Britain Off The Market!

“The Coalition’s in trouble – and you heard it here first!”, was the triumphant conclusion of one of our guests last night. That may or may not be true, but with a resounding “No Way!” the Dispatches audience rejected every proposition before them on selling Britain’s assets to start paying off the national debt, which will this year hit a trillion pounds.

We offered them “easy wins” such as selling off grace and favour apartments and judges residences, but perhaps the inclusion of St James Palace was a step too far and the audience said no. We suggested putting unused local authority assets up for sale but they didn’t like that either, despite an impassioned argument from Edwina Currie who did just that when she was in Birmingham. Then we asked them to think about something much more radical : selling off an asset which we would then have to pay to use. In this case it was the motorways which would be sold off to the private sector and who would then be allowed to charge tolls to use them. Finally – and it was always a slightly absurd proposition in truth – we asked the audience if they’d like to follow Iceland’s example and get rid of the armed forces. It was no surprise that they rejected it, especially when British forces have been involved in rescuing British citizens from Libya and elsewhere recently.

Read more: could selling off Britain’s assets cut the debt?

One of the supporters in the studio of selling national assets, Allister Heath from City AM, tweeted afterwards that he was proud to have been heckled for saying we must fix the national debt or our kids will inherit the bill, and there’s no doubt the Government’s arguments about reducing debt interest payments which will soon exceed our education budget hit home with some voters. But as the Government discovered to its pain when it tried to sell off English forests the public is also deeply attached to what it owns, and deeply suspicious of attempts to sell things off. People seem to instinctively believe they will be ripped off – that the private sector wouldn’t be interested if there wasn’t a fast buck to be made. So it is clear the government will have to tread carefully if they are going to sell much more – given the political pain associated with each individual sale for relatively small amounts of cash they will have to think carefully about whether it is really worth it.

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