Some say politicians have yet to level honestly with the electorate about the need to cut welfare budgets, increase defence spending, reform the NHS and make the economy more productive, all of which would involve short term pain and – some think – a rebalancing of state support from the old to the young.
Politics is about persuasion, seduction even, and prime ministers seem to have forgotten this is an almost constant process of wooing voters, MPs and civil servants to keep them driving your agenda forward.
Perhaps, too, have we voters become too impatient? In an era of instant online purchases that are delivered to our doors within hours, do we demand faster political results at a rate no government could possibly deliver?
The rise in support for anti-establishment parties like Reform and the Greens is a result of voters becoming disillusioned with the mainstream parties which, they think, have failed to address the problems the UK faces.
Sir John Major, the former prime minister, agreed with Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live, that voters wanted quick and easy answers to complicated problems. “I’m afraid we do, and that is because nobody is telling us we can’t have that,” he said. “Governments have lost the capacity, it seems, to say no. And part of the job of politics is to say, no.”
Here, perhaps, we are coming to the nub of the issue, the gap of expectations between the governed and those who seek to govern. In the past, prime ministers could often spend their way out of trouble. Leaders of the right could cut taxes; leaders of the left could spend more on welfare. Both options are now less viable. Tory promises of unfunded tax cuts – and Labour hints at easing fiscal rules to borrow more – spook the bond markets in equal measure.
Yet we have an economy seemingly trapped in low growth, high debt and stagnating real incomes with voters feeling the bitter reality of a cost-of-living crisis. The Tories promised a Brexit boom, Labour promised growth; neither materialised. This leaves many people feeling government is failing to deliver for them, and that makes government hard.
