Andy Burnham has become Britain’s new Prime Minister, promising to “put a laser-like focus on growth“.
It’s a full reset from his predecessor Keir Starmer, who told the country that “the defining mission of this government is to grow the economy.”
Keir replaced Rishi ‘Seven Bins‘ Sunak, whose advice was to “relentlessly focus on growth“.
He in turn took over from Liz Truss, who said that “what I’m about is about growing the economy”.
How different this was to Boris Johnson: “My government’s priority is to grow and strengthen the economy.”
Teresa May’s priority, on the other hand, was to “drive economic growth up and down the country”.
David Cameron promised that “a relentless focus on growth is what you will get from this government.”
Lastly, Gordon Brown, who said that “going for growth is the government’s number one priority.”
There have been eight prime ministers since I began writing this blog. It’s a list of politicians with a wide variety of views, competencies and popularity. One thing they all have in common is a commitment to economic growth.
Some of this was nuanced, with a greater or lesser degree of attention on how it was distributed. Starmer, May and Johnson all specified that they wanted it to be shared, while Truss openly scorned talk of distribution. Andy Burnham brings nuance too, specifically mentioning “good growth in every postcode”. This is important, and I don’t want to imply equivalence in economic approach across the eight prime ministers. Nevertheless, the underlying pattern is the same, the quotes largely interchangeable, and the latest resident of Number 10 has dutifully pledged his allegiance to the god of growth.
I use the word god deliberately, because I think growth fulfils a religious function in modern politics. We put our faith in it to solve our problems. It is the answer to our ills. It will either shine upon us and bless us, or it will abandon us to recession. Growth has many believers and a vociferous priesthood, and questioning its centrality makes you a heretic.
With my heretic hat on then, let me say briefly why I don’t stand among the growth worshippers. I’ve written an entire book on this if you want more detailed arguments, but perhaps the most important of all is this: growth is an abstract. It doesn’t mean anything on its own, like ‘activity’, ‘motion’, or ‘action’.
If we were to swap the word ‘action’ into the quotes above, we’d see the problem. If a politician promised “relentless focus on action”, we’d ask further questions – what actions? Who is acting? For what? Be more specific.
Talk of growth is so normalised that we accept it at face value, but we ought to ask the same questions: growth of what? For whom?
Growth in the abstract may or may not be a good thing. We always have to be more specific. There are plenty of forms of economic growth that we should resist, and industries that should be shrinking. Fossil fuels is one. AI is another, so massively inflated in value at the moment that it’s likely to punch a hole in the global economy any day now.
Some forms of growth are evidence of failure. Should we celebrate growth in the emergency tyre replacement sector if it actually reflects a breakdown in road maintenance spending and the proliferation of potholes?
Growth is also meaningless without saying who it is for, because context is everything. More for those who don’t have enough is vitally important, potentially life-saving, and that’s why it makes no sense to be anti-growth. Growth for people who already have more than they need, however, is pointless. It is a form of waste. In a context of extreme inequality, more for the richest is actively corrosive to society and to democracy.
Another reason to pause before talking about economic growth is that most people don’t understand it anyway. The vast majority of voters will tell you that it matters, because they are constantly primed to say so. A recent survey found that 87% of voters wanted a stronger focus on growth, which makes you wonder where it should come in a list of government priorities if number one isn’t high enough.
At the same time, the Royal Economic Society found that half the population can’t pick the definition of GDP out of a multiple choice question. We don’t know the god we worship.
What would happen if we stopped talking about it?
By all means let the statisticians calculate GDP, and let the treasury and the economics track it. But what if politicians paused every time they wrote ‘growth’ in a speech, crossed it out and put in something specific? Perhaps we could cut to the chase and talk more about what we really value. Higher wages, rather than higher economic growth. Security, a reliable pension. Funding for health and education. Work that pays and businesses that share the wealth. Safe and beautiful places to live, clean air and a thriving natural world.
What if, like Adam Smith did, we talked about improvements rather than growth?
Put a moratorium on mentions of growth in speeches, and politicians would have to be more specific about the improvements they seek. They’d need to tie their policies into the things that matter to people, rather than falling back on abstractions and assumptions. They would need to show how increased prosperity would reach ordinary citizens, what it would feel like to live in a healthier economy, how you would know that you were benefitting.
Dropping the economic jargon of GDP would also reduce the distance that people feel between themselves and politics. It would rebuild trust, and give voters more clarity on what politicians are actually suggesting.
And maybe we could put an end to the echo chamber while we’re at it, and end this sequence of prime ministers who all sound like each other.
The Earthbound Report 