General Election 2024 will be dominated by a few really important issues for voters across the United Kingdom. What people want will be hotly contested around a few themes that will bubble up and down, with the odd second and third-tier issue coming around every now and again. To be sure, there are lots and lots of local issues that individual constituencies will focus on, but the national issues are going to centralise around three key themes: The economy, health and immigration.
Let us start with the biggest issue of them all and a returning issue that will never ever go away: the economy. The economy is too broad a word so we will break it down.
First of all, the cost of living. This is a very tired phrase simply to mean the cost of taxation, inflation, utilities and purchasing power. The ‘cost of living’ crisis (and there are just so many crises that the word ‘crisis’ has seemingly lost all meaning) is a big issue for voters and parties will need to explain how they plan to help out here. There is the answer of state intervention with more state say on price caps, nationalisation of industries and an increase in handouts that the leftist parties will say they will do. The Labour Party is particularly keen on renationalisation of certain areas like energy including a Great British Energy corporation that will help transition Britain away from the “big 6” energy companies and back to the state. The Labour Party will also declare their desire to grow the state in order to protect the worse off. The centrists will declare that taxation increases for the more well-off will be the way to help re-distribute the wealth though with the tax burden the highest it has been in over 70 years this will be a hard sell, though it is a common election pledge for many parties. Here we might see some silence. Both Labour and the Tories are committed to not raising taxes after the election. Time will tell if this is actually a promise or an aspiration they’ll have to ditch; as is often the case. The right will campaign for lowering taxation, increasing investment in start-ups and to grow the economy which is what the Tories will likely campaign on. The more long-term approach is a hard sell but even the Labour Party are campaigning on the idea of growing the economy and a more long-term growth approach not always led by the public (state) sector.
In all, this election will be fought on various versions of Keynesian economics (tax and spend, big state, state investments, state run, state whatever) which is what the two main parties are fighting with, aligning with the consensus politics we are largely living in. There will be parties that are more on the side of Friedman/Hayek-style economics (free market, individual choice, private market dynamism). But Demand-Style economics seems to be the driving force at the moment. So the Supply-side-ers will be having to speak up in a Keynesian-crowded room.
When it comes to healthcare this is where we are actually seeing the biggest shift in the way this issue is argued. Whereas in previous elections the issue of healthcare is simply a bidding war about how much money each party would put into the National Health Service. How much extra funding would each party give to one of the biggest employers in the world? Well, we might get this but actually the issue of public healthcare has changed somewhat drastically over the last few years. Thatcher’s ex-chancellor Nigel Lawson once said of the NHS that it was the closest thing Britain had to a state religion. Any hint of a desire to reform the NHS would be met with angry cries of ‘privatisation’ claims. Now, all parties are basically admitting that the NHS needs to change/reform. The NHS is the biggest source of public expenditure outside of pensions and despite record-spending the outcome is becoming so bad that even France have a far better health system than we do in terms of outcome…FRANCE! The NHS has more staff than ever, more funding than ever, more facilities than ever and yet waiting lists are around 5-7 million. The scandals of Mid-Staffs and other Trusts have denigrated the once-venerated institution. Over half of the National Health Service employees are not clinically trained or patient-facing. This has all led to a new consensus that the service, once the envy of the world, needs to change. How that will look is up to the various parties but a restructuring will take place and the parties will declare how they will do it. There really isn’t much to go on in terms of assuming what each faction will do so let us wait and see on this one. Healthcare is always on the agenda because it affects us all. It also has a fair bit to do with the third and fast-growing issue of the day.
The relatively new player on the top-3 block is the subject of immigration. Where once the word was dirty in establishment and media circles it has now forced itself on to the agenda. The issue which has sent the right-leaning parties in mainland Europe into soaring poll scores from east to west, from north to south, here the issue is so pertinent. Britain has been dealing with mass immigration since Tony Blair’s era, and the eye-watering statistic that in the last 2 years more people came into this country net than from 1066-2010. Net immigration reaching a record 750,000 in 2022 shocked the United Kingdom. The number from 2023 was 650,000 but there is a chance that will be revised upwards like it was in 2022. The impact mass immigration has had on UK infrastructure from roads, school places, GP appointments and general quality of life is finally biting hard on a mass section of the population. With a mass influx of immigration has also led to an influx of tensions outside of the UK as well. From the Indian-Pakistan tensions erupting in Leicester last year to the weekly Palestine protests in London there seems to be wholesale rejection of liberal views to immigration. Illegal immigration, symbolised by the small boat crisis and the Rwanda policy much-maligned for its inability to work, has forced the immigration issue into a commanding third place for voters. The established media will attempt to quieten down this issue and the main parties will make small overtures to their ‘concern’ with both the two major parties committed to managing immigration better (though this means little in practise). But it is clear that this issue will not go away and the effects mass migration has had on towns and cities across the United Kingdom is felt too much to ignore.
Britain has a housing crisis, and this is a huge problem. Britain needs to build around 300,000 new houses a year just to cope with the levels of immigration into this country. The cost to buy a house is nine times the average salary in the United Kingdom; an average salary artificially depressed with the influx of mass immigration. Mass immigration has massively helped big business increase the bottom line at the expense of small businesses which can’t compete with the large corporate businesses with mass ranks of foreign workers. This is how the immigration issue is cutting through to young and old, working and middle class, north and south, and this will be a very hot topic that will cut through the media and establishment blackout. It already is, as is shown by the growing popularity of the Reform UK party now polling and still polling third nationally on 12-13% campaigning on net zero immigration. Time will tell if this issue pushes voters to vote differently in the election like they did in 2015 with the European question for the United Kingdom Independence Party. Will the two main parties talk about it more? We will see.
The other issues in this election will also be important to voters like energy, net zero, foreign policy and national security, and they will most certainly have their days in the sun. We will have a look at these other issues at a later time, but for now the three main issues are going to be at the forefront of many millions of minds and all of the parties will need to be on the ball with their proposals to make things better. Though making things better is totally arbitrary, especially with the rise in adversarial politics in society, but there will be a huge desire for things to look more optimistic. Will it come down to a party basically trying to promise everything and try to please everyone, or will it come to a party doggedly sticking to one idea with the hope of carrying the day with enough voters? This will be an election to watch which way the parties go. Hopefully, whatever way they do go it will actually work.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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