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Westminster’s Everythingism problem: Why trying to solve everything all at once has ruined politics

4 19
11.04.2025

The belief that every policy can be used to deliver every other policy is rife in Westminster, and it’s costing us real progress, writes Joe Hill

From the outside, Westminster can be very confusing. Plenty of policies are announced, yet hardly anything changes. This government, and many before them, have championed economic growth as their top priority, but it has continued to prove elusive. Instead, we get a whole bunch of other policies which are, at best, tangential to growth.

The government can plan to build a high-speed railway from London to Manchester, and instead end up spending £100m on a tunnel for bats. A project to build a nuclear power plant in Anglesey gets sidetracked by a plan to increase the number of Welsh speakers in the area. Financially-stretched public services, in desperate need of efficient budgeting, are told they need to “buy British”, even when that will cost hospitals and schools money they don’t have.

The rise of Everythingism

How did we get here........

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