Comment: A defining week in politics for Britain and the world
Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch (Photo: Getty Images)
By Sunder KatwalaNov 05, 2024
Four months on from a General Election, this has been the week in politics that could do most to shape the next four years. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget began to give prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government a clearer agenda and identity. Conservative Party members elected Kemi Badenoch as the leader who must now try to turn the shrunken opposition into a credible contender for power again.
Yet it will be the outcome of Tuesday’s (5) knife-edge US presidential election – where the stakes for America and the world feel as high as ever before – that will do most to make this an epoch-shaping week. To govern is to choose – but governments and oppositions rarely get to determine the circumstances in which their political choices are made.
The main theme to emerge from the economic choices of Reeves was that this was a Labour budget. The chancellor had no choice but to put taxes up – but chose to increase them further to increase spending on the NHS and education. Reshaping the fiscal rules will enable more borrowing for capital investment too. Former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak’s final frontbench appearance as opposition leader offered a punchy Budget Day critique of what he called Labour’s “tax, borrow and spend” budget. Yet Reeves’ choices did reflect why the public voted Sunak out and Labour in last July.
Investing in strained public services was often the animating priority, with the sensible management of public finances viewed mainly as a means to that end. This budget received a tentative welcome from most of those who voted for change, but it is the condition of the economy and the NHS in three or four years’ time that will matter, much more than what people think now.
Conservative members defied several stereotypes in choosing Badenoch over Robert Jenrick. It was not just that voting for a black, female co-partisan, to lead their Tory tribe, proved wrong those who had crudely suggested the membership was too prejudiced to do so. It was also that Jenrick’s entire campaign strategy was a bet that whoever ran hardest on asylum and immigration would win. Jenrick asked party members for a mandate to make leaving the European Convention on Human Rights the party’s flagship priority – and lost.
One constraint on the politics of opposition is that it is more about being able to talk than to act. Badenoch grasped that better than Jenrick, arguing that his detailed plans for government were premature without the Conservatives focusing first on how to earn permission to get heard again. Badenoch has often said that she hates identity politics – yet the identity politics of Badenoch herself have been central to her rapid rise through the Conservative ranks, through her efforts to contest narratives from the left on identity and culture, history and race. Does Labour know how to respond to Badenoch? Starmer congratulated her on her historic achievement. There was genuine warmth in Vauxhall MP Flo Eshalomi’s congratulatory message “from one British Nigerian to another,” but backbencher Dawn Butler retweeted an ugly racial jibe castigating Badenoch as “white supremacy in blackface” before quickly
deleting it. Labour lacks an analysis of why, despite its stronger record on gender balance and ethnic diversity in the parliamentary ranks, it lags so far behind the impressive Tory record on diversity in leadership roles. Now the Conservatives have elected four female leaders to Labour’s none – and now two ethnic minority leaders in a row – it sounds decreasingly plausible to cast those contrasting records as mere coincidence. Labour’s intuitive initial response to Badenoch’s election may be to avoid topics of culture, identity and race where possible. But every government needs its own account of identity, multiculturalism and integration in this diverse democracy. That is a gap that the post-Corbyn Labour party has yet to address, in opposition or in government. The early sparring of the Starmer-Badenoch era may illuminate a curious asymmetry. Labour is unsure how to talk about identity, yet Badenoch’s own challenge is how to broaden her agenda beyond race, identity and culture, to the economy and public services too. Badenoch told the BBC last Sunday (3) her own approach to the economy would be “completely the opposite”. Her Tory instincts would be more Thatcherite – less taxation, less state.
Badenoch said the Conservative-led governments of the last 14 years too often “talked right and governed left”. Badenoch must now work out how to talk, in opposition, in a way that reconnects with voters lost to Reform to her right, to Labour on her left, and to LibDems in the centre too. Both parties will need to develop their public arguments in volatile times. The anxious wait for news from America’s swing states will do as much as our own big political choices to determine just how volatile these times may be.
(The author is the director of thinktank British Future)
UK life sciences sector contributed £17.6bn GVA in 2021 and supports 126,000 high-skilled jobs.
Inward life sciences FDI fell by 58 per cent from £1,897m in 2021 to £795m in 2023.
Experts warn NHS underinvestment and NICE pricing rules are deterring innovation and patient access.
Investment gap
Britain is seeking to attract new pharmaceutical investment as part of its plan to strengthen the life sciences sector, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said during meetings in Washington this week. “We do need to make sure that we are an attractive place for pharmaceuticals, and that includes on pricing, but in return for that, we want to see more investment flow to Britain,” Reeves told reporters.
Recent ABPI report, ‘Creating the conditions for investment and growth’, The UK’s pharmaceutical industry is integral to both the country’s health and growth missions, contributing £17.6 billion in direct gross value added (GVA) annually and supporting 126,000 high-skilled jobs across the nation. It also invests more in research and development (R&D) than any other sector. Yet inward life sciences foreign direct investment (FDI) fell by 58per cent, from £1,897 million in 2021 to £795 million in 2023, while pharmaceutical R&D investment in the UK lagged behind global growth trends, costing an estimated £1.3 billion in lost investment in 2023 alone.
Richard Torbett, ABPI Chief Executive, noted “The UK can lead globally in medicines and vaccines, unlocking billions in R&D investment and improving patient access but only if barriers are removed and innovation rewarded.”
The UK invests just 9% of healthcare spending in medicines, compared with 17% in Spain, and only 37% of new medicines are made fully available for their licensed indications, compared to 90% in Germany.
Expert reviews
Shailesh Solanki, executive editor of Pharmacy Business, pointed that “The government’s own review shows the sector is underfunded by about £2 billion per year. To make transformation a reality, this gap must be closed with clear plans for investment in people, premises and technology.”
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) cost-effectiveness threshold £20,000 to £30,000 per Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) — has remained unchanged for over two decades, delaying or deterring new medicine launches. Raising it is viewed as vital to attracting foreign investment, expanding patient access, and maintaining the UK’s global standing in life sciences.
Guy Oliver, General Manager for Bristol Myers Squibb UK and Ireland, noted that " the current VPAG rate is leaving UK patients behind other countries, forcing cuts to NHS partnerships, clinical trials, and workforce despite government growth ambitions".
Reeves’ push for reform, supported by the ABPI’s Competitiveness Framework, underlines Britain’s intent to stay a leading hub for pharmaceutical innovation while ensuring NHS patients will gain faster access to new treatments.
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