A lost decade may be on the horizon

THERESA May staged a Sunday afternoon reshuffle, but the real question is how and when she will move out of Downing Street.

Normally, ministers sit by their telephones on reshuffle days fearful they will be out of a job. This time, the Tory leader knew she must secure the loyalty of her frontbench team in order to prevent a leadership challenge.

She has already said goodbye to her two most trusted aides in a bid to assuage anger in party ranks. But her premiership is operating on borrowed time.

Mrs May responded to last week’s election disaster by describing her five-year plan for government. It is fanciful to suggest she will get to stay in office for another half-decade.

People of different political colours will feel sympathy for her, but she will not get to fulfil these dreams of reshaping Britain. A career she pursued for decades with determination and quiet but clear ambition is now in ruins.

She may well make important future contributions to public life but as a result of eliminating her party’s slender majority by taking the gamble of going for a snap election it seems inevitable she is about to enter her wilderness years.

The real concern is that Britain could be also about to endure a lost decade of economic decline, social fragmentation and international isolation.

Last month the National Institute of Economic and Social Research warned that the UK had already experienced a “lost decade of economic growth”. It flagged up the “very disappointing” growth in income since the financial crash, deteriorating productivity and a lack of investment in R&D and infrastructure.

A bungled Brexit which strips the country of investor confidence and hits businesses with new tariff costs could plunge Britain into an even longer period of stagnation and decline.

There are clear priorities that a government should be pursuing. We urgently need to raise skill levels among both the young and working-age population, while the recent terrorist attacks have underscored the need to improve security and encourage integration.

In order to hold on to existing investment, our communities need radically improved infrastructure, both in the form of better road and rail links and decent digital communications.

Instead, it looks as if we are about to see a humiliated Government embark on all-consuming Brexit negotiations. The EU Commission and the leaders of the other 27 member states will chortle when they think back to the fighting talk of Mrs May’s recent speeches and contrast this with the spectacle of a government that depends for its survival on Northern Ireland’s DUP.

Mrs May should use her remaining time in office not to pursue her own survival (she can look forward to an affluent future outside No 10) but to end the culture of hubris and ensure the country does not enter a chapter of conflict, division and avoidable impoverishment. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2014 was 78.5%