The Politics of Avoiding Choice.
Welfare Reform Proposals.
Kemi Badenoch delivered a fairly surgical question at PMQs on Wednesday, reflecting the new Chancellor’s own declared reasons for resigning as Defence Secretary just 13 weeks ago:
“Is the Prime Minister unable, or is he just unwilling,
to get that money by 2030?”
The PM offered the classic deflective response, revealing far more than intended:
“I say to the right hon. Lady that, yes, we do everything to support our national security, but it cannot come at the expense of social security. Having strong national security also depends on resilience in our communities. We on the Labour Benches will not be forced to choose between the two, and we will set out a plan to get to 3.5% by 2035
at the spending review.”
However, not content with this startling promotion of welfare spending to the government’s main priority, the PM clarified:
“We will take the Labour way: change education, support our young people, and provide more mental health support. That is the Labour way to get the welfare bill down, and I say to the right hon. Lady that that is the right way to fund defence.”
This does not bode well. The problem is not that governments should always accept the choices presented to them. Quite the reverse: politics is littered with false choices, usually presented by opponents hoping to force an inconvenient answer. Good government should sometimes change the circumstances sufficiently that the choice disappears. But there is a difference between escaping a choice and postponing it.
Into the gap between hope and choice stepped NEET Supremo Alan Milburn (Steven Swinford, The Times, 11th September 2026 [PAYWALL] “Alan Milburn: We are trapping young people on benefits. Time to get tough”) setting out his thesis that the current structure of welfare was a “total state failure” that has trapped successive generations on benefits.
It is not difficult to see why ministers might prefer the conclusions of the Milburn Review to emerge only after the Labour Party conference. He has suggested that “tough love” is necessary to encourage young people able to work into employment. Trailing a substantial indicator of the review’s conclusions, Mr Milburn suggested that young people capable of working – including those on health benefits for conditions like ADHD and anxiety – should face an “obligation” to engage with employment support. He also called for a benefit reduction “backstop” as a last resort for individuals who repeatedly refuse to participate.
There, finally, is a choice.
The government can improve education, mental health provision and employment support. It should. If those interventions reduce the welfare bill while improving lives, so much the better. However, eventually policy encounters a person who can engage with the help offered, but decides not to. At that point the government must choose whether continued support should remain unconditional and unlimited.
Burnham has rejected Badenoch’s choice between defence and welfare. Milburn’s work may ultimately tell him whether he has found a route to escape that choice, or merely deferred the moment at which somebody has to say “No!”
Devolution, with bill attached
Another choice arrived rather more quickly as the government announced on Wednesday that regional mayors across England would receive powers to impose unlimited “overnight stay levies”, providing local government with a new source of revenue.
There is much to like about the principle. If devolution is to mean anything, mayors cannot simply be given greater responsibility while remaining dependent upon Whitehall for the money to exercise it. Fiscal power is political power and fiscal power also involves taking money from people.
The attractive version of the policy is that overseas visitors contribute a little towards the places they visit and the proceeds fund local infrastructure and services. The less attractive version is that British families holidaying at home pay more for hotel rooms, businesses in tourist areas face another cost disadvantage and some prospective visitors decide not to stay at all. (Szu Ping Chan, Harry Brennan, Eir Nolsøe & Tom Haynes, Daily Telegraph, 9th September 2026 [PAYWALL] “Hotel bosses criticise Burnham’s fresh assault on hospitality.”)
Neither outcome necessarily makes the policy wrong. It merely means there is a choice.
Devolution cannot mean giving local politicians the authority to do popular things while Whitehall retains responsibility for the unpopular ones. If mayors are to have greater freedom to raise money, they must also own the consequences of raising it.
Power without owning the choices is not devolution. It is delegation with better publicity.
Sometimes No Is the Right Answer
AI Kill Switch Rejected
Surprisingly personable Brit 20-something Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic on Tuesday, writing on X “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
His former boss, Evan Hubinger, Head of “Alignment Science” at Anthropic, helpfully confirmed that “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”
This concentrated minds at Westminster, but the Lords were already ahead of the game. On 1st September, before the brou had entirely ha’d, Lord Clement-Jones, supported by Baroness Kidron, Baroness Harding and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, had tabled an amendment (p.28) to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, providing for an emergency AI kill switch.
“If an autonomous model malfunctions within critical national infrastructure, the government currently lack clear statutory power to direct an emergency shutdown. This amendment would provide that last-resort power while embedding gold-standard constitutional checks, a mandatory 24-hour review, a seven-day parliamentary reporting lock and an immediate right of appeal to the High Court with compensation provisions for disproportionate directions.”
The government will not support this amendment, believing that such a kill switch would be ineffective. This seems reasonable, as any AI worth its salt should be able to get round it, so the government’s “No” may be correct, but it has omitted to outline what safety measures they are likely to adopt.
A giant national OFF button has considerable political appeal, particularly when discussing technology which its own creators occasionally suggest might exterminate humanity. Saying “No” to a bad answer is governmenting, but that “No” must be followed by an explanation and, rather more importantly, a better answer..
Parliament Makes a Choice
There was one place this week where the political system proved rather more willing to reach a conclusion. On Friday MPs voted by 286 to 270 against the reintroduced assisted dying bill after its passage through the House of Lords.
Supporters responded by questioning whether the Lords should have been able to delay the measure for so long. That seems an odd conclusion to draw: whatever one thinks of assisted dying and whatever one thinks of the indefensible mixture of appointed apparatchiks and failed bureaucrats currently comprising our second chamber, the constitutional machinery appears to have done roughly what it is supposed to do.
The Lords revised and delayed. The Commons retained final authority. MPs had additional time in which to reconsider an extraordinarily difficult proposal and, voting unwhipped on a matter of conscience, eventually rejected it.
The delay did not prevent a democratic choice. It enabled one. Those demanding the abolition of the Lords because they dislike the eventual answer from the Commons might perhaps reflect on that before accidentally making the case for a revising chamber. Preferably an elected one, obvs.
The £72million Question
More splashily, Reform UK acquired a rather different sort of capacity as crypto billionaire Ben Delo gave the party £36 million, the largest single donation to a British political party ever (Ben Wright, BBC News, 12th September 2026, “Reform receives record £36m donation from crypto billionaire.”) Two days later Christopher Harborne, apparently moved by his “competitive spirit”, matched it. (Christopher Harborne, Daily Telegraph, 12th September 2026 [PAYWALL] “My donation to Reform is a philanthropic gift to our country.”)
Reform therefore ended the week £72 million better off, which should at least reduce the frequency with which Nigel Farage needs to expose himself to undercover journalists offering millions over Mayfair lunches.
It should also transform Reform’s ability to campaign, organise and prepare for an election. Money buys staff, advertising, data, candidates and infrastructure. For a party whose organisational capacity has repeatedly lagged behind its polling support, £72 million is not trivial.
But money solves a different problem from government.
Reform may now possess considerably greater capability to win power. It still faces precisely the same question as everybody else about what happens afterwards: when desirable objectives collide, which one wins? There is no donor large enough to abolish trade-offs.
The Politics of Avoiding Choice
Politicians are right to resist false choices. “There is no alternative” has probably excused almost as much bad government as “Something must be done.” Constraints should be tested, circumstances change and apparently incompatible objectives can sometimes be reconciled by better policy (or a war in the South Atlantic.)
However, rejecting a choice is not the same thing as resolving it.
That is a less comfortable sequel to last week’s encounter between political ambition and the machinery of government. Good government does not meekly accept every choice it inherits. It asks whether the circumstances can be changed sufficiently for the choice to disappear.
But if the choice survives, somebody still has to make it. Over to you, Prime Minister.
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