This chilling report lays bare Britain’s problems – and the challenge for a Starmer government

To which, I conclude, the rather depressing answers are in short: Pretty much everything, pretty much everything and not a lot. 

The UK has been sleepwalking and this report should wake it up – with the terrifying realisation that what has been happening since it dropped off has not just been a nightmare that will disappear. 

Growth is anaemic and has been for years, productivity growth the same and as a result either overall taxation must rise even further or borrowing soar even more. There is a third option, but one that seems unwise and unlikely: the government would have to stop doing something very large indeed. 

In any case, the idea that any government can hit the target of starting to reduce debt in five years’ time is pretty much for the birds. 

That is despite the fact that currently almost every sector of the state is being run into the ground with endless real-terms cuts in its spending. Health, defence, education (the report was written before the school building crisis), social care, the prisons system and the courts and many others are in crisis.

On top of that, our population is ageing. As the report points out, “The number of people aged 85 and over is projected to increase by 19% between now and 2030, and 57% by 2040.”

That means more pressure on the NHS, and social care and therefore spending. What we really need is a national debate about how to pay for all this, including a total radical reform of the tax system to move taxation away from income and onto capital and away from the poor onto the wealthy. We are also, as the report makes clear, not even a very heavily taxed country. 

But no party seems capable of even mentioning the fact that the tax system is not fit for purpose, probably for fear of what the losers of any reform would say and how they would vote. The obvious conclusion is “Neither party seems willing to confront the public with the reality that even maintaining the quality of our public services, let alone substantially improving them, almost certainly means higher rather than lower taxes.”

The country has appalling problems with regional disparities and income inequality and a housing market that has been a basket case for years. The housing market alone creates huge problems for increasing productivity, as people cannot and will not move to where they are most needed. 

Try to get someone from the north to move jobs and buy a house in Cambridge or Croydon – you would have to pay them a small fortune. The country needs to build homes where they are needed, not rocket science but at the moment apparently physically impossible.

In the end, almost everything in this report comes back to growth. Without it we cannot afford to do what, as a nation, we expect to be able to do. Growth in GDP per capita has increased by 4% in the last 15 years, in the 15 years before that it increased by 40%.

That trend desperately needs reversing, that means a properly functioning state (like spending enough to ensure schools don’t collapse), a better housing policy, an industrial policy, a better Brexit, better education and training, a better NHS and a better tax system. Ironically it all means higher taxes and spending to create more growth.

Leaving aside the debate – which this report does cover – about which party has the best or any policies to solve these problems, one thing is clear. Without extra growth, we are really stuffed. 

My own conclusion from reading this report is, be careful what you wish for. Winning the next general election means inheriting a country that is failing at almost every level and on almost every front and yet which has very little idea how bad things are or how to fix them. 

Do read it, but maybe with a stiff drink to hand. You are going to need it.