Wanted: A Plan for Britain

Jun 27

The Future of Britain

As we emerge from a global pandemic, a war rages on European soil, growth stalls and the cost-of-living bites, the country is crying out for a positive plan for the future. We are facing an unprecedented global crisis from climate change. The UK’s decision to leave the EU has put pressure on trade and our union. And we are living through the midst of the technological revolution.

It is the job of politics to find answers to these big issues, to map out a plan to meet them, and to harness the opportunities that these tectonic shifts present for our prosperity and the common good.

The Britain Project has spent the past year listening to the British people, asking them what they think and what they want politics to do. The picture they have given us sets out their expectations and the need for change. The findings in this report are supported by the outcomes of similar work conducted by My Life My Say and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

A majority in this country believe politics is no working and there is no plan. People share a mood of deep pessimism, think the country is directionless and worry about Britain’s decline. Very few people have confidence that the plan we need could ever emerge from the way politics is done today. Voters across the political divide feel underserved by and disillusioned with politics.

The electorate wants a different approach. Something better. A positive vision for the future.

Voters also want the how of politics to change, as well as the what. It is the way in which our politics is conducted, as well as the failure to put forward clear ideas for the future, which make people increasingly lose faith and hope in the capacity of politics to change anything for the better.

Where politics continues to fail, the opportunity lies.

If progressives are to respond effectively, what they need most of all is to offer a plan. This has to be the job of progressives.

Our three organisations have come together to offer a space to convene and catalyse that thinking. We have left tribes at the door to collectively analyse the challenges faced by Britain today and to seek progressive, long-term solutions that the country requires. This is the time for a vision that can transform our country.

In the way we behave, we engage, we speak, and we act, we must show there can be a different, better, franker, fresher, braver and more honest politics. And as we fashion it, such a plan must be bold, it must be visionary. It must show answers for Britain on the economy, prosperity and growth, on climate change, on how we harness the technological revolution to bring prosperity to our people and on Britain’s place in the world.

To be radical isn’t to be extreme. To be exciting isn’t to be unrealistic. To be muscular doesn’t mean shutting out the vulnerable. Our progressive traditions, across the political centre ground, give us the tools to do all these things. To be both radical and centrist, to be exciting and pragmatic, and to be muscular and compassionate. Our challenge as progressives is to offer a politics of hope, and a vision rooted in the lives of people, but one that strives to make our country even greater than it is and to deliver for future generations.

These solutions will define how we and our children live, and the future direction of our country. But first we need to articulate the questions. And that is the starting point for our Future of Britain work, which kicks off with the Future of Britain Conference in London on 30 June 2022. We want to start the progressive conversation in earnest. What do we want the Future of Britain to be and how do we get there?

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