Over the years since the financial crisis, one argument has reshaped Britain more than any other, and forged today’s land of foodbanks, strikes and broken trains. Namely, the claim that the overriding threat to our collective prosperity is public debt, and that the top economic priority must therefore be reining it in by curbing state expenditure.
To be fair, austerity has achieved some success on its own terms, bequeathing the UK the second-lowest debt burden in the G7, and—despite the twin, exceptional emergencies of the banking bust and then the pandemic—a burden lighter than that which the country has lived with for most of the last 250 years.
Some may judge that the tight grip applied to the purse strings has been worth it for the leeway it gives us to deal with any future contingencies that crop up. Others will point to some of the consequences, such as the big squeeze on the resources spent on educating the next generation—which tumbled from nearly 6 to barely 4 per cent of national income over the 2010s—and think they can spot the roots of this week’s grim IMF forecasts, which point to the UK being the only major world economy on course to shrink this year.
This should be a live and urgent debate. In reading this, you can no doubt detect I’ve got my own take, and if we’re to have a democracy which bites on the things that most shape our lives, then all citizens should surely have the chance to come to their own judgement too. And who better than the national broadcaster to hold the ring on a vigorous contest about how to secure national prosperity?
Except unfortunately, according to an authoritative and exceptionally readable new report, the BBC has been doing nothing of the sort. The review, conducted by the original creators of Radio 4’s More or Less, producer Michael Blastland and economist Andrew Dilnot, found much to admire in the Corporation’s economics coverage, in terms of breadth, depth and earnest endeavours to be even-handed between the political parties. But on the great austerity argument, the Beeb’s viewers have experienced the absence of war.
A “debt bad” narrative has reigned unchallenged, as journalists hyperventilate about the state’s “eye-watering” liabilities. They reach for hoary old metaphors about “busting the overdraft” without pausing to think that we’re collectively borrowing far more modestly relative to income than many of us do individually when buying a home—let alone the obvious twists that governments, unlike people, can tax and don’t die. Shorn of essential context about the size of economy and even the changing value of money, numbers are used to support hyped-up headlines about “record” borrowing.
Perhaps worst of all, from the point of view of a healthy democracy, big political choices to “tighten the belt” are presented as if they weren’t choices at all. Ahead of the chancellor’s latest round of retrenchment in the autumn statement, a piece stated: “Jeremy Hunt needs to find billions of savings to keep the UK’s debt under control...,” needlessly creating a “policy endorsement” when—as Blastland and Dilnot spell out—“‘Jeremy Hunt says he needs to find...’ is all it would take to avoid the problem.”
So how is it that an organisation which many in government are convinced harbours deep liberal-left prejudices tends to broadcast such orthodox economics? Not all the presumptions at work lean right, the review is at pains to say. When it comes to funding a particular public service, a “more is better” position often goes unchallenged by voices who’d rather enjoy a tax cut or see extra cash go elsewhere.
One basic problem, underlying both the spend-mania and the debt-phobia, is that many journalists lack the confidence and training to interrogate the economic flipside of increased outlays or reduced borrowing. After the 49-day “cut taxes and be damned” debacle of Liz Truss, it’s not only confidence but real subtlety that’s required to disentangle the role of the different elements—headstrong indifference to the future course of public debt, as against a large increase in borrowing in itself—in producing a real fiscal fiasco.
The bigger problem, however, is the way that a Corporation desperate to avoid looking like it is taking a position deals with the inescapable uncertainties and subjectivities: outsourcing the judgement.
First, it delegates to the Westminster parties the task of defining the boundaries of “sensible” discussion. This becomes narrowing and hopelessly circular during periods like 2010-2015 when the opposition decides on a respectability-first strategy centred on striking a “grown-up” note on the news. Second, it reasonably grasps at the verdicts of honest experts, above all the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but neglects adequately to distinguish between the hard facts it reports and the subjective assessments it makes about the exact parameters of the purported “black hole” (a telling metaphor for those who charge economics with “physics envy”).
Third, and perhaps most damningly, it allows our oligarch-owned press to dictate the discourse. As one BBC insider admitted to Blastland and Dilnot, when it comes to settling the morning headlines, “the organisation is far too swayed by what’s in the newspapers. And that’s increasingly so when the newspaper readership is absolutely dwindling.”
Mercifully, the BBC does not automatically buy into many of the distortions, whether on “Brexit opportunities” or the supposed merits of slashing top tax rates for the rich and benefits for the poor, that are built into the Murdoch/Mail “common sense”. For all the sleaze of the BBC’s party donor chair pre-appointment dabbling in a prime minister’s personal finances and post-appointment involvement in recruiting the head of news, the BBC remains the only media organisation that would set a pair of awkward interrogators on itself, publish their findings and run a pretty straight story about them.
In so doing, it demonstrates how to hold the ring on a discussion with disinterested aplomb. Its next trick must be to do the same on the question of government debt.
