Labor and Tories vow to resurrect public services without raising taxes

In July, the British general elections will take place, which renew the members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. In the middle of the campaign, the Conservatives and Labor are selling a lot of dreams, but not a word on financing.

The British are called to vote on July 4, 2024 for the general elections, which renew the 650 members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for five years. The campaign there boils down to a duel between Conservatives and Labor. If the emergencies are similar to those in France: purchasing power, the future of public services, the British candidates are careful not to say how they intend to finance their programs.

In both camps, the candidates pledge not to increase taxes, some even consider reducing them. They all swear that they will continue to support public services, which are already considered to be in agony. But as soon as we ask them where they plan to find the money, everything becomes very confusing, very evasive. In short, the Conservatives and Labor are promising to “shave for free”, leaving the British taxpayer in a thick fog.

To get an idea, we can say that British public finances are in a comparable state to those of France. Even if the two countries do not operate in the same way, it is roughly the same thing: weak growth around 0.7%, public debt lower than that of France, but on the verge of reaching 100% of GDP for the first time since the 1960s. In summary, the context is unfavorable, while there are serious challenges to overcome. Education, prison system, since 2010 all public services have deteriorated. Some local authorities are bankrupt, and the future of the NHS, the public health service, is far from assured. Nick Davies, program director at the Institute of Government, describes a health system on life support: “Both parties promise to maintain the number of employees in the long term in the NHS, which means increasing the budget by 6.5% each year, which is quite heavy. And we don’t even know if that will be enough to fill the gap. staffing or quality of care problems.”

The only certainty is that the party that emerges victorious in the elections will have to find a lot of money. It will either be necessary to sacrifice budgets in certain sectors or increase taxes, according to this analyst from the British Institute for Fiscal Studies who has no illusions: “History has always shown us that in the first months, new governments often impose nice, juicy taxes… and these measures never appear in campaign programs.”

The silence of the two parties is such that today we are talking about a “conspiracy of silence” on the financing of programs in this British election campaign. It would be a “secret pact” between Conservatives and Labor, so as not to address angry subjects and better devote themselves to selling dreams.