If you read the papers, the stories which consistently force their way to the front are Ukraine, Donald Trump and transgender issues.
Ukraine matters: it is the hinge point in the battle between decency and thuggery. Putin must not win and Britain is playing an honourable part in trying to prevent disaster.
Trump has a dishonourable role in the Ukraine situation. Trying to understand Russia is one thing, siding with them and rewarding them for their violence is quite another. Trump is also getting on just fine with destroying America's economic leadership of the world. He will eventually pass and we should not become fixated by him.
Transgender issues are relevant to a miniscule proportion of the population. The Supreme Court has now confirmed the rather obvious position that reality rather than a person's wishes are key to defining someone's sex. We would be doing everybody, including transgender people, a favour if we let this issue slip from the front page and quietly get on with trying to accommodate people's various differences in common sense, decent ways.
While we focus on these things we just ignore key issues which we should face up to but resolutely refuse to.
You could argue forever about what the biggest issues are but my list would be poverty, defence, the implications of an ageing population and intergenerational unfairness.
By poverty I do not mean relative poverty which is defined by being below a set percentage of median earnings. What I mean is absolute poverty where people, especially children, are cold and hungry.
Defence. The first role of a government is to protect the country. Nowadays not just from physical invasion but things like cyberwarfare. Our defence spending is only about half the proportion of GDP that it was in the 1980s, it needs to be increased back to that level and fast.
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An ageing population brings a need for health and social care way beyond what we have now. This is far more of an emergency than changes in the climate. Our healthcare system is buckling and social care services are overwhelmed today, and this is before the inevitable steep rise in demand.
Intergenerational unfairness is everywhere. Younger people can't afford to buy a home, can't afford to have children, can’t afford to save. No wonder they disengage from politics and traditional work; the deal just doesn’t make sense for them anymore.
There is no single answer to these difficult questions but here are some suggestions which politicians will absolutely not want to address because they are hard.
Grow the economy. It we can do that, every choice gets easier. The UK Labour Government talks about this but then does the opposite. The Scottish Government hardly talks about it because it is so obsessed with social issues. Every single piece of legislation should be tested against the measure of whether it will make the economy grow faster. If it will not, it must be changed or dropped.
Tony Blair was right: people need a hand-up not a hand-out. We really do need to make work pay. The rate at which benefits are withdrawn as somebody starts to earn should be reduced. This is expensive but is absolutely needed if we are to enable people to get out of poverty through their own efforts. Social services need more resources to help families function and protect children. This is also expensive but if the basic rate of income tax has to rise a couple of pence to pay for it then do it.
None of us know how much care we will need in our later years and this is a major worry for older people. Employees’ national insurance was recently reduced by four percentage points; put it back up again and spend all of that money on social care.
Public sector pensions are unaffordable and grossly unfair because their cost is mainly underwritten by taxpayers who have far worse provision. Give public sector workers a 10 per cent pay rise now but put them all on money purchase pensions like everybody else. It will have to be done one day so do it now before young people are stuffed yet again.
The key difficulty for young people is the price of housing. Housing is the most crazily undertaxed asset class in the country, most of the value of which is held by the Boomer generation. There is roughly £3trillion of net housing wealth held by people over 60 years old, of which about half is in London and the South East of England.
Why not introduce 5% stamp duty, paid by the seller, on the value of houses when they are sold or gifted but allow people relief if they buy another house so that it is only the net value they release which is taxed. This would raise between £5bn and £10bn pounds a year. With that money and a more helpful planning regime, we could get building.
Politicians and the electorate need to face up to the real issues and not the ones the media stick in front of us.
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