James Harding tells a story so good I'm going to share it for a second time. About 15 years ago, after the prime minister had delivered a party conference speech, the then-editor of The Times turned to some of his columnists and leader writers to ask what they thought the speech was really about. "There was an awkward pause, then a colleague turned and said he thought it was about... an hour."
Seriously, what is this election about, other than a month to go? Labour, an unerringly consistent 20 points ahead in the polls, has given up carrying the Ming vase and instead plastered it in bubble wrap, put it in an Uber and sent it off to bed. The Tories are coming up with increasingly unhinged policies (I say that, but the national service one started it all) while the Liberal Democrats, until their recent announcement on free personal care, were content with packaging their leader as a middle-England camp counsellor.
If this comes across as pearl-clutching, that's on me. I love an election campaign, and am well aware they are not places for detailed policy offers. Hat tip to former Obama advisor David Axelrod, who famously described Ed Miliband's 2015 general election campaign, with its many low grade retail offers, as "Vote Labour and win a microwave". But there has to be more than this.
Not least when a recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies into schools spending in England finds that average teacher pay is roughly the same today in real terms as it was in 2001. Meanwhile, average pay across the economy is about 18 per cent higher. Could this be why recruitment and retention is in permanent crisis? Who can say?
At the same time, capital spending on school buildings (something we apparently only pay attention to when ceilings threaten to fall down) in about 25 per cent lower in real terms in the three-year average up to 2023-24 than the up to 2008-9.
What about broader metrics? Well, average GDP per capital growth between 2010 and 2024 has been the lowest since just after the second world war. The Resolution Foundation reckons that that real incomes are likely to have fallen over this Parliament, the first time this would have happened in the past century.
True, slow growth has been a trend across the high-income world. But we are lagging behind our peers. According to the IFS, since 2008, income per head has grown at a third of the speed of the US and half that of Germany. As ever, productivity growth (or lack thereof) is the most obvious culprit.
Maybe growth will save us all – that's certainly what Labour is saying when forced to say anything at all. But as this great piece demonstrates, even small downgrades in growth forecasts will blow a simply enormous hole (we're talking tens of billions of pounds) in the public finances. And remember, the post-election spending plans from both main parties are already close to science fiction.
Throw in an ageing society with all its magnificent costs, the return of great power competition (requiring both greater defence spending and posing a higher risk for the global economy) the impact of climate change and the continued slow puncture that is Brexit and there is plenty for both parties to get their teeth into.
Of course, this would be a terrible idea. If the polls are even close to right, Labour is on course for a landslide. Discussing any of the above would be a form of short-term political self-harm. But if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves want to actually fund any of their priorities, or roll the pitch for what might be a tricky decade, they will at some stage have to grapple with at least some of the above.
