do more than all
of these to extend the reach of the state. Al-
ready the government has introduced a de-
gree of social control not seen since the
second world war. Schools are closing in-
definitely. Office workers have been told to
stay at home. The elderly have been urged
to cocoon themselves from human con-
tact. There is widespread expectation of a
lockdown in London. Emergency legisla-

Government

Leviathan rising


The big state is back. The virus is the main reason, but not the only one

Britain


51 Curtainsintheatreland

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