It's time for some grown-up cross-party conversations
If the July 2025 survey by More in Common is anything to go by, public sympathy for politicians of all persuasions is in short supply: 87% of Britons across all parties had either not very much trust in politicians or none at all. Neither is there much faith in politicians’ ability to run the country, with only 18% believing that ‘the Government has things under control’.
This carefully administered opinion poll can be reinforced, albeit unscientifically, by an idle chat with any random group of people about present day UK politics. Two interconnected themes are likely to emerge. One is that the major parties are ‘all the same’; the other is that contemporary politicians seem incapable of sorting out the problems that the electorate are concerned about, with the small boat crisis, dysfunctional NHS, sluggish economy and a crumbling justice system usually leading a crowded field of failed institutions and irritating day-to-day incompetence.
Despite the poor esteem in which politicians are currently held, there’s a strong argument that our long-standing political system is as much to blame as the quality of our political representatives. For the last 100 years or so, the UK’s first past the post method for selecting our MPs has produced a two-party system with Conservatives or Labour aiming to achieve an overall majority and ‘run the country’ according to its manifesto pledges.
There has therefore been a huge disincentive for any of the main parties to propose electorally unpopular policies, i.e. policies which make it clear that citizens may have to make some necessary sacrifices, financial or otherwise. Even the ideologically radical 1979 Conservative manifesto, which stated that ‘We shall look for economies in the cost…of running our tax and social security systems’ was also able to reassure voters that ‘We shall cut income tax at all levels…raising tax thresholds will let the low-paid out of the tax net altogether’.
The tendency of parties to play it safe by avoiding controversial measures has served this country reasonably well in the past. However, if politicians are going to introduce the kind of radical and potentially unpopular solutions necessary to tackle the serious challenges facing the UK today – in the current context of severe economic and geopolitical instability – a new way of formulating and implementing difficult policies is needed.
In theory this might be achieved by replacing our first past the post system with proportional representation, but the major parties are unlikely to abandon their hopes of forming a government by supporting such a change.
There is a practical alternative: seeking cross-party agreement on difficult issues where citizens need to hear some hard truths from our elected representatives, and where sufficient consensus across political boundaries is achievable.
Labour’s recent failure to reduce the every-increasing welfare bill is an example of a lost opportunity to enact necessary measures by cross-party cooperation. If both the Conservative and Labour leaders and ministers had entered into grown-up conversations about a compromise bill which both could have supported, then the current unaffordable growth of welfare as a proportion of GDP could have been prevented. Of course, some Labour and Tory MPs would have wanted a different outcome (i.e. letting the welfare bill increase forever, or introducing draconian cuts) but a pragmatic solution could have been reached and voted through.
To take another example: the huge problem of social care – or rather, how it is funded – which is almost impossible for one party to address. One way or another, citizens will have to pay more, and no way of obtaining this money is going to be popular. This was demonstrated in 2017 by the electorally poisonous response to Theresa May’s reasonable proposals for citizens to use some of their personal wealth to pay for social care, immediately stigmatised as a ‘dementia tax’. A joint proposal on the way ahead, supported by the major parties, is the only way that progress is ever likely to be made on this pressing issue.
Even the shibboleth of a demand-driven NHS based on the principle of “free at the point of delivery” – and soaking up an ever-increasing portion of government spending - might be challenged by grown-up, cross-party discussions. A move to a more affordable insurance-based system is something which no mainstream politician can openly consider in our current adversarial system.
If our representatives can respond to the many challenges facing the UK in a new spirit of cooperation and compromise, it may even be the case that the electorate will show more respect for politicians who are willing to work together to find pragmatic solutions, rather than retreat into ideological bunkers and turn every controversial proposal to their own advantage.
Tony Evans is a freelance writer, political commentator, and former Ofsted Registered Inspector.
