Time for abundant ambition
As Britain shakes off its Covid restrictions, it’s time to think big and act accordingly. Yet here we are, arguing about parties.
Britain has plenty of problems more pressing than Boris Johnson’s lack of moral character. For a sketch of a more fruitful agenda, Derek Thompson’s recent Atlantic essay on an American abundance agenda is well worth a read.
In the past few months, I’ve become obsessed with a policy agenda that is focused on solving our national problem of scarcity. This agenda would try to take the best from several ideologies. It would harness the left’s emphasis on human welfare, but it would encourage the progressive movement to “take innovation as seriously as it takes affordability,” as Ezra Klein wrote. It would tap into libertarians’ obsession with regulation to identify places where bad rules are getting in the way of the common good. It would channel the right’s fixation with national greatness to grow the things that actually make a nation great—such as clean and safe spaces, excellent government services, fantastic living conditions, and broadly shared wealth.
This is the abundance agenda.
This is the cutting-edge political thought we need in the UK too. An agenda that embraces the great realignment and rides roughshod across the turf of both right and left. See also: Alex Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Renaissance.