Reclaiming the Future
How progressives can defy populism and fatalism – the founding essay of Arguably
Illustration: Nate Kitch for Arguably
“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
Albert Camus, The Rebel
For social democrats and their liberal allies, this is an existential moment. The progressive tradition, which created the NHS, the universal welfare state, the Open University and the liberal reforms of the 1960s and 1990s, is under assault as never before. Europe’s centre right – routed in France and Italy – offers a preview of how swiftly political orders can crumble. But rather than shrinking from this challenge, we should embrace it as a chance to return to first principles.
The current Labour government, albeit in a haphazard manner, has made progress: it has begun to reform the UK’s antiquated planning laws, raised infrastructure investment to boost productivity, revived public ownership as a tool of national resilience and abolished the two-child benefit cap. Yet it has lacked an overarching philosophy, too often succumbing to empty technocracy or short-term electoralism, while struggling to choose between fundamental trade-offs.
Pragmatism is a virtue, but it alone cannot provide the purpose that a government needs to thrive. The totemic administrations of the postwar era all recognised the power of ideas: Clement Attlee deployed the philosophies of Keynes and Beveridge, Margaret Thatcher harnessed the libertarian firepower of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, New Labour drew on a wellspring of influences including Christian socialism, Marxism Today, Charter 88 and Will Hutton’s “stakeholder capitalism”.
We have founded Arguably in the belief that, in this age of permanent crisis, ideas matter more than ever. In a hyperactive media environment, we need a space where we can debate them at length and identify a way forward for Britain.
Voters, MPs and civil servants, as they have testified over the last two years, all crave clear direction. National missions, such as green energy investment and rearming for a new era of geopolitical crisis, are best pursued when embedded within a wider philosophy.
“The other side has got an ideology they can test their policies against. We must have one as well,” Thatcher declared to the Conservative Philosophy Group shortly after becoming Tory leader in 1975. The weekend before his untimely death in 1977, the Labour cabinet minister Tony Crosland told Roy Hattersley: “It’s not enough to disagree with the Marxists et al. The centre must remember and keep reminding people that we are ideologists too”. Both, from radically different political traditions, were right.
Today, as always, progressives must begin with an account of the good society. An inspiring example remains that of John Rawls who defied rumours of the death of political philosophy with A Theory of Justice and influenced politicians from Crosland to Gordon Brown to Barack Obama. Behind a “veil of ignorance” – not knowing their class, race, gender or talents – Rawls argued that individuals would adopt two principles. First, that each person is entitled to “basic liberties” such as freedom of expression, assembly and conscience and, second, that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to “the greatest benefit of the least advantaged”. Though communitarians such as Michael Sandel contend that Rawls’ account is overly abstract, it reinforces a basic human intuition: that a just society is one which maximises fairness and opportunity.
Britain today too often fails this test. The government was right to identify growth as its defining mission. Growth is what liberates nations to embark on new projects and escape managed decline. Its absence not only depresses living standards and deprives public services of revenue – it threatens the consent on which wealth redistribution depends. The left, which underestimated Thatcher in the 1970s, cannot afford to be complacent about the potential for a more radical sequel.
For progressives, degrowth is a dead end. But without a radical course correction, the UK will not achieve the growth it needs. Even before the Iran War began, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that GDP per person would rise by an average of 1.1 per cent from 2026-30, a projection that would have horrified pre-crash leaders. Yet this is an era not just of stagnation but of extraordinary innovation. As Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar argue in The Coming Wave, AI, synthetic biology, quantum computing and robotics – with appropriate governance – have the potential to change our economy and society for the better.
But Britain is not best-placed to harness these transformations. Instead of promoting opportunity and security, our tax system, labour market and welfare model too often do the opposite. An economy in which youth unemployment now stands at 16 per cent (732,000) and in which 2.8 million people are inactive due to sickness is not one that is working to the benefit of the least advantaged. To end this waste of human talent, and exploit the opportunities of the future, we need to embrace real welfare reform.
Denmark’s successful “flexicurity” system, introduced by Social Democratic prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen at a time of high unemployment in the mid-1990s, is one example from which the UK can draw inspiration. Employers benefit from flexibility – firms can be restructured with ease to reflect changing market conditions – while workers are guaranteed security: a generous system of unemployment insurance and an active retraining policy. As Philippe Aghion, the co-winner of the 2025 Nobel economics prize, has argued: “If you have [flexicurity], you can make the best of AI”. For Britain, a country which has thrived when it has fused economic dynamism with a concern for the common good, here is a model ready-made for the age of disruption.
A new welfare system should be accompanied by a new generational settlement. Pensioner poverty, which stood at over 40 per cent by the late 1980s, rightly became a political priority and has since been reduced to 16 per cent. But the endurance of the “triple lock” on the state pension, introduced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010, is an act of policy overreach. By 2030, the OBR forecasts, this measure will cost £15.5bn a year, three times more than originally projected. Action is now essential: one imaginative proposal from the Centre for British Progress is to reform the lock by calculating earnings growth over the last 10 years rather than the last 12 months. This avoids the “double counting” created by higher inflation one year spurring higher wages the next. It would save an estimated £6.2bn by 2030 and offers a more politically palatable course than outright abolition.
At the same time as pensioners have been shielded, workers have been squeezed: the student loan system has become a form of age-based taxation. Graduates pay an effective marginal rate of 37 per cent on earnings over £25,000, 51 per cent on £50,270 and 71 per cent on £100,000 (with an additional 6 per cent for postgraduates). They now have to earn more than £66,000 a year before they even begin to reduce their debt, which now averages £53,000. Such a model penalises workers at just the moment when they are seeking to attain the traditional markers of adulthood: owning a home and starting a family. A centre left that now relies on this group for its core support cannot treat them as fiscal mules – loading ever greater burdens on their backs. In particular, freezing the Plan 2 student loan repayment threshold at £29,385 for three years was a breach of faith that should be reversed.
But rather than a politics of generational warfare, we need a new politics of generational solidarity. The revolt against the harsh means-testing of winter fuel payments, which spanned all age groups, was evidence of enduring bonds. The young do not want the old to be at the mercy of a broken social care model; the old do not want the young to be priced out by an unaffordable housing system. To meet its policy priorities, at least until growth improves, the UK will need higher taxes (the national debt stands at 93.1 per cent of GDP). A rise in income tax, which is paid by pensioners, two million of whom are still in work, and younger generations alike, would be one way to reaffirm the politics of shared sacrifice. The government flirted with this argument before the 2025 Budget – the basic rate is at a postwar low of 20p – only to retreat. But the Iran War offers a new, and perhaps final, opportunity to assert that the facts have changed.
Britain must reckon with other hard truths too: we cannot achieve our full growth potential as long as we remain estranged from Europe. The economic damage from Brexit is no longer in dispute. Since 2016, the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research estimates, Brexit has reduced UK GDP by 6-8 per cent, business investment by 12-18 per cent, employment by 3-4 per cent and productivity by 3-4 per cent.
Our goods trade has declined in real terms since 2022, inflicting the greatest harm on the “left-behind” towns that depend most on manufacturing. In the long run, the OBR estimates, Brexit will lead to a 15 per cent reduction in the UK’s trade density and a four per cent reduction in potential productivity. Any notion that a new deal with the US would significantly offset this penalty has been dispelled by America’s protectionist turn. The current European Union is far from infallible but the UK’s best hope is to ally unequivocally with those countries that share its values and priorities: free trade, social solidarity, multilateralism and regulation against the excesses of Big Tech.
By acknowledging the damage from Brexit and launching a reset with the EU, the government has begun the work of rebuilding relations. But its red lines – barring membership of the single market and the customs union – are outmoded in a new era of great power politics. As Donald Trump accelerates the world’s fragmentation into rival blocs, the UK must choose a side.
While rejoining the single market or the EU would mean the return of free movement, a policy that is already supported by 68 per cent of the public should no longer be treated as unthinkable. As an open, service-based economy with crumbling infrastructure, an ageing population and a record-low birth rate, the UK cannot live in denial about its need for migration. By forging a more contributory welfare system, and working with reform-minded partners in Europe, Britain can propose a new model of “fair movement”. Nearly 40 years after British trade unionists sang “Frère Jacques” to the social democratic Jacques Delors, we need a renewed pro-Europeanism, one shorn of the conspiracism and classism that sometimes bedevilled the second referendum campaign.
An ambitious government – that harnesses technology, reforms welfare and charts a new geopolitical course – requires a remodelled state. As Arguably columnist Ben Judah has written, “Downing Street is not all-powerful in Whitehall but an overstretched Victorian private office”. Britain under-resources its executive and then acts surprised when the results disappoint. To break this wearying cycle we need a new Department of the Prime Minister and a reinforced team of special advisers to uphold the government’s political direction (the UK has 130 to Australia’s 430). Electoral reform, too, is now a necessity. This Labour government won almost two-thirds of seats with just a third of the vote, the lowest share of any winning party in history. Until this grossly disproportionate system is reformed, leaders will lack the full democratic legitimacy they need to enact radical change.
A strengthened centre should be accompanied by greater decentralisation of powers to mayors and regions: London currently retains just 7 per cent of the tax revenue it generates, compared to 50 per cent in New York and 70 per cent in Tokyo. Instead of going to the government with a begging bowl, our capital and other wealthier areas should have the capacity to fund their own infrastructure projects such as the Bakerloo line extension.
A New Progressive movement needs something else too: an account of the good life. We must never resemble Gradgrindians preoccupied only with Treasury deciles rather than the real evidence of human flourishing. Let us take our cue from Tony Crosland’s unimprovable words in The Future of Socialism: “We need not only higher exports and old-age pensions, but more open-air cafes, brighter and gayer streets at night, later closing hours for public houses, more local repertory theatres, better and more hospitable hoteliers and restaurateurs, brighter and cleaner eating houses, more riverside cafes”. We must cherish social infrastructure – parks, museums, libraries, piers – and the moments of communal joy that music and sport provide.
It was in the summer of 1930, amid the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and Stalinism, that Keynes delivered his lecture in Madrid on “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, correctly projecting that western living standards would be four to eight times higher within a century. In that remarkable text he inveighed against “the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments”.
Our task today is no different: to defy both the populists who claim that we must smash the system rather than remake it and the fatalists who contend that Britain can only look back to a better yesterday. Time is short, but if we dispense with old orthodoxies and shibboleths, if we harness new talent and ideas, and if, as Keynes did in 1930, we raise our sights above the present, then we can reclaim the future.