The UK's exit charge from the EU: insights from modes of accounting

Whatever the final charge on the UK for leaving the EU, the money itself is relatively marginal to the former's public finances. However, this charge is politically sensitive and financially aggravating during one of the longest periods of fiscal austerity in the UK's history. The ways in which leaving is conceptualized have implications for any continuing financial obligations that must be managed within the context of fiscal austerity and political uncertainty. Yet, leaving the EU is a unique transaction: it is not analogous, for example, to a divorce settlement, the leaving of a club, the termination of a commercial contract, the leaving of a treaty‐based international organization, or secession from a state. Analysing the formulation of the charge in terms of the four modes of government accounting—financial reporting, statistical accounting, budgeting, and fiscal sustainability projections—enhances its fiscal transparency. It evidences not only the weakness and inconsistency of the UK's negotiating position but also the dominance in EU thinking of the short‐term budgetary calculations of the 2014–20 Multiannual Financial Framework over its long‐term sustainability without a large net contributor. The final amount paid by the UK will depend on the resolution of competing perspectives as well as on liabilities and contingent liabilities associated with the increasingly complex EU financial architecture

Restructuring UK local government employment relations: pay determination and employee participation in tough times

The Conservative-led coalition government has been committed to shrinking the state and this has had a major impact on local government. This article examines the consequences of austerity measures for staff participation and pay determination in UK local government. Local government has been particularly hard hit by austerity measures and this has encouraged employers to change terms and conditions, review forms of staff participation and cut jobs. The implications for the institutional resilience of systems of employment regulation and employee involvement in the sector are considered

Public Policy Futures: a Left Trilemma?

Why is it so hard for the Left to produce a coherent, progressive and practicable response to the crisis, when markets and private enterprise have so obviously failed? One answer is that the Left faces a trilemma in developing adequate, electable and progressive public policy. It must respond adequately to the economic crisis to be seen as competent, it must address the established themes in public opinion to be electable, and it must develop generous and inclusive policies, to be progressive. This paper identifies conflicts in all three areas: low public sector productivity growth and demographic shifts tighten already harsh spending constraints. Entrenched public suspicions of higher taxes for any but the distant rich and a public discourse which makes rigid distinctions between those deserving and undeserving of state welfare conflict with egalitarian or redistributive policies. Both spending constraints and the key themes in public opinion conflict with generous and inclusive policies. The Coalition strategy, by contrast, rests on private enterprise-led recovery, work-ethic values and policies that exclude less deserving groups. It does not face the same problems. This paper analyses a range of policy programmes suggested by commentators on the centre-left in the light of these points. It concludes that a central task for a progressive strategy is not so much designing the policies which will be attractive and will meet needs effectively as developing the framework of provision which will help to build solidarity and shift public discourse in order to make inclusive and generous policy possible

Heading for disaster: Extreme work and skill mix changes in the emergency services of England

This article examines the impact on staff of state-imposed public sector reforms alongside austerity cuts since 2010 in the emergency services of England. We discuss the contextual imperatives for change in the police, fire and ambulance services while exploring their unique labour management and industrial relations’ structures and systems. As elsewhere, the burden of cuts and reforms has fallen on the workforce managed through skill mix changes. Such site-level management responses to austerity are being implemented despite staff concerns, increased dangers to the public, and their non-sustainable nature

Root and Branch Restructuring to Achieve Major Cuts: The Social Policy Programme of the 2010 UK Coalition Government

The 2010 Coalition has set itself the challenge of combining an unprecedentedly rapid and profound retrenchment with a fundamental restructuring of the public sector, both to be accomplished within five years. The immediate justification is a presumed need to reduce national indebtedness. The longer-term goal is to shrink the state, free up the market and set British political economy on a new course. The programme has encountered a number of set-backs and some elements appear more likely to be realized than others. This article considers the objectives of the Coalition programme and the likely outcomes, using evidence from a number of sources including comparisons with the experience of retrenchment elsewhere and analysis of previous rounds of public spending cut-backs