There is no denying that the policy known as the "Right to Buy" introduced by the Thatcher/Joseph government was a political masterstroke. In one swoop it changed the world for a generation of people and their inheritors. I am not about to debate the rights & wrongs of the policy (mostly wrong of course, in the short and long term) in this blog. I merely want to use it as an illustration of a systemic change that one government put in that all future governments would find it difficult if not impossible to undo.
Under the British 'constitution', no government (at any level) can bind the policies of a future one. In other words any budget can be deleted, any structure restructured, laws can be repealed and even rights removed by a successive administration. But, the really, really clever and radical politicians can prevent this, for good or for bad. These are the systemic changes.
Another example is the Minimum Wage brought in by Blair's government. It would be nigh on impossible to undo that now. (Although it can be enforced with greater or lesser degrees of attention.) I would put the Open University into this category. Also of course, the EU Referendum was a systemic game changer too.
Some systemic changes are so by dint of legal intricacy (unravelling a law might be extremely difficult), or by dint of political zeitgeist (it would be generally seen to be unthinkable to undo the change). And some change the rules altogether such as the Human Rights Act (underpinned by the ECHR) and electoral reform (such as the voting systems put in place for the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments etc - but not yet Westminster). Still more revolve around creating an uplift in the skills and understanding of the population so that they won't (for example) have any truck with fake news or daft pseudo-science.
I hope that when the next Labour govt is elected (and that cannot come soon enough) that great effort is put into establishing positive systemic changes that will provide resilient improvements for the many, not just the few, in the UK and the world. Yes of course, it will be important to undo the years of damage inflicted on the economy and society by the years of Tory rule. But let's be really clever about it and do all that can be done systemically to prevent damage in the future - no matter which party is in control.
