When Politics Becomes Another Cost the Country Cannot Afford
The visible bill is bad enough. The hidden bill is worse: delay, disruption and borrowing costs.
ARTICLES
6/22/20263 min read
Establishmelt has already looked at the visible cost of political manoeuvring: a by-election, a mayoral election and around £5 million of public money so far and that is bad enough, but it is only the bill we can see.
The bigger cost is what happens when politics turns inward at exactly the moment the country needs focus. Ministers get distracted, decisions are deferred, civil servants are left waiting, departments hesitate and the markets start watching more closely than any of us would like.
This is where Westminster drama stops being entertainment for political journalists and starts becoming an actual cost to the rest of us.
On Friday after the Markerfield by-election, UK gilt yields rose by roughly 8 to 9 basis points. That sounds tiny, mainly because financial markets have a special gift for making serious things sound dull, but 0.08 or 0.09 of a percentage point matters when the government is borrowing at the scale Britain now borrows.
If that higher rate applied across the full year’s planned government borrowing, it would add roughly £200 million a year in extra interest costs.
That does not mean £200 million was suddenly paid out on Friday. It means that if the higher borrowing cost stuck and applied across the full year’s planned gilt issuance, the annual interest bill would be around that level.
For the immediate gilt sales scheduled just after Friday, the impact is much smaller: roughly £5 million extra per year, not £5 million actually paid on the day.
But that is the uncomfortable part. Political instability does not always arrive with one neat invoice marked “avoidable chaos.” It creeps in through small movements in borrowing costs, delayed meetings, deferred decisions, cautious departments, distracted ministers and markets quietly adding a little more risk to the price of lending us money.
Then, a few months later, we are told there is no money.
The country was hardly swimming in spare capacity before this latest round of political theatre began. Debt is high, public services are stretched, growth is fragile and inflation has not gone away. The NHS waiting list is still huge, even if there have been signs of improvement. Growth was beginning to show some life, and there was at least a sense that a few of the big numbers were moving in a better direction.
Then came the Iran shock, with oil, energy and inflation risk pushed, most of that was outside our control but this was not.
At the point where the government machine needed stability, discipline and speed, the political class managed to create another period of uncertainty. Not over a general election or a fresh national mandate. Over internal positioning, leadership calculations, private briefings and the endless Westminster question of who gets the keys next. That is not government. That is an expensive staff meeting with national consequences, that is more establish melting.
And this is not a Labour point. It is not a Conservative point either. Britain has seen too much of this from more than one side in recent years, with the public expected to absorb the disruption while politicians explain why the latest round of manoeuvring is somehow necessary, unavoidable or all part of the process.
Meanwhile, real decisions still have to be made: Defence spending cannot sit around waiting for a leadership weather report. Public service reform cannot keep pausing while everyone works out who might be in charge next month. Investment does not thrive on uncertainty. Civil servants cannot deliver at full pace when the political direction above them is wobbling.
The public is constantly told that productivity matters. Businesses are told to invest. Workers are told to adapt. Departments are told to do more with less. Everyone is told the country must grow, tighten up and get serious. But when do politicians apply the same standard to themselves?
A country carrying this level of debt cannot afford government by drama. It cannot afford leadership uncertainty every time the internal party weather changes. It cannot afford avoidable by-elections, avoidable mayoral elections, distracted departments, delayed decisions and borrowing costs nudged up by doubt.
Around £5 million in election costs was the visible bill, but the hidden bill is the disruption, and the hidden bill is usually the one we end up paying for longest.