Review of the Year Part 3: Top Five policies

Despite the fact that I would never describe myself as a policy analyst, expert or wonk (or indeed very interested in the details), I thought I’d explain why these are my top 5 policies implemented in 2010. They all move in a similar direction – they encourage people to take responsibility for themselves and their families, and they give people more control over different aspects of their lives.  In no particular order:

1. Cancelling benefits to higher rate tax payers. I’ve never been happy that the Tories failed to really articulate an argument about why it is better for people to keep the money that they earn rather than recycle and waste part of it by paying benefits to those who don’t need them. I’m a bit underwhelmed by the various bits of backtracking on certain programmes, and I’m not confident that we should be allowing pensioners’ benefits to be sacrosanct. But – it’s been a good start.
2. Linked to the above, reducing taxes for the lowest-paid which we had long argued for. There is just no point in shifting money around and losing a bit more of it each time, taking away a little bit more of people’s self-respect each time the state takes over. I want a benefits system that gives serious and substantial help when people need it, and a tax system that lets them decide how they want to live their own lives.
3. Changes to the mechanics of politics – from recall elections, to referendums, to open primaries, to equalising the sizes of constituencies, and reducing the number of MPs.  As I’ve said before, the one thing I’m not sure is worthwhile is the AV referendum – I am not sure we need it if all the other measures work – and I’d also have liked some attempt to resolve both the over-representation caused by devolved assemblies, and the constant sort of Dutch auction about what MPs are actually supposed to do. But I suppose you can’t have everything and perhaps those are things we’ll return to, along with finishing reforms to the House of Lords.
4. 4. Transparency, the PBA agenda and the (slow) reversal of the citizen’s relationship to the state transparency is the thing which will revolutionise the way the state spends our money. Look what happened when the Telegraph started exposing MPs’ expenses claims. The post-bureaucratic agenda is what will revolutionise the choices and therefore the life chances of people who currently can’t afford those choices. And the reversal of the state-citizen relationship will take years but is crucial to both of these. I am surprised that I am about to write this but here goes: perhaps most importantly, it restores the old way of doing things – in other words, you have the freedom to do something unless it is expressly forbidden, which as a principle has been sadly eroded both by legislation and by atmosphere in recent years.
5. 5. Maintaining the aid budget which I appreciate is perhaps further down most peoples’ lists of good things… But I fervently think that we have both a moral duty and an economic imperative to recognise how lucky we in the UK are, and to spend our aid budget as wisely as possible. There are monstrous abuses and there are places where we simply shouldn’t be sending anything. But overall, a sensibly used aid budget is the best way to improve lives abroad, reduce conflict, increase trade and global growth, and give human beings the self-respect that we would all wish for ourselves.

That’s my top five. What are yours?

Related posts:

1. Review of the Year Part 2 – The top five political quotes of 2010
2. Platform 10′s Review Of The Year Part 1 – The Best Political Books Of 2010
3. Modernisation was a pre-requisite to unveiling popular policies
4. Freedom of information part 1
5. We Must Be Ready To Defend Our Policies Against Labour Grassroots Attacks