The Observer (2022-01-09)

The Observer
48 09.01.22 Comment & Analysis

 The notion

of sovereign

liberties is

as old as

Thatcher’s

pearls.

Crises such as public

health must be met by

the state and there’s

the Conservatives’ rub

Conservatives look

like cranks today, not because of
personal failings of this or that
politician, but because they cannot
deal with the crises of the modern
world. It’s not that they don’t have
answers – rightwing thinkers spit
them out faster than a machine
gun fi res bullets. It’s just that their
answers are irrelevant and, even in
Tory terms, self-defeating.
All viable responses to global
warming, vaccination, the job losses
artifi cial intelligence will bring and
failing public health enhance the
role of the state. It must provide
jobs and benefi ts to society’s
losers, protect their health and
drastically reconfi gure markets to
sustain the planet. Small states that
allow sovereign individuals and
companies to decide for themselves
now feel as antiquated as Margaret
Thatcher’s handbag and pearls.
At best, Conservatives will the
ends but not the means, as the
Johnson government does with the
climate crisis and protecting the
NHS from the Covid pandemic. At
worst, they retreat from modernity
into denial and conspiratorial
gibberish.
I know of no better example of
the inability of the right to face the
world in front of its eyes than the
collapse in public health, which
will become ever more visible as
2022 progresses.
Infl ation and tax rises are
pushing a great segment of the
population into poverty or a place
close to it. In ways that would
astonish our forebears, poverty
will produce obesity. Anyone in the
government who has cared to study
the crisis knows that the cheapest
meals are no longer vegetables
and rice, potatoes or bread, the
traditional diet of the poor. Now,
they are ultra-processed industrial
foods, whose manufacturers use
the cheapest and least nutritious

Obese? Need nanny’s help? Don’t rely

on the Tories, baffl ed by today’s world

ingredients and economies of

scale to keep the price as low as

possible and lashings of fat, sugar

or salt to make their gunk palatable.

Government knows it, but will do

next to nothing about it.

Tim Lang, the author of Feeding

Britain , refers me to studies

showing the UK had the worst diet

in Europe, with half of all food

bought processed to the nth degree.

The result is hundreds of thousands

suffering avoidable deaths or years

of painful and cramped lives as

they deal with the chronic illnesses

fatness brings: cancer, heart

disease, strokes, dementia and,

indeed, Covid.

The moral argument for

preventing needless pain is

overwhelming. Even the most

hard-hearted Tories, meanwhile,

should want to limit the escalating

costs of healthcare if only to hold

on to their money. The NHS spends

£18bn a year treating obesity-

related conditions , a fi gure that

can only rise. Dreadful diets mean

higher taxes.

They cannot bring themselves

to act, just as they cannot bring

themselves to tell the UK’s Novak

Djokovices that there is a price to

pay for refusing to be vaccinated

or level with the public on the

revolutionary changes to national

life a serious attempt to cope with

climate change will bring.

The best the Conservatives could

manage was to commission Henry

Dimbleby to produce a national

food strategy. Last summer, it

recommended the government

intervene to produce a long-term

shift in eating habits, that sugar and

salt be regarded as modern versions

of tobacco and taxed accordingly,

and that the government protect

food standards in trade agreements.

The report was criticised for

treating food poverty as a distinct

condition. Our own Jay Rayner , the

Robespierre of radical restaurant

critics , roared there is no such thing

as food poverty, there’s only poverty.

The best way to deal with today’s

fall in living standards is to listen

to Marcus Rashford and restore the

cuts to universal credit.

Dimbleby is indeed a classic

establishment fi gure: fathered by

David, schooled by Eton. But that

is what makes him interesting.

He offered Tories the chance to

modify rather than overthrow their

beliefs. Throughout its history, the

Conservative party has survived

by making concessions to shifting

times the better to ensure that it

stayed in control of change. “Tory

men, Whig measures”, as Disraeli

put it.

Now it cannot adapt or concede.

Ministers have sat on the Dimbleby

report for months. In cabinet, all

the familiar arguments are heard

against, in that tellingly upper-class

phrase, the “nanny state” interfering

with free markets and freedom of

choice. Civil servants are muttering

that better health labelling on food

products is as far as their political

masters will go.

Readers may scoff at

Conservatives babbling about

nannies. But there is a long tradition

of leftwingers worrying about the

middle classes telling the working

classes what to do.

“The ordinary human being

would sooner starve than live on

brown bread and raw carrots,” wrote

George Orwell in 1936. “When you

are underfed, harassed, bored and

miserable, you don’t want to eat

dull wholesome food. You want

something a little bit ‘tasty’.” In other

words, it’s not that worries are not

justifi ed. It’s just that they provide

no solutions.

History isn’t an exam. No teacher

rewards the students who get the

questions right. Maybe Conservative

politicians can prosper by riding

the reaction against the costs of

the push towards net zero. Donald

Trump has already shown them

the way.

But whatever electoral

success they continue to enjoy,

Conservatives can see the world

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald

Reagan created collapsing. They

fear a prim and constricted future

when the state represses enterprise,

tells you what to eat, how often

you can fl y, when to be vaccinated,

how you must heat your home and

what type of car you can drive, if

any. But then, when the current

wave of conservatism began in

the 1980s, leftwing critics saw

how it would lead to a corrupt and

divided future. If Thatcher wins,

said Neil Kinnock , in 1983, “I warn

you not to be ordinary, I warn you

not to be young, I warn you not to

fall ill, I warn you not to get old”.

His oratory and foresight did the

Labour party no good because

the left no longer seemed to have

credible solutions.

Now it is Conservatives who

cannot respond to change. The 21st

century baffl es them. They don’t

know what to do about it. This is

why, for all their apparent self-

confi dence, so many speeches by

Conservative politicians and articles

by Conservative thinkers sound

more than a little unhinged.

@NickCohen4

Big property returns

lie in the shires, but

so too do the risks

Wealth was surging in Britain

long before Covid and energy

bills got in on the “going

through the roof” act. Offi cial

data last week showed

household wealth rose to

£15.2tn pre-pandemic. Despite

a huge recession, it is likely

to have defi ed all economic

logic by growing further since,

thanks to double-digit house

price growth.

Booming house prices in

recent decades have made

London’s homeowners the

richest in Britain , but they also

ensure that it’s our wealth

inequality capital, with an army

of asset-less renters. Does this

mean property investors would

have done best by investing in

London or other global cities

such as Tokyo and New York

where house prices have

boomed? Nope, says surprising

new research examining 150

years of data from 15 countries.

In fact, overall long-run

returns are better outside big

“superstar” cities because of

higher rental yields elsewhere.

What’s driving this? Th e

authors argue these higher

returns make sense as

compensation for the increased

risk of buying property outside

major cities where housing

markets are more volatile and

less liquid. So, despite what

everyone says, the big city is

the place for those who want

to play it safe. Bold investors

should head to the provinces.

Th at’s obviously what loads

of people have done during

Covid lockdowns, which is why

we’ve seen far stronger house

price growth in rural areas. But

before you get too smug, don’t

forget the longer-term lesson

of this research: your new rural

idyll’s value could be in for a

bumpy ride.

 Torsten Bell is chief

executive of the Resolution

Foundation. Read more at

resolutionfoundation.org

Insights

Torsten Bell

Nick

Cohen

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‘Conservatives

can see the

world Thatcher

and Ronald

Reagan created

collapsing’