Foundations: Why Britain has stagnated

A new essay about making Britain prosperous again.

I have co-authored a new essay about why Britain’s growth has almost flatlined since the mid-2000s, along with

Ben Southwood

and Samuel Hughes. I think it is the best thing I have ever been involved in writing about Britain’s problems, and I hope you’ll find the time to read it.

Our argument is that Britain’s problems are very simple. We have banned investment in most of the housing, business premises, infrastructure, and energy supply we need. There is no separate mystery about why investment is low – we have banned most investments we need to make. And there is no productivity “puzzle” – productivity growth is low because we do not build the basics that we need to produce more.

For example, electricity prices are now vastly higher than they were twenty years ago:

The essay builds on things I have written like Britain is a developing country and Democracy is the solution to vetocracy, and that Ben and Samuel have written on similar topics. But it also relies on the huge amounts of work done by people like

John Myers

,

Sam Dumitriu

and Ben Hopkinson of Britain Remade,

Anton Howes

, the author of

In The Sight of the Unwise

,

Harry Rushworth

, Freddie Poser, Michael Lane, and many others.

Read the whole essay.