Tax and spend? We can’t save public services without a unified tech policy
There are numerous ways in which to judge a potential leadership candidate. Their sheer electoral appeal, their reputation within the party, their communication style and authenticity, their experience, or their policy agendas. Or often all of the above.
In regards to the latter, the candidates are unsurprisingly fixated on the same old conventional arguments about state, market, tax and spend. Whether you agree or disagree with each potential leader’s approach, the universal unoriginality is obvious. It is not that tax and spend is unimportant, it is that it is predictable. It reflects not just an absence of creativity, but a clear failure to engage with an agenda focused on long term, as well as short and medium term issues.
One could copy and paste these policy agendas into the political discourse of any other election in the last 20 years and they would fit in without question. Rewind to the 2010 Conservative leadership election fights over public spending and the size of the state, today’s feel like a flashback. And yet the world we live in now is indistinguishable. Not because society has naturally evolved, but because we have experienced some fundamental changes in our society and economy. In particular, the technology revolution.
Labelling the technology revolution as our fourth industrial revolution is often dismissed as polemical. And yet, the first industrial revolution fostered present-day democracy and led to the foundation of modern economies. In a similar vein, the technological revolution has created entirely new, highly effective business models while social media has made politics and journalism unrecognisable from a pre-tech era. Little of our day to day lives is untouched by technology, for both better and worse.
And so policymakers that underestimate this profound period of change do so at their own detriment. The role of politicians is to not only recognise the velocity of change, but understand how it can be harnessed in all of our interests.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that more technology policy in the leadership campaign will solve some of the most intractable problems this year: inflation and low growth compounded by energy price volatility, food prices and the Russo-Ukraine war. But if anything, this intimidating set of issues should underline the importance of new approaches to such problems.
The point is that something needs to switch for MPs, frontline politicians and the future leader of the Conservative party. The default approach to technology is to criticise and provoke, hence the fixation on policies like the Online Safety Bill and little else. Generally, engagement with technology policy is usually just a guise for another politically expedient concern. The now-eliminated Kemi Badenoch had promised to abolish the Online Safety Bill in a characteristically tired reference to the culture wars. Similarly, Rishi Sunak’s promise to abolish EU data regulations is a thinly veiled homage to the anti Brussels factions of the party.
In contrast, Penny Mordaunt’s approach, published yesterday in this newspaper, is uniquely refreshing. That tech policy has been subsumed into the broad purview of the Secretary of State of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport since 2010 demonstrates a failure to acknowledge the broad reach of technological advances. Creating a single digital department then, at the very least, is long overdue. Especially against a backdrop of candidates focusing purely on the simplification or removal of regulation, it is a promising direction of travel.
When it comes to technology, there is a space to occupy that is constructive, optimistic and interesting. A space that moves technology from a niche hobby horse of a select few ministers but to a fundamental building block in our public policy. Polling, where it exists, suggests that voters don’t see tech as a big policy priority, but it’s still vital for policymakers to understand it. It may not always be a politically sellable policy that will engage voters on the doorstep, but it is an enabler for a highly functional state and society.
There is clearly more potential for technology to generate material benefits for people’s lives. There is the small but significant, such as digital identity, online prescriptions and GP appointments. And there is the borderline revolutionary such as personalised healthcare, accelerated clinical trials and – in the midst of a climate change induced heatwave – nuclear fusion, carbon capture technology, alternative proteins and vertical farming.
All historical experience would demonstrate that an essential part of harnessing technology is through concerted political leadership and buy-in. And yet we look to the policy proposals of the leadership candidates – levelling up, health and social care, defence, crime, education – and any sort of political leadership for innovation is notably absent. To enable technology is to enable progress and prosperity. The leader that realises this has the key to a genuinely promising and hopeful agenda.