"Long-Term Planning" is a term I hear thrown around a lot about Governance, usually because people feel it isn't happening. This isn't for lack of trying either, in 2024 Keir Starmer was making clear that his Premiership was going to last at least ten years; while that looks unlikely today, it does raise some serious questions about what long-term planning looks like in an era when leadership is highly fragile. To really put this in context, the last Prime Minister to serve a full-term was David Cameron during the Coalition from 2010-2015, and the last Prime Minister to serve a full-term with a majority was Tony Blair between 2001-2005, two decades ago. Votes have also become more fracticious as a multi-party system chafes against an electoral system designed for about 850,000 people and a few loose groups of MPs. If the projections from the 2026 locals are to be believed, the winner of the next General Election will be Nigel Farage, with only 74% of the country voting for opposing Parties, a number that will no doubt rapidly rise if he's the incumbent, as many politicians have found recently.
So what can we do if leadership is likely to collapse every 2 or 3 years and knowing what Party will command enough support to lead is increasingly unpredictable? Well, we should start looking to change our models of long-term planning from one where we presume the vision will stay same for at least a decade and towards one where the plan can adapt to many different visions. This will inevitably require compromises, and even moreso than past Manifesto backtracking, (See: House of Lords reform) but towards necessary ends. Let's say, for instance, Zack Polanski becomes Prime Minister in some unlikely scenario; in that situation the Greens are presumably either going to build or requisitition new Council Housing through central planning. The problem is given Zack's other weak policies and poor tolerance of scrutiny, he would likely have a really short honeymoon period before receiving challenges to his authority, and assuming the next Parliament is hung, he could easily face a no-confidence vote.
Housebuilding from both the Public and Private Sectors in Britain since 1860. (source)
This problem would mean any long-term plans the Greens have for housebuilding would be stalled, and as centrally planned housebuilding has declined massively since the 1980s from Governments across the spectrum, so it can reasonably be assumed that should a new Party come to power they might not follow through. As such it may be worth considering reducing the extent to which we rely on a system designed for an era in which central planning was at the forefront of Government policy, not to prevent it from happening, but to have failsafes for a political culture that is less interested in it.
Another thing that will have to happen is the entrenchment of our Rights into law; given all mainstream Parties on the Right have expressed an interest in repealing them, something that will not only be problematic on the basis of limiting Government ability to interfere with people's lives, but also lead to the potential 'tug of war' that we've already seen in American politics where the extent to which certain Rights exist has become wholly dependent on the political alignment of the ruling Party and Supreme Court. With Democrats introducing new Rights, only for Republicans to end those Rights, afterwards being reintroduced by the Democrats again, before being ended again within the by the Republicans. Given our Rights are even more precariously protected due not separating regular laws from Constitutional ones (thus making those more important ones harder to repeal) we are likely going to be left in an even more precarious position in terms of Rights law, if we aren't already heading there...
Unless Proportional Representation comes in the near future to prevent rapid electoral shifts based on increasingly marginal votes to create consensus-based Governments that are representative of popular opinion, this is what is long-term planning will need to look like, and I don't think anyone will be happy about it.
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