Instead of merely ‘trimming the fat’ from the public sector, this government seems intent on sinking the welfare state entirely
When a ship encounters a storm, the captain does not rip up the deck and cut off the lifeboats to make the ship move faster. Doing so might temporarily delay flooding, but it gives passengers no chance when an iceberg crashes against the hull. And yet that’s exactly what British governments have been doing ever since the financial crisis of 2008. One by one, the ropes holding on to our welfare services and public institutions have been severed. The current government, which has called on departments to find “efficiencies” to meet its unfunded tax cuts, is no different.
So what can we expect to happen if Liz Truss’s cabinet pursues these cuts? Already, Conservative MPs are extolling the benefits of an “insurance-based” health service, and seem to be preparing the ground for further waves of NHS privatisation. Yet Britain’s public sector has already been gnawed to the bone. How will departments “trim the fat”, as the levelling-up secretary Simon Clarke described the approach over the weekend? Is there even any fat left to trim?
