The Half-Power State

How “lower taxes” became a trap, and austerity came back with better branding… Mel Stride’s plan from the Tory Conference

When I finished university and started my first job, I used to think “lower taxes” meant freedom. Like, the adult kind. The kind where you finally get to keep what’s yours and spend it on things that make you feel alive. It felt like a reward. A nod from the state that said, “You’ve made it. Keep a little more.” 

Fast forward to today, after years of watching the scaffolding behind the scenes; mum waiting weeks for a GP, schools held up by literal metal poles, the NHS gasping through winter. I’ve started to realise it’s not a reward. It’s a trap disguised as a treat. Like someone handing you a voucher for a restaurant they’ve just burned down.

I didn’t see it straight away. It was drip by drip…quiet, cumulative. I don’t know when it properly hit me, because we all know how slowly neglect moves. Not with sirens, but with silence. Not with collapse, but with erosion. Maybe it was the fifth time I saw someone on TikTok explaining how to “hack” their way into mental health support like it was a video game. Or maybe it was just the slow, quiet erosion of things I used to take for granted; appointments, safety nets, a sense that someone, somewhere, was holding the country together. This is policy. This is what happens when a country decides to shrink itself.

Because what we’re living through right now, the failing NHS, the crumbling schools, the ghost-town youth centres isn’t just bad luck. It’s the aftermath of the last austerity. The one that promised discipline and delivered decay.

And now, at the Conservative Party Conference, Sir Mel Stride is offering us the sequel. A £47 billion plan to “live within our means.”

• Foreign aid slashed to 0.1% of GNI (because global solidarity is apparently optional).

• £23 billion cut from welfare, especially for “low-level” mental health and migrants (translation: if you’re quietly drowning, you’re not worth saving).

• Civil service and green subsidies trimmed (because who needs functioning infrastructure or a livable planet?).

• Business rates abolished for high street shops and pubs (a sugar cube for the base).

• And a £5,000 National Insurance rebate dangled in front of young people buying their first home (as if that’ll dent the housing crisis).

But here’s the trick: they’re selling this as a win. Less tax, more freedom. Less spending, more control. But they never say where the money will come from. No new taxes. No windfall levies. No wealth redistribution. Just vibes and scissors.

And it’s seductive, isn’t it? The idea that you’ll pay less tax and somehow win. That you’re clever for dodging the system. But what they don’t tell you is that the system is dodging you back. You’ll pay less tax, sure! But you’ll also pay for private therapy, private education, private pensions, private safety. You’ll pay in precarity. You’ll pay in isolation. You’ll pay in the quiet panic of knowing there’s no one coming.

And we’ve done this before. We’ve lived through the slow bleed of austerity. We’ve watched libraries close, youth centres vanish, social care buckle. We’ve seen the state shrink until it’s just a crisis manager with a megaphone. And now they’re doing it again, just with better branding.

Stride isn’t chaotic. He’s composed. Strategic. He’s not selling collapse, he’s selling restraint. But it’s the kind of restraint that only works if you believe the state should be small, distant, and mostly absent. It’s not about balancing the books. It’s about shrinking the story. Making the country feel like a spreadsheet. And somehow, we’re meant to clap for it.

He talks about “living within our means” like it’s a moral imperative. But whose means? Whose morality? Because if you’re cutting aid, welfare, and public infrastructure while refusing to tax wealth, you’re not balancing… you’re abandoning.

Imagine this: a young person gets their first full-time job. They’re handed a £5,000 rebate to help buy a home. Sounds generous, right? Until you realise house prices are still astronomical, wages are stagnant, and the rebate barely scratches the surface. It’s like giving someone a snorkel in a flood. Symbolic. Useless. And yet, it sells. Because it feels like something. Because we’re so starved of care, even crumbs feel like cake.

Meanwhile, the high street gets a tax break, but the NHS gets a funding freeze. The welfare system gets gutted, but the rich get silence. And we’re told this is “fiscal responsibility.” It’s not. It’s austerity with a better haircut.

I keep thinking about that phrase: “half-power state.” It’s not just policy. It’s a mood. A country running on low battery, dimmed brightness, background mode. And we’re told it’s noble. That restraint is patriotic. That scarcity is strength. And the promise of paying less taxes! But I don’t want to live in a country that’s proud of its own absence. I want one that shows up. Fully. Loudly. Unapologetically.

Because if this is the deal; less tax, less country, more survival! I’m not buying it. I want a refund. Or at least a reckoning.