The quote in question is infamous, as it reads: “Once in the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, retire early and our productivity is poor. While kids in India aspire to be doctors or entrepreneurs, Brits are more interested in football and pop music.” Standing on the side of working-class Britons has long been safe Tory territory. To claim that such people did not exist was a risky proposition. The excerpt, leaked by an eager journalist ahead of the book’s full release, won the authors – Truss, Dominic Raab, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel and Chris Skidmore – the kind of attention ambitious fans crave, even if the wider the book’s ideas about a shrinking state, national decline and entrepreneurship were lost in the attack on the British people’s laziness and penchant for shallow cultural rubbish. The book received another round of publicity when four of the authors were handed major portfolios in Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, suggesting the ideological framework of his government. The hapless Skidmore was chosen for the role of the fifth Beatle by only becoming a Secretary of State. But the mixture of disdain and near-contempt for the British character implied in the passage has clearly irked Truss. Challenged on this in the debate, Truss said she had not written the offending chapter, gently blaming Raab, a supporter of Rishi Sunak. Sunak said he recalled that the book’s authors took collective responsibility for its content, which makes sense given how self-consciously the five offered their ideas at the time as a decisive alternative to the coalition of conservatism offered by David Cameron. with Nick Clegg. They were all members of the Free Enterprise Group, wrote a collective introduction to the book, wrote a second, more politically rigorous second volume, After the Coalition, and overall gave the impression of offering a coherent tour of the horizon where Britain needed to look for renewal . Given the one-dimensional nature of the Conservative leadership contest, fought entirely within the parameters of the Tory right, many of the book’s ideas will hardly be seen as controversial. Weakening labor laws, reducing the size of the state, lower taxes, less reliance on welfare, raising parental expectations, more science in schools – these are small changes to the Tory disasters. It is hardly equivalent to floating private health insurance in liberal democratic circles, which David Laws, a student of Clegg’s, did when he contributed to The Orange Book, a similarly controversial, if less coherent, work published in 2004. The danger in Britannia Unchained is not so much the individual policies that shock this current narrow electorate, but instead the whole on your feet tone, which is agitated at a time when the wider public post-pandemic and in a time of heightened fuel prices has learned to see the state as a source of protection rather than oppression. Written by the cream of the crop of 2010 recruitment who largely inhabited rich, safe, southern English places, the tone may also play less well on the ‘red wall’. MPs nursing small majorities may turn white, for example, when they read: “We should stop indulging in irrelevant discussions about the division of the pie between industry and services, North and South, women and men . Instead, we should focus on trying to make it easier for businesses to hire people and ensure that the tax burden is less onerous.” The book is full of calls for ever tougher medicine. “We must stop rescuing the reckless, avoiding all danger and rewarding laziness.” “The stark fact is that the only successful approach to poor performance has proven to be hard work.” “The average Singaporean works two hours and 20 minutes more a day than the average Brit.” “There is no need for managed decline, but Britain will only get there if people are willing to take the tougher options.” The Science Museum is criticized for trying to make its exhibitions relevant. Media studies are anathema. In contrast, Korean students are praised for “going straight from tiring days at school to studying all night and on weekends.” And that’s all before you get to the work ethic chapter. The joy of living this is not. Under the Truss, it will be double math every day. Many views appear to have come from conversations with “London taxi workers,” ironically an industry wiped out by Uber, the kind of American tech company praised by the authors. The other highly regarded worker is the Polish immigrant, but unfortunately his work ethic has also been lost in the UK job market – thanks to UK government legislation. The possibility that low productivity is linked to low capital investment or poor management is not explored. Despite the book’s self-proclaimed optimism, it is relentlessly negative about the unrepentant British. The authors’ refreshing determination to draw lessons from economies abroad – as long as they’re not European – leads Truss and her fellow writers to poke fun at authoritarian states, a theme that now animates her. “As British politicians we believe it is particularly useful to learn from the successes of China and other emerging economies. China’s path to prominence has been accompanied by strict educational standards and a fierce competitive spirit.” The most remarkable aspect of the Chinese leadership is not their politics, but that many are engineers. Dubai is praised for its lack of regulations. In the pursuit of prosperity, human rights deserve no mention. A long chapter praising Brazil’s optimism did not foresee the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro. Russia receives exactly one report. Israel’s tech startups are lauded as if the state played no role. American technology is praised and the dominance of technology in children’s lives is warned against, with no connection. But credits and brochures written a decade ago to grab attention come with these inherent risks. Most political ideas are ephemeral and quickly pass their sell-by date. No damage was caused. The same cannot be said if a book reveals such an unadulterated Darwinian attitude, a charge sometimes leveled against Truss. Indeed, it is very likely that in the next election two competing visions of the state will be the point of contention. Do you want an arm around your shoulder or a kick in the rear? If this turns out to be true, Britannia Unchained may turn out to be more of a bond and less of a source of liberation for the Tory party.
