What do you think the U.K. will be like in 15-20 years?

[GoodnightAdeline]

Pondering this on the train this morning.

My personal view is Labour will win the election this year, and will be able to keep the country treading water for a little while, but we will continue to get poorer as a nation and the decline will continue. I think there will be an exodus of skilled and younger people and we will slide into second world country status, leaving a tiny workforce struggling to support an enormous number of dependants. Perhaps it will right itself eventually, but not before 2060 or so.

Am I being too pessimistic?

I think you miss my point about the difference between individual and societal impacts.

Personally I was very affected by it at the time. However societally we recovered.

Poorer, edging back to some sort of relationship with the EU.

Migration will grow and grow as an issue as parts of the world become uninhabitable.

@Somerford am (genuinely) interested in why you say that about China. Is it because of their demography?

There won’t be a battle about water here! It never stops bloody raining!

Sorry but wireless electricity 😱 currents passing through the air and frying us to shreds if we are stood in the wrong place?!

Partly demographics, partly governance. Their demographics situation is absolutely dire AND they're ruled by a dictator whose main priority in recent years has been purging the government of anybody remotely competent. The rest of the world won't be discussing China as an emerging super power by 2060, they'll be watching the collapse and trying to detach from China economically as quickly as possible if they haven't already done so.

i'm pretty sure kids and their partners will not want to live with their parents

I agree with all that.

The UK will be back in the EU.

There will be less jobs and the possible introduction of universal basic income.

There will be an uptick of multigenerational living due to lack of housing etc..

People will emigrate to other countries for work, better healthcare etc..

The weather will slowly get more extreme due to climate change. More storms, heatwaves, rising sea levels. etc..

It’s not remotely grim. In 20 years time I’ll be 90. No thank you. Hopefully voluntary euthanasia will be legal well before that.

I think most of us will be wearing bodycams whenever we leave the house.

I think generally there will be a slow improvement in living standards for the majority. As previous generations aged and got rich they voted for governments with unfair wealth-hoarding policies. Middle-aged and young people now are struggling so much they will vote for more egalitarian politicians.

People will emigrate to other countries for work, better healthcare etc.

My Romanian friend already goes home when she needs anything medical rather than risk the NHS. I think people have very little idea how far our standard of living has dropped over the last decade or so compared to the rest of Europe.

I would move to Canada tomorrow if I had a visa. I honestly would. And you’re right - it’s like the concept of finite money simply doesn’t exist to a lot of people.

To those saying we will rejoin the EU, you are assuming it will still exist. I'm not so sure.

Anywhere between the two tropics will be very hard to support life as we know it. Mass migration and water wars. A bit like a cross between Mad Max and Waterworld. The elite will be holed up in some sub arctic pleasure cities while everyone else is left to fight it out for themselves. We don't deserve this planet.

@karriecreamer
I wondered how long it would take before posters start slagging off the 'Boomers'. How predictable.

@hangingonfordearlife1 true. They probably won't. However living in sepereate homes is still quite a modern way of living.

And the cost of buying and renting a home is not really achievable for a lot of people now. Who knows in 20 years time.

I'm not saying they have to. It's an option. And something that has been practiced on my husbands side of the family for generations.

It's an option

It will be same as it is today, but with lots of mental health issues due to kids today being brought up with social media.

UK economy will continue to grow steadily but slowly.

Problems will still exist with immigration, climate change and net zero targets.

We will not rejoin the EU which will gradually break apart causing lots of issues for the UK as we are on their doorstep.

People are having fewer children. Immigrants are the ones having larger families so there will be a shift as the majority of the population is not Christian.

You don't want to be alive at 90?

@AmaryllisChorus I've heard this before, that boarding schools are institutional care for rich people

See also "boarding school syndrome" and attachment difficulties

I support @BIossomtoes on this. It’s unlikely I will live to 90 as I have a progressive illness but I don’t actually want to. 82 or 83 would be perfect.

If they're right about the AMOC collapsing, we'll suddenly have a climate like Canada and need to sort out our crap housing rather quickly!

The majority of the population isn’t Christian now.

I don’t think there will be an EU in 20 years anymore. Italy will go next. Hungary is on the edge.

I'll be dead. I sometimes wonder why I'm still campaigning on matters that current generations have fucked up (despite all my campaigning, I have limited reach!) since I shan't be here to see what the next generation does about it all.

One good thing, I suppose, is that people will have stopped pretending they can change sex. On the other hand, medical science might've found a way to make it happen ... in any case, women & girls will still be getting the short end of the stick.

Climate-driven wars and mass migrations will be a major issue. There will probably be a stark separation between the very rich and everybody else, with economic unrest affecting most people's lives. Attitudes to work will have belatedly changed as 'jobs' won't really exist any more. There should be a universal basic income at living wage level; I hope there is!

On the other hand, global co-operation should be more evident by then although the world economy will have changed shape, with Asia truly ascendant and America rather angry.

More services, from health to education, will be provided by AI which will still not be very intelligent. Provision will be very patchy and self-help initiatives will spring up, for better or worse (probably worse).

For most people in the UK, it will just feel like life bumbling along in a slightly annoying but manageable fashion. Meanwhile, my ashes will be getting slowly absorbed by various terrestrial materials and becoming part of nature's recycling scheme.