Yes men are murdering Britain

People-pleasing has induced a permanent state of paralysis

In the Aesop fable, “The Miller, his son and the Donkey”, a miller and his son lead their donkey to market on foot, hoping it arrives fresh and fetches a higher price.

One passerby laughs at them for walking, so the son rides. Merchants then scold the boy for letting his father walk, so they swap.

In town, girls criticise the miller for making his son walk, so both ride together. A woman then complains they are overloading the poor animal and insists they should carry it.

Growing increasingly desperate, the miller and his son tie the donkey’s legs to a pole and hoist it between them. Everyone laughs at the ridiculous sight.

The donkey suddenly panics, breaks free, falls into the river, and is swept away. The pair are left with nothing to sell.

The moral to the story: trying to please everyone pleases no one. Much better to go with your gut and reason your way through a given situation than be buffeted by the winds of competing opinions.

If only Keir Starmer had applied this lesson to his premiership, he might not have squandered a huge parliamentary majority in less than two years.

For as soon as he took office, Starmer tried to please everyone and pleased no one.

This predilection for people-pleasing was apparent in his decision to scrap the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.

Starmer’s flirtation with fiscal prudence swiftly collided with Labour’s largesse. Faced with a rebellion from party activists, he turned on people-pleasing mode and U-turned, frittering away his political capital in the process.

This would become a recurring theme. From welfare spending to immigration, Starmer would attempt to accommodate and end up more isolated. He became a stranger on his own island.

Rachel Reeves was also afflicted with Yes Man Syndrome, promising to stimulate growth without anybody feeling materially worse off.

This took the form of a farcical plan to unleash the economy while ruling out increases in the main rates of income tax, National Insurance and VAT.

At the same time, she committed herself to strict fiscal rules requiring day-to-day spending to be funded through tax revenues and public debt to be falling as a share of GDP by the end of the forecast period.

These self-imposed constraints were designed to reassure financial markets. Yet they hemmed the Chancellor in.

Instead of taking bold, unpopular decisions to fire up the economy, she opted for a kind of squidgy accommodation of the status quo. How has that worked out for her?

As tempting as it is to lambast the current government, people-pleasing permeates all aspects of public life.

It explains why Britain is facing its seventh prime minister in 10 years: setting unrealistic expectations that cannot be delivered on creates a low trust society where leaders are held in contempt.

This refusal to acknowledge trade-offs also explains why Brexit remains a major fault line ten years on. Because both sides argued from a place of no compromise, Remainers and Leavers alike felt betrayed by their own side.

For the reality is Britain’s departure from the EU has been neither as bad as Project Fear warned nor as bountiful as Leavers promised.

My big bet is that the sovereignty argument for leaving was strong enough to make a more nuanced pitch to voters. Messaging around economic pain or disruption in the near-term to reap the rewards in the long-term would not have stopped Brexit.

But it might have managed people’s expectations and limited the political fallout.

Yet politicians chose to infantilise voters instead, offering them sweeteners that sugarcoated hard truths. Don’t be surprised when voters expect ever greater sugar rushes.

Repeatedly telling the British public that they can have their cake and eat it also explains why Britain cannot tackle its housing crisis, the debt hangover from Covid and countless other systemic challenges.

The insistence that no one should ever be worse off has induced a permanent state of paralysis.

It hasn’t always been thus. It’s no coincidence that Britain’s most effective leaders were guided by instinct, pursuing what they thought was the right course of action over what was politically expedient at the time.

This is embodied by the phrase TINA (”There Is No Alternative”), popularised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to promote free-market economics.

Liberalising Britain’s economy ignited a fury for Thatcher that endures today, but the her hard-nosed pragmatism and longer-term vision for the country made her a highly effective leader.

It’s this legacy that explains why David Cameron invoked that same speech from Thatcher three years into his austerity programme in 2013.

It’s revealing that the Conservatives would go on to win an outright majority in the general election two years later, suggesting that a significant portion of the electorate accepted - or at least tolerated - the argument that reducing Britain’s large post-financial crisis deficit required difficult choices.

Cameron communicated harsh truths to voters and was rewarded for it.

By the same token, Boris Johnson’s flagship levelling up policy failed in part because it was too broad-based and accommodating. By insisting that there can only be winners everywhere ignored the reality that London is Britain’s economic hub.

Andy Burnham would be wise to heed these hard lessons as he sets out his vision for Britain’s future under his premiership. He should level with voters about the country’s challenges and take unpopular decisions now that will vindicate him later on.

I wouldn’t hold your breath. As Burnham put it in 2024: “I’m more of a spender than a saver. I would much prefer to say ‘yes’”.

The yes men, it would seem, are going nowhere.