Icebergs: Britain’s Main Growth Industry

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.

“God himself could not sink this ship.” — Cal Hockley in 1999’s Titanic, with characteristic hubristic unsoundness.

An unsoundness that is an extraordinarily common disease. We are content to survive disaster, then immediately blunder into another one. We are the nation that, having scrambled into the lifeboats of the Titanic, would happily climb aboard the Boccaccio - and be comforted by modernity, blind to the course set straight for the bottom of the ocean.

That is where Britain stands now. We have scraped one frozen wall, with years of stagnation, frayed productivity and infrastructure, and uncontrolled migration, and in the rush to rebuild, much of the political class is merrily charting a course towards three more, each capable of ripping the hull clean open.

The Whole Nation Conservative idea is, at root, about navigation: keeping the ship steady for all aboard, not merely the first-class deck. It means confronting reality, not hiding in the captain’s quarters with a glass of port and a well-rehearsed speech about “delivering for hardworking families.” But today’s politics of froth and performance risks leaving us in even choppier waters.

We escaped the Titanic, only to find ourselves on another vessel, bigger and flashier, but still steaming toward the ice. And unless we change course, the next collision will not simply dent our casing but leave the passengers so distrustful they’ll refuse to sail again.

Iceberg One: The Vanishing Common Ground

The first looming berg is the growing distance between the political class and the average Brit. With the erosion of meritocracy, a perception of ingrained unfairness, and a lack of sustained competence, the gulf between Parliament and its people widens the further down the pit we fall. 

It is easy to talk about “levelling up” and “growth funds” in Westminster; it is harder to explain to a miner’s grandson in County Durham, or a young family in Skegness, why nothing much has changed after 30 years of promises and why they have been set aside. In Blackpool, they have scattered funds on leisure facilities and tourism strategies, but the seasonal economy and its jobs remain fragile and low-paid. In the Red Wall, and the Fens, continuing deindustrialisation and slowing agriculture show no signs of abating for the long hall.

These are communities where people have done the “right” things for generations, worked hard, played fair and respected the law, yet each decade leaves them no better off. For years, that despair expressed itself as apathy. The political elite could comfort themselves with the idea that non-voting meant acquiescence.

Then came 2016 and with it Brexit, the explosion at the end of a very long fuse. It was proof that these communities could be heard, that they could change things. That discovery is not going to be forgotten.

Enter Reform. However one feels about their politics, they are tapping into something raw: a sense of betrayal so deep that people who once muttered about politics in the pub are now evangelists at the school gates. Unlike the Conservatives’ traditional, often discreet base, these voters recruit. They convert. And we all know about the zeal of the convert.

Here’s the real danger: almost everyone in Westminster is underestimating how high Reform’s ceiling could go. If the Conservatives do not show the understanding of the deep injustice many Britons feel and how to right it, the ground will hollow out beneath us, and politics will be dragged to the extremes and leave us divided. And with that division the common ground will vanish.

Iceberg Two: The Communication Trap

The second iceberg is subtler, yet every bit as fatal: a complete misunderstanding of how the average person now consumes politics, and how it is as much about the emotional as it is the logical.

Take immigration. A majority of Britons, across party lines, want it cut and controlled. They are right: it is a central plank of rebuilding the country. It is of the utmost importance, to be highlighted, discussed, and acted upon. But in political messaging, seemingly subliminally, immigration has been treated as, or implied to be, a silver bullet: the cure for an unfair economy, housing shortages, even the NHS crisis. When politicians, implicitly or explicitly, sell it this way, they set a trap for themselves.

Because here’s what will happen. Sooner or later, and the shift in the Overton Window suggests “sooner” and by hook or by crook, immigration control will be achieved. The people will make it so. The country’s other problems will ease, some more than others, but they will not vanish. Housing will still be scarce due post-war inelastic supply. Wages will still lag as the country still grapples with poor productivity. Public services and infrastructure will still creak after decades of inefficiency and poor maintenance.

And then the voter, seeing that their lives have not been transformed and decline has not reversed, will conclude they’ve been sold a dud. The distrust will deepen, the gap between governors and governed will widen. And our democracy, already battered by scandal and cynicism, will take another hit it cannot afford.

Worse, immigration as the political story is stealing oxygen from resolutions to other looming crises because of prior political failure. Our leaders have laid this trap for themselves too. The only reason it has the power it has is because uncontrolled immigration was once the problem ignored (in action if not in rhetoric) in favour of other issues. The sole way to avoid this iceberg is deal with immigration head-on and at pace to restore trust, whilst being honest on what work has to go alongside it. The political leaders and movement that can slay this beast, will be best placed to convince voters of action to correct other crises. Removing either step from this process is the Westminster equivalent of watching the iceberg’s tip glint in the moonlight, and ignoring the vast frozen mass beneath the waterline.

Iceberg Three: The Demographic Time Bomb

The third iceberg is the least dramatic to look at, no jagged peaks or no cinematic glamour, but it may be the one that sinks us.

Britain is ageing. Life expectancy is rising; the birth rate is collapsing. Our pension system, worshipped via the political idol of the Triple Lock, is becoming unsustainable. The workforce is shrinking, even as welfare rolls grow. In vast swathes of the country, we are simply not replacing ourselves: not in our workplaces, not in our communities.

This problem compounds the further we spiral. As local community networks degrade, more is foisted onto the state. And the state, bloated and inefficient as it already is, cannot carry this weight without either astronomical taxes or savage cuts. Even that is not likely to be enough.

Supply-side reform, especially on housing and planning, has been endlessly discussed yet rarely delivered. The result? A housing crisis that feeds a cost-of-living crisis, which in turn feeds a fertility crisis. Families are smaller, later, or not happening at all.

Without a course correction, we will have a smaller working-age population trying to fund not just our current level of spending, but the additional burdens created by collapsing local support systems. The sums do not add up.

The Last Ship

The lesson of the Titanic was not “build bigger ships.” It was “learn to navigate.” Yet our politics today is all about tonnage and paintwork, with grand launches lacking in consistent advocacy, while the ice drifts ever closer.

If political parties rebuild their “ship” without plotting a course far from these three icebergs - the vanishing common ground, the communication trap, the demographic time bomb - they will sink again. And if that happens, there may be no passengers willing to board another.

Because here is the real danger: when the people lose faith not just in a party, but in the idea of the voyage itself, democracy suffers irreparable damage.

We can survive one shipwreck. We cannot survive a fleet of them. And if we keep steering like this, the final sound will not be the string quartet’s last note, but the quiet, enduring silence of a country that has stopped believing anyone can steer at all.