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.

Completely agree with these posts

Plus Thatcher had the resolve to stand up to the unions, particularly the NUM, which had made the country ungovernable, under both the Tories and Labour.

A massive reset is needed but it is not the type that Reform advocate because their policies would make things far, far worse. If you are not enjoying the current decline in living standards then the very last thing you’d want is the economically illiterate Reform brigade in charge! 🤦🏻‍♀️

This isn’t true.

I mean, successive incompetents have got the country into a huge and unnecessary economic mess so it’s not remotely surprising that living standards are declining. And it’s also true that many of the fundamental issues have become entrenched and harder and more expensive to fix over time so these incompetents have made them orders or magnitude worse by ignoring them for decades.

However, at this point in time it is still highly likely that with a realistic and economically sensible plan the country’s fortunes can be turned around.

The problems we have which are preventing this from happening are those that I set out in my first post on this thread:

a) a dysfunctional political system that attracts incapable people to become politicians and a political system that encourages short-term policy making rather than a coherent and economically viable plan to change the country’s downwards trajectory (most measures taken by Governments of either colour for decades have had a net negative effect on our long-term prospects and therefore been worse overall in terms of outcome than if there was no policy change at all over that period); and

b) an electorate who are also so short-termist and economically illiterate that they continue to vote for such nonsense and don’t pressure their representatives to implement the very obvious policy solutions that would improve things, preferring instead to latch onto simplistic slogans and individual issues and to be promised undeliverable goodies rather than to have actual leaders who will address and resolve the country’s problems. If the electorate demand and vote for undeliverable fantasies then it is no surprise that this is what politicians provide for them.

I agree, however, that because these problems compound the longer they are kicked into the long grass, the available capacity opportunity to fix the issues diminishes with each electoral cycle so we are now entering a doom loop and unless somebody capable implements viable policies soon the country will become so poor that it will take many decades to turn it around, if it can be done at all. Sensible actions need to be taken now and that is not happening.

That is why it is so depressing that so few people even now seem to be able to see the big picture and are happy to fight like rats in a sack over the remaining scraps and concentrate on attributing “blame” for the past rather than engage in any sensible discussion on appropriate policy solutions that would improve the future.

The British electorate seems to be very slow at learning the lessons of history and make the same mistakes over and over again, as can be seen from the recent swing towards Reform. That path, as is obvious to anybody with any basic economic understanding, leads to national economic suicide. So I hold out little hope of the necessary changes being implemented however, to say it now cannot be done isn’t true: it still can at this point, with immediate action. People are choosing to continue making it worse because voters find reality unpalatable.

These high tax rates existed throughout the 40s 50s 60s and 70s... and mainly affected unearned income, not all & under manly Tory Governments.

The UK deindustrialised to a far greater extent than anywhere in Europe & what has "smashing the unions" really done for us?

..... Amongst the lowest pay rates in Europe, a privatised utilities sector, with all but Telecoms in a total mess esp Rail and Water and we pay the highest prices for Electricity in Europe and at one time, in the world.... or hosing sock is v old, we pay high rents and no one can get a council house, so state/tax money pours into the private sector....

Then when had the gift of N. Sea oil/gas... what did the Tories do with it? privatised it, super low taxes on extraction and what little we did get she gave away in tax cuts for the super rich.

If we have a "Broken Britain" look no further than the party that has ruled us for most of the post war period....

Tbh, I am a bit weary of the constant narrative of "broken Britain". Yes, not everything is rosy, of course not, but it's not necessarily all to do with our politicians, or government. If you say something enough it almost becomes a self fulfilling narrative. We are such a bunch ofo moaning minnies. We are all hostages to world affairs, and the rest of Europe is not much better.

The selfish egotistical “I’m alright Jack” attitude adored by Thatcher and her worshippers has never gone away and created a selfish society

Although state reliance is so high it’s causing issues.

Of course for some Britain isn't broke. Renumeration for CEOs has only got bigger, politicians seemingly have lucrative careers when they leave office talking about their failures or being offered positions with Banks or businesses. Think Johnson, May, Sunak, Truss from the recent crop of PMs. Post Office scandal taking a decade or more and rivers being polluted seemingly legally. Can't blame migrants, benefit cheats, teen mums for those failings

Labour from 1997 onwards.
Had a very healthy pot of cash, so started spending it. Sold the gold reserves.
Promoted people being on benefits and expanded the civil service (presumably to administer their spending).
Bailed out banks that went under or were threatenening to in the 2008 financial crisis.
Started a war on very tenuous "proof".
And if we go further back, Labour in 1976 abolishing grammar schools, which were a means of social mobility via education.

A

Is that you Liz?

Letting the population vote on Brexit was the worst idea .We were on holiday in Lincolnshire shortly before the vote and lots of farmers had Vote to leave posters in their fields and my DH said Are they thick? as farmers get a lot of subsidies from the EU. The farmers did prove they were thick. There was a group of people on buses and trains trying to persuade people to vote leave only they left DH and myself alone. The best was we were in a Portuguese cafe and an old man was telling people why leaving was the best. DH said to him Well you will make the owners pack in as they will have to return to Portugal. He did not connect the two things and the people voted and Britain has faced disaster since then.

I was absolutely horrified in 2016 to realise how many people had no idea what our trade agreements with the EU were, nor did they much care!

At least in the 70s referendum the pro and anti arguments were clearly and factually set out (I've seen the leaflets the Electoral Commission produced). I spoke to an older guy at a party some years back about it and he said the debates were more factually based then.

Just as well Labour did spend some money on roads, schools and hospitals, god knows where we'd be now without them.
Gold reserves? we've still got the 2nd highest amount in the world in BOE vaults......
He sold a small proportion.

Bailed out banks? just as well or retail banking would have collapsed, hats all of us.. no wages no savings... all gone.

Grammar schools? Their abolition started under the Tories, Edward Boyle in the 60s.... continued under Thatcher...

Even the Iraq war was started by George Bush and would have happened regardless of UK involvement.

So your post is in fact 0% accurate... well done.

D more than anything else. Brexit was the most colossal act of stupid help harm imaginable

Well Yes but its not as if the UK was some Shangri-La pre Brexit.

Our decline started long before 2016.

I think our FPTP system gives us poor minority governments too

Where did this 'broken Britain' cliche start? Was it a slogan in the 2024 election or was it before that? Were they the words of just one MP one day or one journalist? I don't know how long it's* been around.

*It's is short for 'it has' so there's an apostrophe to show that two letters are missing. Free English lesson. I would like to put an acute accent on the 'e' of cliche but I don't know how to with this keyboard.

Spend some time in Europe? well maintained roads, an ambulance service where you dont wait 24hrs or Hospitals where 48hrs in AE is just a TV series.

Most also have far cheaper housing costs too.

We are a long way behind in comparison, oh and our Supermarkets are shite too.

What part? Serbia?

@Alexandra2001 I do. I'm Italian, with many friends from across Europe.

The NHS needs reform, not more money, other systems work better, we need to adopt the European model.

Our Supermarkets are cheaper, with a greater variety of food. We don't have abundant fruit and veg like Italy, well, because our climate is different!

Roads, rail, infrastructure is similar, housing in cities is unaffordable, there is massive unemployment particularly in the young and immigration is a huge issue. Go to the edges of towns and cities and you have encampments, or apartment blocks full of poverty and deprivation.

Yet we are both in the G7 and in the top twenty GDP on the planet.

Broken Britain was a Labour slogan, along with the 22m Black Hole. Only it's now a £45m Black Hole, so they've dropped that one. Well done Rachel.

I'm sure Serbia is recovering and rebuilding after the 1990s war, with the help of the EU. But actually, if you are old enough to remember the 1980s... In 1988, my DM and I took the ferry to northern Spain and drove up the coast through Hendaye into SW France. It took eight hours, and the roads were dreadful. We did a similar trip a couple of years ago, and the trip took four hours. It was magnificent, and not a pothole anywhere.

The money the EU invests in poor countries to improve infrastructure is huge and mostly well spent, expanding the economy fairly rapidly. But the founder EEC member countries that are paying for the investment have ageing populations and infrastructures, and in the case of the UK, an already densely developed landmass. So the UK is the first net contributor nation to opt out. Clearly, there are a thousand other pressure points I'm not addressing.

I feel that the EU needs a rethink and reset to recognise that the founder nations in general are facing an ageing crisis. More money for old folk is not a rallying call for economic growth, and it would be idiocy as policy. But until we boomers shuffle off the mortal coil, it might be time for the countries that joined the EEC in the 70s and 80s to contribute more of the budget.

Albania

Not part of the EU. Fast developing a tourist economy. Corrupt politically. What else am I going to write? I've never been there, and as AFAIK, their main exports are pimps and drug dealers. The rest wash cars.