Eggs in a Basket: How We Shut Down Debate for Generations

Co-founder of Whole Nation Conservatives Igraine Gray is a Conservative activist and former council candidate, writer, published author and rehabilitated rough sleeper. Prior to the 2024 General Election she was Policy Assistant to Sir Simon Clarke.

There is a peculiar British political habit, perhaps best described as a national affliction, of turning policy into sacrament. The moment a policy becomes the embodiment of a noble principle, we set it on a plinth, light candles beneath it, and guard it against scrutiny with the sort of fervour usually reserved for defending a beloved grandmother from online trolls. To question it is heresy. To reform it? Treason.

This isn’t devotion but deterioration. We are locking ourselves into decline by confusing principle with process. In doing so, we mistake the path for the destination and then act surprised when we wind up lost. We see it most acutely in the areas where our institutions are floundering, yet we’re too frightened to pick up a spanner. No wonder we’re treading water as others lap us.

Take the NHS. Please, take it. Wrap it in bubble wrap, smother it in bunting, and shout “our NHS” until the echo rings round Whitehall. The institution has become a symbol not of healthcare, but of moral virtue itself. If you even whisper that the model might need change, someone will accuse you of wanting to bulldoze your local A&E, preferably while your nan is in it.

Yet here we are, in 2025, with a day-to-day NHS budget of not far off £180 billion (1). Roughly the size of the entire GDP of Greece (2). This sum, we’re told, is not enough. It never is. More money is hurled at it, year after year, with all the precision of a drunkard playing darts. But results don’t follow money the way day follows night. Waiting lists balloon, staff burnout is endemic, and the public’s faith, ironically, is in critical condition.

Why? Because the NHS’s institutional structure has become synonymous with the principle of universal healthcare. To suggest that perhaps the model - monolithic, centralised, and oddly allergic to innovation - might need reform is to be accused of wanting to bring in American-style “pay or die” medicine. But the principle is not the structure. The principle is healthcare for all. The policy is how we deliver it. When the system fails, we cling tighter. It is policy as fetish, and the patient is bleeding out.

The same pathologies infect our pension system. The Triple Lock (guaranteeing pensions rise by the highest of inflation, average earnings or 2.5%) has been calcified into a sacred totem. To question it is to launch a vicious attack on hard-working Britons who’ve "paid in all their lives." The principle, looking after people who have contributed to society in their old age, is almost beyond reproach. But the policy has become grotesquely expensive and inefficient.

In 2025, the state pension bill is projected to balloon to over £138 billion (3), more than we spend on education (4). The UK now spends more than 5% of its GDP on state pensions, a figure projected to rise sharply as our population ages. Meanwhile, intergenerational inequality yawns wider than ever. Young people are taxed heavily to sustain benefits they’ll never receive, while many pensioners, increasingly, own homes outright, live longer, and are protected from downturns. It is not immoral to ask whether this is just. It is immoral not to.

But say so, and the response is Pavlovian: “You want old people to suffer.” No. We want them to be supported by a system that works. One that is stable, fair, and fit for the future. Not one that has become a political hostage note signed in grey ink and sealed with the blood of fiscal sanity.

And now, a new sacred cow calves: leaving the European Convention of Human Rights. To some, ECHR exit has become the sole measure of whether you believe in national sovereignty and border control. In truth, leaving the ECHR is in all probability the right current course - especially if we are to regain effective control over illegal migration and extricate our courts from the tentacles of foreign jurisprudence. But the danger is in turning it into the defining mechanism for control. If we subconsciously cast all other measures aside, dooming them in perpetuity, we risk substituting strategic thinking with blind loyalty to a single exit sign. Even if the effectiveness diminishes.

Another case in point, and one so swaddled in righteousness it’s practically wrapped in hemp, is the Greenbelt. Once a modest policy aimed at preserving Britain’s natural beauty, it has now been elevated to near-biblical status, the green halo through which all our environmental virtue supposedly shines. To even suggest a review of its make up and size is to invite accusations of wanting to “concrete over the countryside” and bulldoze the AONBs in favour of ugly boxes. But here’s the rub: much of the Greenbelt isn’t rolling hills and babbling brooks. There is much scrubland, derelict warehouses, and decaying wasteland. Meanwhile, the housing crisis intensifies, with younger generations priced out and critical infrastructure stymied. The Greenbelt, in its current form, does precious little for the environment and plenty to perpetuate stagnation. It has become another bloated relic mistaken for a principle (preservation of nature, environment and history) even when that principle is not being served in the slightest. Why, then, do we keep clinging to things that don’t work? Because it is now deified, beyond all common sense and purpose.

As with the NHS and pensions, when a policy becomes the shrine upon which a principle is worshipped, it blocks out light, oxygen, and reason. We become so gripped by symbolism that we forget pragmatism.

A successful government is not one that defends policies like holy relics, but one that adapts them as the terrain changes. To be true to that principle and result we are striving for. To do otherwise is to become the constitutional equivalent of a railway company insisting that timetables cannot change, even as routes fall into unviability.

This country is now facing what Neil O’Brien has named a confluence of crises (5), a perfect storm of problems threatening to engulf us - economic, demographic, cultural. It cannot afford to keep putting eggs in brittle baskets, then hurling them from the parapets of Westminster and acting surprised when yolk ends up on our faces.

Principles endure. Policies are tools. If we mistake one for the other, we will continue to stagnate, endlessly polishing rusted instruments while the work goes undone. The best way to honour a principle is not to freeze it in the form of a 20-year-old policy, but to ask, day after day, what best serves it now.

So let’s end the deification of these decisions and institutions. Be driven by principle and outcome, putting debate back on the table. Because when you put all your eggs in one basket, to be tucked away from harm, don’t be shocked when they rot.

References

1. Spring Budget 2024 | NHS Confederation

2. GDP by Country - Worldometer (worldometers.info)

3. Government support for pensioners - House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)

4. Annual report on education spending in England: 2024–25 | Institute for Fiscal Studies (ifs.org.uk)

5. The confluence - by Neil O'Brien - Neil’s Substack (neilobrien.co.uk)