By Susana Rowles
THIS week, in an effort to warn Britons that tough times are ahead, Sir Kier Starmer and the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been giving speeches and interviews discussing the tough choices that will need to be made.
One could question the wisdom of announcing £10bn of public sector pay rises while telling everyone to tighten their belt in the same month, but the UK political psychodrama is too complex for an 800-word column.
Regular readers won’t be surprised to know that I disagree with Starmer’s politics on pretty much everything. However, there is one thing I do agree with him on, and that is that it is time to make tough choices.
Jersey is lucky that we don’t have the same scale of social or economic problems currently facing the UK. And also, that some of the problems we do share, are relative in scale.
When we talk about certain Jersey problems, we are often discussing problems affecting a small number of people, not several hundred thousand people.
To give you an example, if we wanted to give a laptop to every Jersey child in Year 7, we’d be talking about 900 laptops. In the UK, that would be around 1.1m laptops each year.
If we wanted to increase the capacity of our 28 bus routes, we would be talking about 30 extra buses and 50 new bus drivers. In London alone, TFL has a fleet of 10,000 buses.
However, this issue of scale is both a blessing and a trap.
It’s easy to expect the government to just solve this issue or that issue, after all we’re only talking about a small problem here, a small problem there.
And down the trap we go, continuously expanding the scope of what we expect our government to do.
If we expect government to oversee everything, to regulate everything, to intervene in everything, then we have to accept a larger civil service.
This is one of the difficult conversations we need to have.
In an earlier article, I discussed how a growing share of resources is being allocated to address the demands of ever-smaller minorities. This results in fewer resources available for initiatives that benefit all of us.
I also discussed how the public’s expectations of government have transitioned from strategy and policymaking to implementation and service delivery.
This happens because it’s easy to increase scope, but managing expectations requires strong political will.
And when so much more effort and resources are spent on small groups of people, the rest of us (the majority) can grow frustrated with the quality or scope of the services we do access.
As a fiscally conservative person, I prefer a smaller government where I retain more of my cash and choose where to spend it. When the tax burden rises, naturally, the expectation of what I should receive for the extra tax also increases.
We cannot have our cake and eat it. If Jersey is to remain a low taxation jurisdiction, we need to adjust our expectations. And vice versa, if we increase the scope of what we want the government to do, we need to accept that we will have to pay more.
Pundits are always making the case for a reduction in waste. And while it is true that we do waste resources and that we probably could do the same with a bit less people and a bit less money, as soon as cuts are made, people start bemoaning the loss of a service.
No loss is ever acceptable.
Once we have something, our expectation is that we will have that something forever.
A smaller government, one that doesn’t tax everything that moves, comes with sacrifices. It means we may not have every service on demand, every issue swiftly addressed by a government office, or every minor inconvenience regulated away. The challenge is finding and maintaining that delicate balance between what we expect from government and what we are willing to pay for.
If we want a government that does more, we must be ready to shoulder the financial burden that comes with it.
If we want to maintain lower taxes and a smaller state, we must be prepared to forgo certain services or accept that some issues will be left for individuals and communities to resolve on their own.
In essence, the tough choice that lies ahead for us is to decide what we want from our government and what we are willing to give up or do ourselves.
It’s not acceptable to simply demand more without considering the cost, nor to insist on low taxation without recognising the limitations that imposes.
As the October budget looms in the UK, let’s take stock of our priorities.
Is our goal still to have a government that is big enough to provide necessary services, but small enough to allow for individual freedom and economic efficiency?
So, let’s have an open discussion about which functions the government should and shouldn’t be expected to perform in the wider context of everything else it already does.
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Susana Rowles is an entrepreneur working in ed-tech. She was born in Portugal, spent most of her adult live in the UK and moved to Jersey in 2018. Susana is heavily involved in the local community and sits on the board of several Jersey charities. She has a keen interest in local politics and the impact it has on our community.
