In a lecture titled ‘Politics as Vocation’, the philosopher Max Weber noted that: ‘To an outstanding degree, politics today is in fact conducted in public by means of the spoken or written word.’ It was true when he said it, in 1918; it is even more true now.
Much of Weber’s speech, given to Munich University, concerned ‘the significance of the lawyer in Occidental politics since the rise of parties’. This, he argued, was not random. Since the governance of politics through parties essentially translates to governance driven by interest groups – and the skill of a trained lawyer lies in effectively advocating for the interests of their clients – it follows that lawyers should ascend to dominate. To this list, he added journalists and ‘party officials’, a figure that, to him ‘belongs only to the development of the last decades and, in part, only to recent years’.
Sadly, it is not a new development to us. Across most modern industrialised democracies, there has been convergence towards professional or middle class overrepresentation in politics. This began with a shift away from rural and agrarian elites, but a second strengthening has now occurred with the marginalisation of working class representation; in 1945, about a quarter of MPs came from a working-class background, based on their pre-parliament occupations. By 2019, this figure had dropped to just 7%.
This change has coincided with a significant rise in the number of MPs, regardless of their background, holding a university degree, and an increasing domination of the ‘communicating professions’ – law, education, journalism and public relations – that Weber would have recognised.
This shift may explain one of Britain’s most pressing problems: getting things done. People skilled in their ability ‘to weigh the effect of the word properly,’ as Weber put it, put an overweighted emphasis on saying rather than doing. This explains why legislators reach for new laws instead of working out how to better enforce the ones we have, why the solution to most of the problems faced by public services is to throw more money at them, why needless regulation is mindlessly added to needless regulation and in particular why, for the last 14 years, Conservatives spent time raging about things they didn’t like on GB News instead of using their power to prevent them. There is, as Anthony King wrote, ‘always the possibility that those who are adept at the use of words will come to believe that words are enough, the words are just about as good as deeds and are, indeed, all but equivalent to deeds’.
Starmer’s Labour, too, appear to be afflicted by this specific professional distortion.
Rachel Reeves’ Budget created fear among consumers, businesses, and investors. Suddenly worried about the economic implications of the ‘black hole’ they have both inherited and significantly deepened, the Government has attempted a reset; now the word on every Labour MP’s lips is ‘growth’. Starmer has argued that growth is his ‘number one priority’. This has since been repeated by many frontbenchers, along with Reeves herself, who has promised to ‘fight every day to deliver that growth’. Dan Tomlinson, MP for Chipping Barnet – and Labour’s Growth Mission Champion – took to X to argue that: ‘Almost everyone is under-pricing this government’s commitment to delivering when it comes to decisions on investment-led growth.’
Included in those ‘under-pricing this government’s commitment’ to growth are the Bank of England, which has already halved its growth forecast for next year. Indeed, we may also add the Office for National Statistics to the list of the accused, since it reported last week that GDP grew by just 0.1%. Admittedly, since the economy was expected to contract, this could be portrayed as a slight improvement – but only if you skirt over the fact that GDP per capita fell.
We must also include that notorious hate group, the public. The latest City AM / Freshwater Strategy Poll reveals that only 19% of people believe Starmer’s claim that the economy is ‘starting to turn around’. In contrast, a majority (55%) expect the UK economy to deteriorate over the next year.
Confidence in the Government’s economic strategy is low, with 71% expressing doubt about its ability to deliver growth. Similarly, 67% of Brits lack confidence in Reeves’ economic management.
Growth cannot be delivered by words, but by deeds. Our politicians should not be waking up and asking themselves what they are going to say today, but asking themselves what they are going to do today. And what are Labour doing to deliver growth?
We have cripplingly expensive energy, and under Ed Miliband’s Net Zero plans it will become even more expensive. Solving the housing crisis is essential to unlocking potential across Britain, but Labour have lowered housing targets in some of the Labour-voting areas where the housing crisis is most acute. Labour rebels have tabled an amendment in favour of a four-day week. Taxes have already been raised to historic levels, and Reeves has declined to rule out further tax hikes in the spring. This Government has treated business and employment as a way to raise revenue, not deliver growth; incentives matter, and only when the incentives change will the outcomes change.
The Chairman of the CBI has cautioned that slogans like ‘growth, growth, growth’ must be matched with concrete strategy and policy action. He is right; as the explorer Freya Stark once noted: ‘There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.’ There can be no economic growth, either.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
