Matthew Elliott: There is a UK pathway to significant economic growth, but are we brave enough to take it?

Lord Elliott is a co-author of Prosperity Through Growth: Boosting Living Standards in an Age of Autocracy and AI. He is also President of the Jobs Foundation, a charity which champions business as a force for good.

The UK economy has been struggling for years.

Since 2007, our growth has been weak.

In the nearly two decades since the financial crisis, productivity has flatlined, business investment has faltered, and the promise of rising living standards has faded. Today, we face an economy where excuses come faster than significant improvements to living standards, with no clear route to positive change.

Economic policy has rightly become the issue of the moment.

Tax is being discussed more and more in focus groups and is rising in tracker polls of the most important issues facing the country. The upcoming Budget is shaping up to be yet another with painful tax increases to fill a fiscal gap with no thought to radical change. This Government claims that growth is its number one priority which is the right one but they have yet to demonstrate that they truly have a handle on how to achieve it. Indeed much policy is pushing in the opposite direction with the Employment Rights Bill being a case in point.

For too long, we’ve been trapped in a cycle of policy tinkering: new schemes, new slogans, new taskforces but no growth as a result.

The public is understandably losing patience with this tinkering. We need a credible plan, grounded in evidence and deliverable in practice, to get the UK economy back on track.

The lead-up to budgets is characterised by constant speculation about the size of black holes and potential tweaks to taxes. Quite what the government of the day is trying to do beyond meetings its rules is an afterthought.

That’s why I – along with Dr Arthur Laffer, Lord Michael Hintze and Douglas McWilliams, have written Prosperity Through Growth: Boosting Living Standards in an Age of Autocracy and AI, a new book setting out a detailed roadmap for how to achieve just that. Drawing on decades of economic insight and the practical lessons of policymaking, our 24/7 Growth Plan, with 24 policies to turn UK fortunes around, would raise UK growth by 7 per cent above current forecasts within five years and crucially, it’s fully costed and implementable.

But as anyone who has spent time around Westminster knows, having the right policy is only half the battle. Governments have been publishing ‘growth plans’ for decades, many of which gather dust on the shelves of the Treasury, and are quickly forgotten. The real challenge is not simply what to do  – but how to get it done.

That’s why the third section of our book focuses not on the policies necessarily but rather how to deliver. We wanted to understand, from those who have actually sat in the hot seat, what makes the difference between bold ambition and real achievement.

To do that, we conducted 33 in-depth interviews with senior economic decision-makers, including five former Prime Ministers and nine former Chancellors. We spoke to political leaders such as David Cameron, Rishi Sunak, George Osborne, Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, as well as the senior civil servants who worked alongside them, like Gus O’Donnell and Nick Macpherson.

Of course, in the modern global economy, Westminster alone cannot deliver growth. You also have to keep the markets onside. That’s why we spoke to figures in the City, including Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, to understand what confidence looks like from an investor’s perspective. Stability and credibility matter but so too does ambition. The bond markets reward discipline but they also reward success. A clear, well-executed growth plan attracts capital and signals confidence in the nation’s future.

If there is one overarching lesson from all our conversations, it is this: growth is a choice. It doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t come from slogans. It comes from leadership, consistency, and the right incentives for people and businesses to invest, innovate and employ.

The UK has superb fundamentals, with world-class universities, a deep financial system, a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and a history of the rule of law. What we have lacked is the right leadership to turn those fundamentals into tangible growth. Too often, we have designed policies for redistribution rather than wealth creation but you cannot redistribute what you do not grow.

A credible growth strategy needs three things: the right principles, the right policies, and the right politics. The principles need to encompass all aspects of economic decision-making, with lower taxes, thoughtful and restrained spending, thoughtful regulation, sound money and free trade. The policies need to move towards these objectives. What we now need is the political will to deliver.

After seventeen years of stagnation, the case for growth is no longer just economic but moral too. Growth creates jobs, lifts people out of poverty, funds public services and gives families hope for a better future. Every new business that opens its doors, every new job created, is a small act of national renewal.

Britain has done this before. In the 1980s, we went from being the “sick man of Europe” to one of the fastest-growing economies in the developed world. We can do it again but only if we recapture that same sense of purpose, optimism and reforming zeal.

The policies for prosperity are there. The challenge now is to get the politics right.

It’s time for Britain to grow again.

‘Prosperity Through Growth: Boosting Living Standards in an Age of Autocracy and AI’ is co-authored by Dr. Arthur B. Laffer, Matthew Elliott, Michael Hintze and Douglas McWilliams.