On a zoomed-out level, this new political-economic framework could be a break as stark as the transition from post-war Keynesianism to Thatcherism, and the upending of Tony Blair’s generous welfare state for post-financial crisis austerity. But in practice what this means is that the old questions of how to “divide up the pie” become irrelevant.

That powerful visual metaphor brings with it the notion that a nation’s resources and rewards are limited, and must be carefully divided up and rationed out. Abundance gets rid of all that, taking with it the culture wars and questions of economic austerity that have defined a generation.

So what is it? The core idea of abundance, as described in the recent book of the same name, co-written by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, is that the question of politics should instead be about supply. How do we get more of the things we need – whether that’s homes, energy, or GP appointments?

It sounds very simple. But it is also a deeply subversive reorientation of the political picture – it essentially turns politics on its head. Instead of pitting left against right, or the state against the market, it offers a new lens, and draws politics towards the question of the ends, and away from the question of means.

In this approach, the start point is to identify what we need more of, and from there work backwards to figure out how we get more of it. It seems a very obvious approach. But then almost all western political systems noticeably do not work in this way.

That includes Britain, where recent polling from More in Common found that 73% of people believe that the government doesn’t have things under control, while 52% of people believe that the cost of living crisis will never end. And 53% believe that their children’s generation will have a worse quality of life than that of their parents.

This sense of dissatisfaction is enhanced by the promises of the Labour government already beginning to look somewhat flimsy. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, faces two goals that are in tension with each other.

She has bound Britain to tight spending rules to maintain our economic credibility (memories of the market reaction to Liz Truss’s kamikaze budget are still fresh). But she also faces restless MPs. As the welfare rebellion demonstrated, they are desperate to increase spending to support their constituents, who have been scarred by inflation and austerity.

There is an unwinnable trade-off between those two because, at every opportunity during the last generation, we have developed an instinctive attachment to economic decline. And to make sure there’s no risk of the economy growing, we have carefully built a constellation of institutions, regulators and incentives that point towards every decision landing on stasis.

The path of least resistance is to maintain the status quo. To remain ensnared in the malaise. To do nothing. And that is what has made our politics a zero-sum fight for resources. 

The good news for Britain is that the government has accurately diagnosed the problem that we need to fix: We need a return to economic growth. This is something widely recognised now across British politics, as growth is more than just numbers on a spreadsheet, or lines on a graph. It represents economic activity, jobs being created, people getting richer, and tax revenues increasing without needing to take anything away.

If we have a growing economy, then suddenly the stark trade-offs that the chancellor faces are no longer zero-sum. It makes it possible to both invest money into public services like the NHS, while remaining fiscally responsible. It means households can become richer, and pay more taxes into Treasury coffers at the same time.

But as evidenced by the current government, which has pledged to make Britain the fastest growing economy in the G7, this is perhaps easier said than done. This brings us back to abundance – which offers a plan for how to do it.

If we want to achieve growth and progress, we’re going to have to build it. That means reorientating institutions so that the default is “yes”, rather than “no” – and not being afraid to use the state to make or shape markets, in the interests of increasing supply. And that the ultimate measure of legitimacy is not consultation, but delivery.

Again, this seems straightforward. But then consider that Britain’s extreme attachment to proceduralism has had a devastating effect on major infrastructure projects like HS2 and the Lower Thames Crossing. Decades have passed, with almost no progress.

To move Britain in this direction would be a radical departure, particularly from many Treasury dogmas that have held back Britain’s ability to build. But the prize if we can reshape Britain’s economic model to infuse them with abundance ideas could be finally achieving the elusive growth that we need.

For example, take the energy transition. The cross-party Net Zero consensus that used to exist is virtually dead. Back in March, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch declared that the 2050 target is “impossible” to achieve, and of course Nigel Farage and Reform were never on board.

It’s certainly true that achieving Net Zero is going to be difficult. It requires billions of pounds of investment to replace our energy infrastructure, and the transformation of our built environment.

However, viewed through an abundance lens, the energy transition becomes an economic opportunity. Instead of aiming to use less energy, and live more austere lives, we can use the transition as an opportunity to generate vastly more energy than we could ever need.

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. We have, after all, already invented the clean energy technologies we need. We have nuclear power, and every year the price of solar panels and battery storage is collapsing. According to Our World In Data, since 2010, the price of photovoltaic panels has fallen from $2.39 per Watt, to just 31 cents.

So imagine what we could do if we change the question of politics to aiming not for energy transition, but energy abundance: We could do more than completely decarbonise our grid and power electric vehicles. We could make household electricity bills so cheap that it isn’t worth metering, utterly transforming the cost of living, and use the excess of cheap energy to drive the economic growth that we need.

Once you start with supply as the driving question, it changes how we think about trade-offs, and makes clearer the opportunity cost of inaction. And this is especially where the movement originated, in housing activism in the United States.

The problems on both sides of the Atlantic in this case are similar. In cities like San Francisco and New York, just like in, well, basically all of Britain, demand for housing hugely outstrips supply, making the cities extremely expensive to live in.

And the cause is similar: it’s simply too hard to build. America has a legalistic culture, with new housing schemes often bogged down in lawsuits. And here in Britain, our planning system is plagued with layers of consultation, review and regulation – all of which has the net effect of making building more homes torturously slow, and unable to keep pace with demand.

This is perhaps why housing is the area of the so-called Abundance Agenda that Keir Starmer has embraced most wholeheartedly. At the Labour Party conference in 2023, when asked if he is a “YIMBY” – a pro-building advocate who says “Yes In My Back Yard”, the prime minister simply replied “Yes”.

And the benefits of an abundance view that advocates increasing the supply of housing is clear, as building more homes – an abundance of homes – solves, well, seemingly everything.

For example, if we can reduce the proportion of household incomes spent on housing, people will feel better off – and will be able to put their money at work where it is more economically useful. More housing would also make it easier for people to move to where there are new job opportunities – better matching skills to where they are needed. 

It can even reduce regional inequality, by increasing geographic mobility, and not just filtering wealth straight to the landlords at the top of the tree. And building more could also make future population pyramid problems less severe, as with more housing, people will have more space to raise families.

No wonder an influential 2021 essay coined the phrase the “housing theory of everything”, to describe Britain’s problems.

Seeing the prime minister apparently water down his commitment to planning reform in the commons felt like backward step. But there is at least some reason for optimism here in the UK. The core problem has been identified – our lack of growth – and my view is that the ideas around abundance make an effective lens that shows us the route to a country that works. 

Britain might feel broken right now, but the simple idea of abundance has gained a good deal of attention in the Labour party. It’s an outlook with far-reaching consequences – and one that suggests we might just have the tools to build a country that works after all.

James O’Malley writes a politics and policy newsletter, and hosts The Abundance Agenda podcast.