Labour is failing the Lonsdale test

The government should be asking: If Joe Lonsdale were to launch a podcast called British Optimist, what would we need to do in order to make his guests say they were positive about the future of the UK? Says James Price

In a crowded field, there is one podcast whose new episodes I both look forward to and dread in equal measure. It’s called American Optimist, and it is hosted by the Palantir co-founder and serial entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale. 

I love this podcast because it ends with Lonsdale asking every guest whether they are still optimistic about America. From tech bros to fast food chain founders, from politicians to Navy Seals, all of them confirm that they are all still proudly optimistic about the future of the land of the free.

I dread each episode for the same reason. Can you imagine a podcast about the UK where anyone worth listening to could honestly say that they were hopeful about where we’re heading? Britain and America may both have an unenviable list of challenges, shared by most of the developed world, but our ability to comprehend a brighter tomorrow, let alone build one, has disappeared.

Whether it’s Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” in the 1980s, Kamala Harris’ promise of ’joy’, Donald Trump’s assertion that things can be made Great (Again), or my American fiancée’s constant positivity about the future, a sunny outlook characterises our cousins across the pond. I both adore and envy it. 

I both adore and envy the sunny outlook that characterises our cousins across the pond

How could you be downbeat about the future in a country where Elon Musk can catch a 40-storey skyscraper-sized rocket out of the sky with “mechazilla” chopsticks and launch a range of robots in the same week?

In the UK, though, our new government seems determined to drive out the very people we need to kindle the kind of British optimism necessary to reverse the decline we have seemingly resigned ourselves to. 

Labour minister Stephen Kinnock has refused to deny (six times) that taxes on those earning £100,000 will be raised nine times, on the insane reasoning that if you work hard and earn a decent salary you no longer count as a “working person”. This may sound like a huge figure to some, but as I have written here before, it is around $150,000 less than the manager of a large petrol station gets paid in Texas.

Leftie logic

The same leftie logic underpins health secretary Wes Streeting’s warning that high earners should not expect “help” in the Budget. In the socialist worldview, everything is really owned by the state, and what little we are allowed to take home is only thanks to the benevolence of our political overlords. High earners don’t want “help”; they just want to be able to keep what they earn, rather than see it wasted by the state.

Likewise, the desire to pass on a better life to your children when you die is an instinct as fundamental as DNA and a necessary foundation for hope for the future. That’s why polling consistently finds that inheritance tax is Britain’s most hated levy, despite the fact that only around 5 per cent of estates pay it. Yet speculation is mounting that the Chancellor will increase death duties in the upcoming Budget. This reveals a mindset that it’s wrong to care about your own family above all others, your country over other places and your way of life instead of cultural change. It’s a belief system that doesn’t just cut across the grain of basic human nature, it’s sapping the optimism we need for growth.

A mindset that it’s wrong to care about your own family above all others, your country over other places and your way of life instead of cultural change is sapping the optimism we need for growth

The saddest thing is there’s no need for such negativity. There is such unbelievable potential in the UK. As Tennyson said, tho’ much is taken, much abides. Our rule of law, language, time zone, climate, history, institutions aren’t just sources of optimism, they are preconditions for outright greatness. 

But a mixture of fatalism and socialist thinking from the new government are making investors as pessimistic about Britain as I am.

To fix this, the new government should institute the Lonsdale test. At the start of every cabinet meeting, Starmer should ask a simple question. If Joe Lonsdale were to launch a podcast called British Optimist, what would we need to do in order to make his guests say they were positive about the future of the UK? Right now, the government is badly failing this test.

James Price is a former government advisor