Overton Window: Policies for a Better Britain

This discussion paper stands back from the constant cut-and-thrust and point-scoring of everyday politics to examine what a Better Britain might look like if some of its problems were addressed by imaginative and long-term solutions.

As it shows, this need not to be a purely theoretical exercise because there are examples of countries in which some of the problems that Britain faces have been solved by the introduction of alternative and successful policies.

The ideas in this paper are currently outside the Overton Window of what is considered reasonable to propose for implementation. Yet they could do much to repair Britain’s broken institutions and practices.

These include (but are not limited to):

• Follow the Swedish school model, under which a parent chooses a school and the state send the funds to that school;

• Replace student loans with business sponsorships;

• Repeal the Town and Country Planning Acts;

• Adopt the Australian model of healthcare;

• Replace the tax code with a single rate of tax, as in Singapore;

• Treat drug addiction as a medical, rather than a criminal, problem;

• Stop clogging up court time with prosecutions of recreational drug users or those who have not paid their BBC licence fee;

• Abolish all tariffs and subsidies on agriculture, as has been done in New Zealand.