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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Boris Johnson won the Brexit campaign and a general election not because he knew how to govern, but because he knew how to entertain. If the present government fails, will the successor be a better government or a populist entertainment? My bet is on the latter, with possibly devastating long-term results, as is now the case in the US.
It may already be too late. But we should try to avert this outcome. If we are to do so, we must start with what is happening now in the UK. The Starmer administration has good intentions. But it was woefully unprepared for government. Part of the explanation has been such a lengthy period in opposition. The government is inevitably very inexperienced, as was also true in 1997 and 2010. But there is a further constraint: oppositions are chronically underfunded. They are supported not as governments in waiting, but as small private organisations trying to win elections. But these small organisations will, should they be elected, have to provide direction to a complex state that, in the case of the UK, spends more than 40 per cent of GDP and provides all the frameworks within which the country operates. It is a huge responsibility for which they are unprepared, both individually and institutionally. This, no doubt, is why governments start off by acting like rabbits in headlights, either delaying too long to decide what to do or leaping too quickly to ill-informed decisions.
This is not a critique of democracy per se. Yes, it has many failings. But none of them is as great as those of despotism. Yet we have to recognise that oppositions need a great deal of help if they are to prepare themselves for the tasks they may face. They need to understand the problems confronting their countries now. They need to work out reforms that might deal with those problems. Not least, they need to know how to turn aspirations into policies, legislation and institutional change.
Part of the solution must be to make politics a more attractive career for able people. Another, as I have argued elsewhere, is to bring ordinary people into the debates, via citizens’ assemblies. But it is also vital for oppositions to have the resources they need to work out policy in advance, from ideas to implementation, while in opposition. Without this, they will be grossly unprepared. It then takes them too long and popularity drains away, as changes come too late.
What is needed then is large-scale public support in keeping with the reality that a political party is a core institution of government. Its vitality is a public good. Even parties one does not agree with are part of that good, because healthy competition is what democracy is about.
There are two risks with relying on private money: insufficient resources and corruption. The former would be smaller if British think-tanks had the resources of US ones. But they do not and never will. Moreover, the priorities of the think-tanks depend on those of wealthy and powerful donors. These may be in line with the true priorities. But that cannot be guaranteed.
So, we should create funding for the opposition on a scale sufficient to invent and create policy, and work out many of the problems of implementation, prior to coming into power. This would improve the quality of public debate and governance, thereby making our democracy more effective. Today, support is just too limited. Thus, financial assistance to opposition parties “to carry out their parliamentary business” in the House of Commons (so-called “Short Money”) was set at only £11.1mn for all opposition parties for 2024-25, with Labour getting just £6.8mn. Opposition parties may also have access to civil servants in the run-up to an election. But that, too, is not enough.
I can see three possible improvements. One is to create a department of the opposition staffed by civil servants and outside experts, designed to help the opposition formulate its proposals. An objection is that this would undermine civil service impartiality. It is also unclear what to do with multiple opposition parties. A second possibility would be publicly funded party think-tanks, as in Germany, with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and others. The third would be to fund parties to commission research and policy development on a large scale.
The most powerful objection is that the sole focus of oppositions is in fact on winning power. If the pursuit of power is seen as inimical to the development and discussion of thought-out policy, the latter will always be abandoned. This is, alas, perfectly possible. Indeed, it seems increasingly plausible in today’s politics. But the result will be persistently bad government. Winning elections is not enough. Democracy has to deliver decent governance, too.
