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.

Depends what it is you think is broken?

Thatcher lit the fuse, subsequent Tory governments poured constant petrol on the fire, they’re relentless in brutality

As long as the rich are ok nothing else matters, it’s that simple under a Tory government, there’s no coming back from that, the corruption and nepotism is too deep rooted and fabric of society is destroyed

Thatcher.

But tbf the oil crisis fucked everything up before she came along to fuck it up more.

The underlying issues are:

a) our political system which encourages politicians to make short-term decisions that will win them votes, while kicking the more important reforms that are required but will be unpopular into the long grass, which means problems compound over time until they become ruinously expensive to fix; and

b) a poorly educated populace, a majority of which is susceptible to infantilised and over-simplified political slogans, has minimal grasp of economics and prefers to vote for politicians who tell them palatable lies than to be told uncomfortable truths and, therefore, has continued to vote for incompetent people with nonsensical and very obviously stupid and counterproductive policies, for their own short-term benefit.

As a result, we now have no viable party to vote for at all.

Thatcher. 🙄

It’s like asking fundamentalist Christians what’s wrong with the world: “SATAN!”

The left loves its mythical demons. Just like with bonkers religionists. It avoids looking at facts and reality.

Blair and Brown. It looked good on the surface and was a nice time to be alive but they spent money we did not have. Fur coat and no knickers. Financial crash spoilt everything and I’m not sure any government could have dealt with it, so apportioning no blame for that.

D- the idiots that voted to leave.

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

How can you honestly say that the younger generation have it unimaginably better these days, when the most basic need of all, housing, is very difficult to come by?!

A family member had a
minimum wage job yet still managed to buy herself a 2 house on her wage alone. Never in a million years could that happen now! And my parents benefited from the availability of council houses so yours definitely will have if they needed it.

The country was in a good place in the 90s, relatively speaking. Of course every era has its issues.

Blair had the mandate and opportunity to roll back the more damaging aspects of Thatcherism (council house building/utilities privatisation) and didn't.

It was under Blair that house prices skyrocketed. The average house price in 1997 wasn't that high. It was affordable to buy a house.

We had an Empire and somehow believed our own publicity. Then 2 World Wars and lend-lease from America. We had to rebuild then we wanted people to work here so they came from former colonies in India, Caribbean etc. The world changed but somehow we believed we shouldn't. Various parties came along and have done what they have done. Thatcher with her selling everything prob really started things moving. Times seemed good under Wilson. But we wanted our pound and didn't like Europe but wanted to holiday there and buy their cars. Everyone has played their part. Britain is still a G7 economy tho. Blair years seemed good and he brokered the Good Friday Agreement. Brexit is a whole other story.

Maggie started the rot. Once previously nationalised industries went, many regions suffered a rapid decline and this created a vacuum.
No government since has been able to arrest this decline.

Yep we spent it up and put it on credit, until it crashed.

Pre Thatcher winter of discontent was broken anyway, it’s not like people were living it up.

Not "the Tories" but Cameron. That man did more damage to this country than any other PM in my lifetime and I was born in the mid-50s.

My mentally unwell mum got ECT treatment in the seventies and that was about it. No therapy, not even talking therapy. No disability benefits nothing.

Can you not understand how the seeds Thatcher sowed such as globalisation, selling off social housing, closing industry, deregulation, privatisation and neoliberalism have led to where we are now?

Yeah, it's about equilibrium. Blair's New Labour had ample opportunity to roll back some of the excesses of Thatcherism and he didn't. At heart he was a Thatcherite.

But his social liberal policies caused a lot of issues. ECHR enshrined into UK law with HRA, opening the borders which saw us swamped, really liberalising our judiciary which you see coming to pass in so many nonsense rulings that keep violent criminals out of prison or from being deported.

Again though the Tories had 14 years to roll back on the excesses of Blairism and they didn't because Cameron was a Blairite and the post-Cameron governments were spending all their energies on Brexit.

I can, but New Labour had 13 years to roll back these policies and didn't, they accelerated it. Blair had huge majorities and did nothing, so he has to take a lot of the blame. Thatcher rolled back on many of the damaging policies of the 70s as well, Blair didn't do that for the 80s.

The price of a house in 1997 was affordable. It was under Blair that the housing crisis really took off.

Thatcher called Blair her greatest achievement.

Yy re financial crisis but I think we would have weathered it much better without the massive influx of people from poorer countries all competing at the bottom , services pulled from the elderly to go on interpreters etc.
What we went through was cataclysmic

Blair also swelled middle management on NHS, over saw breakdown of maternity care and cut back legal aid.

It still is cataclysmic.😬

It's not just us though is it? It seems to me that the last 50 years has seen the movement of wealth upwards.
We and the US seem to have embraced trickle up economics until a handful of tech bros own more than the rest of the globe and the rest of us squabble over crumbs.

And damaged our GP service by giving them higher wages and let them opt out of unsocial hours - "to cure the GP crisis" - well that worked well, didn't it - it made the GP crisis worse!

Thatcher her short term ism closed down so much of what Britain could produce.
David Cameron giving the vote to appease some old Tories and people voting to leave as they didn’t want “ immigrants” coming into Britain , well that’s worked out well 🙄