Spending Review: For the Whole Nation?

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.

Every Chancellor has their signature soundbite. Last week, we received a symphony of billions: £29 billion extra for the NHS, £11 billion for defence, a £113 billion infrastructure spree (1), and enticing promises of bricks, railways, and digital dreams. And yet, let us be clear, if the Spending Review were music, it would be less Beatles and Queen, more HMRC hold-music: familiar, repetitive, and utterly disconnected from the real lives of this nation’s people.

This was not a statement of national renewal. It was an Excel spreadsheet with delusions of grandeur.

The Chancellor claims to have laid the groundwork for long-term prosperity. But what we saw was not a hearty renewal of this great nation. It was the resuscitation of a Whitehall machine that has long since ceased to understand the rhythms and needs of the communities it purports to serve. Whole Nation Conservatives have always believed that true national strength flows from below: from family, place, civic duty, and dignity. This Review, regrettably, flows from above, and mostly in borrowed money.

It is foolhardy to dismiss everything. There were elements to welcome. An uplift in defence spending acknowledges the uncertain world we now inhabit, though spending is not projected to be at the pace or size needed. A commitment to infrastructure speaks, at least on paper, to the possibility of productivity and regional rebalancing. But the devil is in the details, and in the assumptions, and is lurking loud and proud there.

Take the NHS, now crowned (yet again) as the sacred cow of the British state. A 3% real-terms rise (1), celebrated in Westminster as if it were a spiritual offering. Yet Whole Nation Conservatives know that money is not sufficient on its own. Pouring billions into an unreformed, bureaucratic health system is not progress but rather delay disguised as duty. We do not need a bigger NHS; we need a better, accountable, outcome-driven, prevention-focused NHS that treats people before they break. Free at the point of use but creative and innovative in how it finances and delivers care. Instead, we got another cheque for an absolute behemoth that can barely keep its own books.

On education, the gesture was even thinner. A modest increase in per-pupil funding (1), cleverly announced with emphasis on “school rebuilding”, masks a fundamental drift. The Review betrays the Government’s lack of moral or cultural vision for education, lack of understanding of schools as pillars of community and character, seeing our education system as a weapon to conduct class and ideological warfare with little thought of the collateral damage. Of children. Instead, it settles for more classrooms without deeper curriculum, more metrics without more meaning. Our children are not merely future workers. They are citizens in the making. The Conservatives’ record on education showed that we understood this. This Review did not seem to notice any of it.

Then there is infrastructure, the Chancellor’s monument to “long-termism”. £113 billion (1) is a commanding number. But the shape of this investment reveals the old, tired habits: top-down schemes, endless consultations, projects parked in the Treasury’s filing cabinet for later unveiling. Similarly, we are told that this will be a golden age of housebuilding. And we so desperately need that golden age to dawn. Yet the numbers are front-loaded in promises and back-loaded in delivery. £39 billion for affordable housing (1) sounds bold until one realises it is stretched thin over ten years, with little to no appetite for reforming the very system that jacks up cost and stymies progress. Nothing to fix this broken country that eats money like kids eat sweets and still has nothing to show for it despite the gorging. Nothing to empower the people who want to stay, build, raise families and serve: the kind of rooted citizens who anchor a society.

On policing and crime, the Review offers a paltry 2.3% increase and a quiet nod to funding via council tax precepts (1). This is not reform but abdication. Council tax is one of the most regressive instruments we have. Tying community safety to local tax rises is not devolution; it is delegation without power. Worse still, police services are left without clarity on how to deliver more with less, while trust in local law enforcement continues to fray, as does our social fabric.

And then, in the footnotes, the Review whispers the real news: cuts. Quiet slashes to the Foreign Office, to Defra, to culture and local government (1). Cuts are not bad in and of themselves. They are often necessary if we are not to live beyond our means. A lean but active state should be the goal. But this is not the argument the Government wants to make. They have an addiction to big-ticket PR spending, and none of the thoughtful analysis to show how to coherently make the state work.

It is difficult not to conclude that this Review was a political artefact, not a working plan. It was designed to win a news cycle, not aid in rebuilding the nation. It shows that deep down there is no recognition that our crisis is not merely fiscal but also moral, cultural and communal. The British people are not just hungry for services. They are starved of trust, agency, and meaning. The Government instead chose to fudge the numbers to prop up what limited narrative they have to the detriment of the Whole Nation.

The 2025 Spending Review does not serve the Whole Nation. It undermines it.

It entrenches the belief that Britain’s future lies in Whitehall’s capacity to spend, rather than in the people’s capacity to build or in our ability to chart a course for a balanced economy. An economy that should be reindustrialised, intergenerationally and regionally fair, and burgeoning. It tightens the grip of a state that is increasingly managerial and mechanistic, neglecting its duty and power, while the human bonds that sustain our nation continue to erode.

It is a technocrat’s triumph and a citizen’s loss.

Until our governments rediscover that political power must be exercised in service of the people’s flourishing, not merely their servicing, we will continue to write budgets that grow the government, while the nation quietly shrinks.

The Spending Review of 2025 was big. But bigness is not greatness. And without courage, without philosophy, without nationhood - it is just a bigger way to fail.

References

1. Spending Review 2025 (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)