UK General Election Special
For non-UK readers, here is a brief summary of UK politics. For over 100 years, UK governments have been formed by either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. The current government is Conservative; the predicted result of the upcoming election is a swing to Labour. The Conservative Party is right-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Republicans; the Labour Party is left-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Democrats. There are several minority parties who have no realistic prospect of winning a majority or forming a government; however, they may hold the balance of power in a “hung Parliament” where no party has an overall majority. Minority parties contesting this election include the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, Reform UK and the Green Party.
I have selected seven issues which I am particularly interested in or concerned about, although there are many other important issues which I don’t have the time or space to cover here. For each issue I have set out what I think the problems are, my proposed solutions (if any) and the positions of the Labour and Conservative parties. The issues are, in roughly descending order of importance:
1. The economy
2. Resource depletion
3. Food security
4. Defence / geopolitical instability
5. Population growth / immigration
6. Biodiversity loss
7. Climate change / Net Zero
3. Food security
4. Defence / geopolitical instability
5. Population growth / immigration
6. Biodiversity loss
7. Climate change / Net Zero
1. The Economy
All mainstream political parties, economists, political commentators and business leaders agree that we need economic growth, and the only point of difference between them is how the economic growth can best be achieved. The problem is that perpetual economic growth is impossible. You can prove it by some simple back-of-an-envelope calculations. If you have (for example) 3% per annum economic growth over an average human lifetime of 80 years, then at the end of that person’s lifetime the economy would be ten times bigger than when they were born; in other words, producing and consuming ten times as much stuff. After two lifetimes, 100 times bigger. After three lifetimes, 1,000 times bigger. And so on. This is self-evidently unsustainable, because eventually you will run out of stuff to produce and consume. Things which are unsustainable must eventually stop. Therefore, our politicians need to be preparing us for long-term economic contraction, not trying to goose the economy to ever greater heights of production and consumption.Economic contraction suggests a drop in living standards, and politicians are reluctant to say anything which suggests we may be heading for “austerity”. It would help if we could define living standards in terms other than GDP growth, for example, an increase in health, happiness or time for leisure pursuits.
What do the two main political parties say about this?
Conservatives: The manifesto promotes growth across all sectors of the economy. The word “growth” appears 18 times in the document. There is an unspoken assumption that growth is good, more growth is better, and these things are so obvious they do not need to be discussed. There is no discussion of what might be the optimum level of growth, or whether there might be limits to growth. There is a bizarre claim that they will “support the growth and decarbonisation of our aviation sector” (air transport accounts for 2.5% of global carbon emissions). So are we going to build a fleet of electric aeroplanes? Well, no. It turns out that the “decarbonisation” will be achieved by using Sustainable Aviation Fuel, which has been described elsewhere as “greenwash” and “magical thinking”.
Labour: Position on growth is almost identical to the Conservatives. The word “growth“ appears 21 times in their manifesto. Labour aspires “to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7“.
2. Resource depletion
Industrial civilisation is depleting all kinds of resources faster than they can be replenished, including fossil fuels, aquifer water, fish stocks, forests, topsoils and minerals. This is unsustainable. As the flow of resources reduces, the economy is likely to contract.We should reduce our consumption of resources by reusing and recycling more, making consumer goods repairable and discouraging built-in obsolescence. For example, I have an old iPhone which is still in perfect working order, but I can’t use it because it can’t run the latest apps and Apple have stopped issuing updates for it.
What do the two main political parties say about this?
Conservatives: The manifesto has nothing to say about resource depletion or built in obsolescence. Recyling is mentioned only once.
3. Food security
In 2020, the UK imported 46% of the food it consumed.The overall picture is more complex than this, because we exported some specialty foods like whisky, but imported large quantities of animal food, fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, seeds and fuel in order to grow our own food. We are heavily dependent on these imports and therefore vulnerable to interruptions in supply caused by war, resource depletion or other countries keeping more of their own production for domestic consumption.
We could improve our food security by producing more of our own food in the UK, in a more sustainable manner. The Government should legislate to prevent any more farmland being turned into housing estates and other developments, and encourage more small scale food production, for example on allotments.
What do the two main political parties say about this?
Conservatives: There is nothing in the manifesto about allotments or home food production. The manifesto says that the Conservatives “have changed planning rules to protect the best agricultural land“ which implies that any other agricultural land is still up for grabs by developers.4. Defence / geopolitical instability
The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and the simmering tensions in the South China Sea have reminded us that the world is a more dangerous place than it was a few years ago. In my view, the most important principle is self-determination, or a people's right to form its own political entity.I believe we have a moral duty to intervene if we see this right being infringed. The type of intervention depends on the circumstances; it doesn’t necessarily mean military intervention every time, but could mean applying economic sanctions, or even just saying something.
I support our military intervention in Ukraine, and the fact that we have said something about the conflict in Israel (although I think we should probably say more about it). I would support independence for Scotland, Wales, Taiwan and Hong Kong if that’s what a majority of the people there want. I would also support the right of the people of Crimea to secede from Ukraine and unite with Russia - if that’s what the people there want, and if they can express that via a free and fair vote. I support increasing our defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, and having a nuclear deterrent, although this should be exactly what it says - a deterrent - and not used as a first strike.
What do the two main political parties say about this?
Conservatives: the manifesto reaffirms military support for Ukraine and for our independent nuclear deterrent. The conflict in Israel / Gaza is not mentioned. They oppose independence for Scotland, or a further referendum on indpendence. 5. Population growth / immigration
To understand this issue better, we need to understand the concept of “carrying capacity”, that is, how many organisms (or people) an environment (or country) can sustain. There are numerous examples of this in nature. Deserts and polar regions have a low carrying capacity because of their extreme dryness and cold respectively, so few animals, plants and humans live there. Regions with a moderate climate and moderate rainfall have a high carrying capacity because things grow more easily and are more densely populated with animals, plants and humans.For hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution, the population of Great Britain remained fairly stable between three and six million. We can probably consider this to be the baseline carrying capacity. From 1760 onwards (widely accepted as the start of the Industrial Revolution) the population increased rapidly to its present level of 67 million. The rapid growth in population resulted from several factors including reduction in child mortality due to improvement in living standards, the Agricultural Revolution which improved farm yields by adopting more efficient farming practices, and more recently, the widespread use of imported fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and fuel for mechanised agriculture. Immigration, particularly from the colonies of the British Empire, has also made a significant contribution to population growth. Net immigration to the UK in 2023 was 685,000. This includes 29,000 who arrived illegally in small boats and were subsequently detained while their asylum claims were processed.
Nobody knows for certain what the sustainable carrying capacity of the British Isles is for humans, but it is likely to be somewhere around the historical norm of 3-6 million, and well below the current level of 67 million. The current population could not be sustained without the fossil fuel and other imports which have artificially increased the carrying capacity. As the availability of fossil fuels diminishes, the increase in population which we have seen in the last 250 years will probably reverse and the population will decline. Our politicians should start preparing us for this.
Climate change may further reduce the carrying capacity. If the Gulf Stream slows or stops, the British Isles would become colder, possibly similar to Northern Canada, making food production more difficult.
The UK is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which obliges us to take in refugees. This Convention was set up with the best of intentions in the aftermath of World War 2, which created millions of displaced and persecuted people around the world. However, since the Convention came into effect, the population of the UK has grown from 50 million to 69 million and the world population has grown from 2.5 billion to an astonishing 8.1 billion. An increasing number of people claiming refugee status are economic or environmental migrants. The conditions which prevailed in 1951 are very different from today. I would be in favour of the UK withdrawing from the Convention, or at least, rewriting it to take into account the realities of today’s world.
What do the two main political parties say about this?
Labour: no mention of carrying capacity, optimum or maximum size of population or optimum level of (legal) immigration. There are pledges to smash people-smuggling gangs and remove failed asylum seekers.
6. Biodiversity loss
The more our population increases, and the more we produce and consume, the more pressure we put on wild spaces and the creatures who live there. In conventional economic ideology, wild spaces have little or no economic value because they don’t produce or consume anything or contribute to economic growth; therefore, they are expendable. However, if some of the policies described above could be enacted, such as reduction in human population and reduction in production and consumption, wild creatures could start to make a comeback.My apple trees produced lots of blossom this year but few fruits, and I am concerned that they are not being pollinated, possibly due to insect loss due to excessive use of pesticides. This is one of the ecosystem services insects perform for us for free, but it will be very expensive to replicate it by hand if they go away.
What do the two main political parties say about this?
Labour: no mention of biodiversity, nature or wild spaces.
7. Climate change / Net Zero
I have deliberately put this last on my list of important issues. Although climate change is important, I don’t believe it is the most important issue of our time, and I think politicians and the mainstream media have become obsessed by this to the detriment of other more urgent issues.Yes, we should be reducing our carbon emissions and slowing the rate of climate change. The Earth’s climate has been changing for billions of years, but usually very slowly. The problem with human-induced climate change is that it is changing very rapidly; too rapidly for animals, plants or even humans to adapt. For example, if sea levels rise by 53 feet by the year 2300, will that give us time to move all our coastal cities further inland?
I don’t believe that “net zero by 2050” is possible. If you stand on a bridge over a major highway, or stand on a hill overlooking a city at night, you get a visceral sense of the enormity of the problem. How can we possibly convert all those thousands of vehicles passing under the bridge every hour, to net zero? How can we possibly convert all of that city’s electric light to net zero?
The general assumption by politicians, the media and the public is that we can achieve net zero but still maintain our current way of life, for example, by converting fossil fuel powered vehicles to electric so we can all continue driving cars. However, a more realistic approach would be to redesign our living arrangements so there is less need to transport people and materials. The Government should rewrite the planning / zoning / tax laws to mandate that homes, workplaces, schools, shops, churches, pubs and farms should all be within walking distance of each other. This was the almost universal living arrangement until 250 years ago, and we may have to learn how to do this again.
However, I believe the reality is that we are not going to do it in time, so Nature is going to do it for us whether we like it or not. As the last drops of oil and the last cubic feet of gas are sucked out of the ground, the vehicles will stop running, the lights will go out, and only then will we reach Net Zero. But it won’t look anything like what the politicians have led us to expect.
What do the two main political parties say about this?
Labour: Doesn’t use the words “net zero” anywhere in the manifesto. Says that “Young people…should be supported…to generate ideas to respond to climate change” which sounds like passing the buck to the next generation. In the meantime Labour, like the Conservatives, will focus on increasing electricity generation from renewable sources.
Both Labour and Conservatives talk of “reforming the planning laws” but the purpose of this seems to be mainly to make it easier and faster to develop land. There are few details about what this would look like in practice.
Conclusion
In one word: depressing. The positions and promises of the two main political parties are so similar that there is little to choose between them other than the personalities of the leaders. Neither of them attach much importance to most of the issues which I consider to be important. Neither seems interested in looking at the long term picture. Whichever party the British elect on 4 July, it is unlikely to make any significant difference to our general trajectory.Conservative Party Manifesto 2024
Labour Party Manifesto 2024
Attribution: Ballot box image from Vecteezy.com
Slaynt vie, bea veayn, beeal fliugh as baase ayns Mannin
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