From basic services to public luxury
Phil Jones
1st April 2025
Introduction
Universal Basic Services (UBS) has become the common term for a vision of an updated public sector in the twenty-first century. Coined by the Institute for Global Prosperity some seven years back to imagine an alternative to ‘basic income’ (BI), the term describes seven services: food, shelter (housing), healthcare, education, legal services, transport and internet. But what does it actually amount to?
As an earlier blog published a few years ago for the Autonomy Institute, by our Chief Executive Will Stronge, noted:
‘…many of these services are not in fact proposed as universal in that report. Housing is to be allocated to the most in need first, amounting to a (commendable) proposal simply to build more houses and provide free utilities). ‘Free transport’ is really just an extension of free bus passes. UBFood has little detail in the way of logistics: will we really be giving food to people via an expanded network of food banks and soup kitchens?’
Though a central intention of UBS is to end a policy environment dictated by the logic of austerity, most publications on the subject have tended to be directed by exactly that. They express a mindset that no longer feels confident in demanding ‘good things’, mostly aiming to recover public services to the same standard they were in a previous era. A Labour Party report on the subject published in 2019, a few years after the IGP paper – perhaps understandably given the extent of cuts over the previous decade – mostly framed the idea as a recuperation of services lost to austerity. Recent publications, meanwhile, have tended to treat existing services in isolation, thus prompting the question: when we talk about UBS, are we really just talking about revitalising the public sector?
What do we mean by basic?
It is also worth emphasising that outside of policy circles, the term ‘basic services’ is unlikely to inspire much excitement. With its connotations of ‘austere’, ‘lacklustre’, even ‘threadbare’, the term ‘basic’ seems all too compatible with the growing perception of the public realm as unfit for purpose. Indeed, images of a drab grey monolith have long dominated the UK’s image of the state, even before the damage inflicted by decades of austerity.
Of course, as Anna Coote and Andrew Percy have explained elsewhere, ‘basic’ does not mean basic in the derogatory sense here, but rather the fulfilment of essential needs. In the context of basic income, this makes perfect sense. A primary aim of basic income is to cover daily essentials with a specific quantity of cash. But the term ‘basic’ sets the bar rather low for services, which are defined as much by quality as they are quantity. Public services must, of course, cover what is essential to survival: health and social care, food, housing, education etc. But what constitutes this baseline is historically contingent. In their book on UBS, Coote and Percy note that ‘all human beings have the same set of basic needs.’ Included in this list are healthcare and education. But one can’t talk about a certain amount of education or healthcare in the way one can calories or water. What constitutes the basic minimum of healthcare and education is qualitative, and it depends as much on social expectations as it does on some essential, unchanging human need. In truth, the same must be said for water and food.
A recent poll by IPSOS revealed that 7 out of 10 people believe public services are failing to meet their needs and expectations. Expectations were not exactly high, with the majority of participants citing the hardly ambitious proposals of more resources, sufficient staff and better leadership. I argued, some years back, that austerity is partly a project of diminishing social self-esteem, so that the public no longer expects ‘good things’. Specious mantras about public spending such as ‘the magic money tree’ and ‘no money left’ lower public expectations to such a degree that we are unable to imagine a better future.
So, let’s pose an outlandish question: What if public services exceeded expectations? Why not try to make public services exceptional rather than acceptable? What if instead of ‘austere’, ‘dilapidated’, ‘broken’ and ‘insufficient’, the words ‘abundant’ ‘comfortable’, ‘elegant’ and ‘glamorous’ came to mind?
But the term ‘basic’ sets the bar rather low for services, which are defined as much by quality as they are quantity.
Public luxury
The term ‘public luxury’ has in recent years gained currency among a number of academics and commentators. It may seem a curious choice in the context of the public sphere. Luxury, after all, is typically regarded as a form of conspicuous private consumption, usually of status goods such as branded clothes or services only available to the wealthy – like five-star boutique hotels. Here, it captures the idea that beyond being simply functional, services should offer everyone access to the ‘good life’. If private luxury implies the economic reality that ‘nothing is too expensive for the super wealthy’, then public luxury instead implies the utopian idea, expressed by US labour organiser Bill Heywood, that ‘nothing is too good for the working class’. It suggests a radical egalitarianism of ‘everything for everyone’.
Public luxury represents an abundance of good things, spaces and experiences available to everyone. Rather than infinity pools for the few, it means abundant and well constructed lidos and swimming pools for the many; rather than vast glacial skyscrapers built in the name of finance, it means beautiful public building projects that match the scale and ambition of twentieth-century modernism. It means every community has a restaurant or canteen that serves delicious, affordable food. It means spacious and attractive parks that people want to spend time in. As ‘Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, suggests, ‘beyond the basic public pedestrian space, […] a good city should have at least one, and ideally several, “grand” public spaces. That is to say, spaces of such quality that even the wealthiest members of society cannot avoid frequenting them.’
Though the modern idea of ‘public luxury’ dates back to the utopian visions of social democratic and socialist governments in Europe during the early twentieth century, the term itself was only first used by the Guardian journalist George Monbiot for a 2017 article titled ‘Public luxury for all, or private luxury for some: this is the choice we face.’ While most proposals for basic services make a case for public sufficiency, Monbiot instead suggests ‘private sufficiency and public luxury’. The provocation subverts our standard understandings of the private and public sectors, so that the latter is characterised by magnificence and the former by moderation.
There are many examples of ‘public luxury’ across European history, from extraordinary libraries, municipal theatres and housing estates with aspirations of ‘glamour’ to abundant public toilets and sparkling water drinking fountains. The remainder of the blog posts in this series will explore some of these examples. But for now let’s focus on an example from the UK’s history.
The British Restaurant
The British Restaurant scheme was a nationwide network of state-subsidised public dining rooms, created to feed the bombed-out and starving British population during the Second World War. Somewhat surprisingly, the scheme was the brainchild of Prime Minister Winston Churchill – a known gourmand. Motivated by an unswerving nationalism, Churchill wanted the scheme to cast shame on the war efforts of other European nations, and he insisted that the restaurants should serve only gourmet food – even if financial anxieties made this politically impossible. Even so, the meals were not dictated by a logic of austerity, but included, by all accounts, delicious and nutritious food.
The scheme was not motivated by the logic of austerity. The urgent need for public feeding did not detract from ambitions for the kitchens to have cultural and aesthetic value. Envisaged in the paternalistic manner that would later be central to the post-war consensus, many British Restaurants were adorned with commissioned artwork and appealing decoration decided by Churchill’s government. Some even featured murals painted by local artists, had libraries and fresh flowers on the tables as well as pianos and gramophones that the diners could use.
It should be said that twentieth-century public luxury often relied on imperialist exploitation. Churchill’s nationalism meant he was willing to see millions of Indians starve in the Bengal Famine, as he continued to import rice from the subcontinent for puddings in the UK’s communal restaurants. Any contemporary vision of communal eating will need to deal seriously with the problem of supply chains under capitalism, by simultaneously cultivating relationships with ethical and sustainable farms both at home and abroad. It would need to take a role in restructuring the UK’s food system as a whole, rather than simply represent the public-facing part of an exploitative system.
Nonetheless, the British Restaurant helps us make the case for a policy whose time has come again. The idea of state-subsidised eateries offering decent food at affordable prices is not a utopian dream but a historical reality, offering a rebuke to any critic who believes that such an idea is mere fantasy. Its ambition and scope – stretching right across the UK – demonstrates that a universalist approach is logistically and financially feasible during periods of crisis. Perhaps more importantly, it helps us to imagine what a twenty-first century community restaurant might look like. A later blog post in this series will envisage a modern community restaurant in more detail.
Phil Jones is a Senior Researcher at the Autonomy Institute, and a member of our UBS Hub.