“Distinguished jumping spider" (Attulus distinguendus) recently stopped a new town centre being built in Kent. Natural England declared Ebbsfleet Central West a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) earlier this year after discovering a colony of the spiders. Suburbs of "Ebbsfleet Garden City", centred around the high-speed railway station, have already been built, but construction of the town centre has now been halted. It might be easy to laugh this off as a one-off, but it is an example of the consequences of "everythingism", a worryingly common phenomenon in UK policy-making. "Everythingism" is the idea that every government project or policy should promote every policy objective. It has been coined by Joe Hill, in a recent essay for the think tank Reform, based on Ezra Klein's "Everything-Bagel Liberalism". Housing projects have to take into account nutrient neutrality and provide apprenticeships, and prisons have to have 50 per cent female prison officers, all while maximising value for money. And, as seen in Ebbsfleet, Britain will not be able to meet its building targets unless it also looks after its jumping spiders. Projects having to achieve so many aims at once means many of them never get off the ground. It is all these hoops that mean England has the lowest number of houses available in the developed world. For progress to be made, goals have to be traded off against each other. Protecting rare species and building new towns are both important, but when they are at loggerheads these incomparable concepts have to be weighed against each other. Politicians are elected to make these difficult decisions, but too often they defer them to unelected public bodies and "quangos" (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations). In Kent, it was Natural England who decided that arachnids were more important than new homes. This is not to blame Natural England; they were doing their job. The issue is that they have the power of veto. Decision-making responsibility lying with single-issue statutory bodies is not only undemocratic, but it is stopping the UK pursuing its own best interest. Government, at national or local level, needs to be making these decisions. They are the ones elected to weigh up incommensurable policy goals and to decide what is best for the country. In his essay, Hill calls for policy goals to be delineated, with each one simplified down to its clear objective. He said: "It's become dogma here in Westminster that the more complicated you can make a policy, the better it is." By trying to meet multiple objectives at once, these policies fall short of all of their goals. Hill cites the example of Playpumps, an aid organisation initiative to introduce water pumps that were also playground merry-go-rounds. This seemed like a win-win, with children being able to play on them as well as helping pump water while they did. However, they performed much worse than normal hand pumps, and children did not like using them because they needed more effort to push around. Eric Crampton, chief economist for the New Zealand Initiative, wrote recently that "if for some ghastly reason you wanted to hit two birds, and you had two stones, trying to hit both birds with each stone would be pretty silly". That is too often what the government is doing. In a recent appearance on "Triggernometry", podcast celebrity Rory Stewart described how, while he was a minister in the Foreign Office, his team of civil servants focused on Syria were moved to the East Kilbride office. This was part of the government drive to move civil service jobs outside London. When Stewart insisted officials still came in person at key meetings, they said they would fly down. However, this did not last long and soon civil servants based in East Kilbride only attended virtually. When Stewart raised this, he was told that they had to cut down on flights because they contravened the government's environmental objectives. Promoting jobs in Scotland and reducing carbon emissions are both important goals. However, in their pursuit of them, these officials harmed their primary goal, namely bringing peace in Syria. Once it is pointed out, you can see "everythingism" all over policy-making in the UK. It is easy to then declare that all policy goals need to be treated entirely separately. However, in reality different policies do touch each other, and their intersection needs to be considered. How many flights the government takes does impact on climate goals, and new towns being built does affect biodiversity. What is difficult is working out where to prioritise each objective. Decisions have to be made to pick between policies, but too often these decisions are made by someone other than the people elected to do so. In 2021, the impact on Welsh speaking on Anglesey was cited as one of the reasons a new nuclear power station was not built on the island. These concerns were raised by the Planning Inspectorate, who stated that the project wou...