'Wellbeing' isn't a joke - it's a tool for tackling populism

Last week’s International Day of Happiness lives on. Not so much in the US, where the chaotic uncertainty engineered by Donald Trump and his Project 2025 supporters is creating misery, and not just for the public servants fired or suspended from their jobs.

- Phillip Inman

It might also be difficult to see how the goal of happiness is rated in Whitehall when the UK sits only one place above the US in the United Nations' annual world happiness index. The UK slipped from the 20th most happy country to 23rd in this year's index, while the US dropped one position to 24th, both well behind the Nordic countries, which lead the world, and many others including Mexico, Australia and Belgium.

It would be wrong, though, to put the UK in the same bracket as the US because the Treasury - often considered among the more hardhearted of organisations - is on a very different journey to the course being set in Washington.

While Elon Musk is busy tearing through USAID and Trump is waving executive orders that dismantle the education department, the UK finance ministry has committed to include wellbeing, for which we can substitute the word happiness, when judging the benefits of public spending.

In the vicious budget fight going on at the moment in Whitehall over the three-year spending review, departmental chiefs are supposed to stop, smile and for the first time show how their policies will impact the wellbeing of recipients and the nation. In this respect, the UK will be leading the world.