Who broke Britain?

[User32459]

Who do you most blame for our downfall as a nation?

A) Tony Blair and New Labour (97-2010)

B) The Tories (2010-2024)

C) The current Labour government

D) Brexit and Nigel Farage's lies

I think the answer is all of the above and the current government are an absolute disaster, but to be fair to them they've come in at the end when the damage is done. It's not 1997 anymore when they can get away with Blairite policies.

Labour have a lot to answer for but i'd probably go B. The Tories just about got everything wrong. Did they do anything good at all? And ultimately their shocking governance led to Brexit as well.

And the failures of the lot of them will need to Nigel Farage as Prime Minister.

Also all the ones who worked part time, who actually have a higher income in retirement than they did when they worked as they get 2/3 final salary (such as part time health care assistants, admins, etc in public sector with gold plated pension schemes), and get full state pension, meaning their incomes are actually higher. With working part time for most of their working life, they barely paid much, if any, NIC either. Someone who was earning, say, £9k before retirement could well now be on £16k due to a combination of gold plated public sector pension and state pension. It's crazy, yet they still think they've "paid in" which many havn't!

Er...... nobody? It's not "broken". It's not perfect - and nowhere is - but it functions pretty well as a democracy and a state.

So can you tell me op, what was so good pre 1997?

I’m certain that all of the governments have made mistakes, but was it great pre 1997?

I don’t remember it being that way. Growing up on a city council estate it was a pretty miserable existence for a lot of people.

Why does everyone always think that the past was so great?

Thatcher started the rot, Cameron and Osborne advanced it and Johnson finished it off with his debasement of public life. Gordon Brown transformed life for children and is weighing in on the discussion again. If Starmer, Reeves and Raynor have any sense they'll listen. Selling allotments is not the way to go. Setting out a vision and plan for no child living in poverty is the way

Not A B C or D. It was Thatcher.

She was the one whose policies instigated the yuppie 'Me Me Me' generation.

This in spades

Surely this is a joke ? Nobody’s maths is that bad

In the 70s my factory worker dad bought a house on one wage and I got paid to go to University.

True, I did not!

You'll have noticed, because you're on them all, that there's thread after thread on this forum blaming 'illegals' for everything. Posters are pointing out, that seemingly innocuous threads are started by people with an agenda. The agenda is to blame 'illegals' for everything.

I'm not going to derail the thread as refreshingly, 'illegals' haven't been blamed for everything. I hope that answers your question.

Totally agree!
There is a lot of "short-termism" on this thread, and absolutely no understanding of history.
Would people like to go back 200 years to 1825? I think not! Or even 100 years to 1925? No.
We are fortunate to live in a safe democracy, with a welfare state to protect us. Not to mention all, the cultural, sporting, geographic and historical aspects.
Most people live lives that are unimaginably better than they were even in my childhood in the 1970s - but now, foreign holidays, new cars, eating out, new furniture, "treats" etc etc are considered the norm, so it's hardly surprising that some people's finances feel stretched. We need to take responsibility for our own choices.

Thatcher

I think it's a combination of many things.

The West has been in decline for a long time - since 1945 really. As for the UK, a combination of right to buy, Brexit, austerity, but then these are all really symptoms of the general decline.

When I was studying for my degree I did an economic history module. I remember reading the words of a doctor working for the NHS in it's first few years. He said that when it had all been costed and worked out, the figures used were of a particular number of 'ill' people in a population. And it was assumed that need would decrease over time as people would be healthier.

The doctor reported that they were all overwhelmed by the numbers of people seeking help with health problems that they had hidden for years - particularly middle aged and elderly women with gynae issues that they just kept to themselves as they couldn't afford to pay to see a doctor. So almost immediately demand for NHS services exceeded what had been expected.

There’s also a lot of threads about Gaza, as there were about COVID, and Brexit. At the moment illegal immigration via small boats is a huge issue. Like the aforementioned topics it’s not surprising it pops up a lot in political discussion.

No period in time is perfect.

But in the mid 90s we were in a relatively good economic position (which allowed Blair to spend heavily and no 'black holes'). Socially the country was a happier place. Immigration was barely a concern to most people and now it rates number 1 or 2 in every polling as the top concern of the electorate. There was no real 'culture wars'. Liberalism hadn't consumed everything and there was a better equilibrium.

I can’t comment on the oral evidence about the NHS you heard.

But the average life in the UK is far better than it was through previous decades. All the major indices of heath and welfare have improved over time.

My fear is that we are being dragged to the ‘70s by this government. I hope I’m wrong.

The 1970s wouldn’t be anywhere near enough for the people who want it now. The ‘dole’ payments were small, you had to queue publicly to get it. The NHS didn’t do complex mental health, IVF or neurodiversity. No PIP or DLA, no reasonable accommodations for anything. Children with SEN were deemed uneducable in many cases and basically babysat rather than taught.

They did do complex mental health in the 70’s. My dd received treatment for it.

Absolutely, I completely agree, in many ways we are healthier and living in better conditions than our GPs generation (my GPs were born in the 1910s and 1920s).

I was making the point about the NHS as it's one of the things that people talk about when discussing Britain being 'broken' or 'in decline'. My point was that the NHS faced problems in demand from day 1.

The UK has been in a slow decline for about 30 years. If you think it's bad now for average people, it's going to get worse. Within 5 years AI will quite possibly take a significant number of middle class jobs, leaving huge numbers of graduates unemployed. The rich will continue to get richer at the expense of the traditional middle class. If you want to understand who has got all the money follow Gary Stevenson, he has an interesting take on what is happening and why we need to tax assets not just work. Before we blame immigrants or poor people for the woes of the country, it's worth considering who is getting richer, when large numbers of people are struggling. It suits the people at the top, and the media owning billionaires for the ordinary people in our country to blame each other.

What kind of complex mental health? There were much more limited medications, therapy was fairly primitive. Mental health wards were basically places to be sedated.

A

But who gets to decide that socially the country was a happier place?

How old are you if I may ask?

It feels as though you are looking back through rose tinted glasses.

Yes there are problems now, but there most certainly were problems back then.

If I had to pinpoint one, it would Right to Buy during the Thatcher years.

The biggest changes were made by Thatcher, pretty much out of necessity.

These led to prosperity, but unfortunately like all policy you don't want to run it too long or it blows bubbles and creates inbalances.

The problem was that Tony Blair was largely a Tory. So didn't actually wind back much of the previous Tory policy that was put in place during his era. See council houses for example, where Thatcher built more council houses in a single year than Tory Blair did during his entire term.

Starmer is pretty much a Tory too. So we've effectively had Tory governments since about 1979.

This is not really very good. Because if and when you swap parties you mitigate the extremes of policy.

The government after what happened to Truss is absolutely petrified of trying to do anything different economically to try to improve the country. So we are probably in a long period of stagnation/declining standard of living. Until maybe there is some sort of world crisis that justifies radical change in economic policy.