Dan Tomlinson Interview: Without Growth, Our Politics Will Not Survive
6 min read
Periods in insecure housing mean cheerleading for the government’s growth agenda is personal for Dan Tomlinson, he tells Adam Payne
According to the Prime Minister’s growth champion Dan Tomlinson, as far as the government’s mission to deliver serious economic growth is concerned, the stakes cannot be overstated.
“There’s just no way forward for this country, for the long-term sustainability of our politics, if we don’t turn that around,” the MP tells The House.
When Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves emailed Labour MPs last year inviting them to put their names forward to form Keir Starmer’s phalanx of champions, Tomlinson, 32, did not hesitate to raise his hand. The new Labour MP for Chipping Barnet says he dropped the idea of going for a select committee spot to devote as much of his time and energy as possible to flying the flag for the government’s driving policy.
An economist at the Resolution Foundation think tank from 2015 to 2022, Tomlinson’s CV lends itself to the growth champion role. He describes the job as a link between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the growth-focused departments of Whitehall; a conduit for sharing growth-delivering ideas generated on the back benches. You can also expect him to be on the airwaves banging the drum for the agenda.
Tomlinson says his formative experience as a millennial in a broken housing market has played an important part in his enthusiasm for the pro-growth, pro-build agenda. The MP grew up in Oxfordshire – namely, David Cameron’s former constituency, Witney – where he lived in social housing and, for a time, emergency accommodation. He later moved to Tower Hamlets, east London, where he briefly rented before being evicted. This led him to move in with his in-laws where, with his partner, he saved enough money to buy in the north London suburb he now represents.
“When I knock on doors here in Barnet, I often come across people in their 60s who’ve got people in their 30s living at home. It’s not uncommon to find three generations living at home. People who want to move out, to be able to afford to rent or buy a place of their own, but can’t,” he says.
“I don’t think there are lots of MPs who lived in emergency accommodation as a kid, but I do think there are lots of MPs, new MPs, for whom the housing crisis isn’t just some abstract thing. It helps us understand the country and breed support for the changes that we need.”
The House met Tomlinson in Barnet’s Oak Caffe, a corner establishment that Starmer visited during last year’s general election campaign. Like many other constituencies nationwide, Chipping Barnet turned Labour for the first time in July. It was also the first time that the constituency had not voted Tory in its 50-year existence.
Tomlinson’s victory came at the expense of former cabinet minister Theresa Villiers. As well as being one of the more high-profile casualties on that Thursday night last summer, Villiers’ public opposition to mass housebuilding meant that, by the time she had been dislodged as Chipping Barnet’s MP, she had become seen by pro-build enthusiasts as a patron saint of nimbyism.
Did this make Tomlinson’s victory even sweeter?
“The fact that it was won by Labour against someone who was, in some ways, the embodiment of the anti-growth coalition, shows you that politics has changed,” he says, smiling wryly.
Over the decades, the boat has collected a lot of barnacles and if we want to motor on, we need to get rid of them
The north London seat’s new representative is under no illusion about the scale of the challenge facing the Labour government as it seeks to lift the country from years of stagnant growth and falling living standards, as well as the electoral repercussions for his party if they are seen as having failed.
“We definitely need to make sure that by the time of the next general election, we beat the forecasts that the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] is putting out at the moment and that we people feel and know that they’ve got more income in their pocket at the end of the month.”
“It’s on us,” he continues. “It’s obviously massively on Keir, Rachel [Reeves] and Angela [Rayner] leading the government, but it’s on every single one of us in a marginal seat to show that it was worth it putting their trust in somebody.”
Putting his think tank hat on, he says: “We [Resolution Foundation] punched some numbers, then that found that eight million young workers have only ever lived and worked in an economy where wages aren’t rising… We’ve had the longest squeeze on wages since Napoleon was making his way around Europe. That’s the scale of the problem that people are facing.”
The thought of the next general election is already weighing heavy on the minds of some Labour MPs. This is particularly true of those with more precarious majorities who are looking over their shoulder at the sight of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK preparing to capitalise on any sense of yet more broken promises by mainstream politicians. While Labour MPs generally agree that the government’s growth mission will need time to yield proper results, there is some nervousness that they won’t have enough to show for it once they eventually face the voters.
Tomlinson, however, says the idea that it is long-term versus short-term is “misguided” because “a lot of long-term decisions can pull in investment today”.
“If you say to the private sector, ‘we’re making long-term decisions on our energy security, or ‘we’re going to build this new railway line’, or ‘we’re going to expand this airport’, they don’t wait until the building has happened in 10 years’ time to start to buying up land, to start investing, to start building the warehouses, to start sorting out their logistics,” the Labour MP argues.
“These things happen immediately. The private sector is quick to move. Making long-term decisions for the health of the country can have benefits in the here and now.”
That said, there is urgency in Tomlinson’s approach, particularly when it comes to planning reform, as he says the government must “disrupt and try to change things up”.
“The planning system is broadly unchanged since 1947. We’re just not going to build the homes that we need if we stick with the planning system as it has been. It’s just not going to happen.
“You can’t just keep pulling the same levers and not expect to get the same results… Over the decades, the boat has collected a lot of barnacles and if we want to motor on, we need to get rid of them.”
The government this month published the details of its Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said would “streamline” planning, putting an end to processes taking “years and years and years” and ensuring that the country gets the “infrastructure and the houses we desperately need”.
As ministers take the bill forward, Tomlinson says they should look to the Victorians for inspiration.
“We were the first country in the world to build a steam railway: the Stockton and Darlington railway. Brunel built the Great Western Railway and the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Bazalgette built London’s sewers. We got stuff built. We didn’t sit on our hands – we made it happen.”
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