The conservative playbook in the UK and elsewhere is to say there's not enough money and they must cut services. That omits the possibility of increasing taxes; also, the UK and probably other wealthy countries have never had more money.
But voters aren't victims of talking points. They still go along with it. Why?
But look outside this golden world and you discover a
different picture. Real household income hasn’t increased
for the past 15 years. The average UK
household is 20% poorer than its peers in northwestern
Europe. A survey for the Resolution Foundation in January
found that 11% of Britons (the equivalent of 6 million
people) hadn’t eaten when hungry because they didn’t have
enough money for food.
.
.
Britain’s low-growth economy is not only relentlessly
reducing the country’s living standards (on current
trends, the average Polish family will be richer than the
average British family by the end of the decade). It is
also forcing everyone to pay higher taxes for worse
public services: The great British Middle Class live in
a world of petty crime that goes un-investigated let
alone punished, over-crowded emergency health services,
and ever-lengthening NHS waiting lists (Britain has one
of the lowest ratios of doctors and hospital beds per
patient in the whole of the OECD).[1]
Britain Should Stop Pretending It’s a Rich Country July 18, 2023
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/18/stagnant-...
The problem probably isn’t money but rather something else, like low throughput, or too much work being absorbed by bureaucracy, or some other issue that is much harder to solve than simply levying more tax.
I can't speak for services but as of 2020, the UK and Canada's tax intake as a percentage of GDP was only about 1% apart.
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/canadians-south-seattle-me...
Your point that Canadians are concentrated into big cities is true. But on the other hand, there are hundreds (thousands? millions?) of small towns all over the place in Canada, and all of the ones I've seen are clean, neat, nice, safe, and shockingly (to me) well-served by infrastructure. (not to say it's perfect; we've all heard of indigenous towns without water).
Just take broadband / wireless connectivity.
Outside of London / S.E. England, the rest of the country has shoddier coverage than places like Thailand! Twitch streamers who have tried to livestream their exploits outside of London were met with spotty coverage at best. You can go watch the VODs yourself. Its unbearably bad even with the aid of cellular-bonding equipment ( multi-SIM multi-data plan fused to provide better signal ).
Whereas in similarly sized places like South Korea the same live-streamers have been able to stream the length and breadth of the country with a single SIM data plan, right from their phones without so much as a bitrate drop-off!
Large swathes of U.K. are still serviced by those one-lane-each-way thoroughfares you saw over a 50 years ago in films such as Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange.
My personal gripe - air conditioning is nearly non-existent outside of big box commercial establishments & good non-bed & breakfast hotel chains. ( This is the case across much of Europe - scores of people died in a heat wave in France not so long ago )
[1] The size of South Korea is approximately 99,720 sq km, while the size of the United Kingdom is approximately 243,610 sq km, making the United Kingdom 144% larger than South Korea. The population of South Korea is approximately 51.8 million people, while the population of the United Kingdom is approximately 67.8 million people.
That's true in the abstract, but it's not important/significant enough to consider. The costliest services for the government to provide (welfare, healthcare, education) grow in proportion to population, not area. A rural hospital or school might spend more on ambulances or school buses respectively, but those additional costs aren't anywhere near the top in terms of expenses.
The UK on the other hand has a serious problem with bureaucratic inefficiency. Their geography favors efficient services, yet they can't do better than Canada? That's a problem.
Don't go around bragging. It's a national shame.
Not necessarily though, same could be said about, say, Finance industry in the UK.
They had a go at telling the North how they will be showered with money for levelling up, and reaped unprecedented votes there. But I believe they did precisely 0% of what they promised and are probably toast in the polls there for a generation.
Except their national support is around 25% recently so even the Southerners seem fed up. I guess old people need healthcare...
I'm not so sure about that, there's a good argument that many folk get exhausted trying to resolve all the political calculus (while still living their lives and dealing with everyday problems) and just give up. Bryan Caplan called this 'rational irrationality' in his book 'The Myth of the Rational Voter' and I found his argument quite persuasive. Also look into Alistair Smith/Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's The Logic of Political Survival and their notion of 'selectorate theory'.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/08/25/britain-...
That's an odd piece of evidence to cite; Germany also has lower GDP per capita than any state except Mississippi. By PPP, it's ahead of 17 states and behind the other 33.
But Germany is well known to be a wealthy country. England is also a wealthy country. Europe is poor compared to the United States, but that won't make it poor in a global sense.
It does tend to leave the question open of why there's such a large American constituency for "why aren't we more like Europe?".
Basically, inequality in action...
This is where I see the UK failing more and more - critical infrastructure is falling apart as people outright "check out" from the grind or leave the country for greener pastures - why would you bother working for the "rich" if you'll end up no better off? Thus service quality decreases, "nobody wants to work anymore", every business is short-staffed and failing since patronage is falling due to lack of disposable income. When this starts affecting critical infrastructure such as transportation, healthcare or law enforcement, it becomes a death spiral that's really hard to reverse.
Being "rich" in such a country is an increasingly precarious situation, especially when so much of that "richness" is inherited wealth owned by a generation that is itself aging rapidly and in dire need of good healthcare.
Although the reason HNWI's might wish to leave HK is obvious even to the casual observewr, reasons why the UK went from net importer to net exporter of HNWI's in 2017 may be murkier?
Regardless, the UK in particular and Europe in general can't continue to pretend that they can socially fund every need under the sun.
because even if the US is very rich and ahead, their public infrastructure feels very run down compared to Germany, Austria, and others in Europe.
As for extra-parliamentary measures, I believe most of these are illegal and the rest of symbolical value only.
Added:
I feel sorry for those in the UK. Other former wealthy and admirable European countries seem to be on the exact same path of decline, too. I'm sure it's not due to Brexit at all; OTOH I have a feeling that I can't really explain rationally (ie. this comment box is too small) that Brexit will somehow be good for the UK on average once the transition pain is over and done with. That might be a while, though
This situation is not new, it's been a slow decline ever since Maggie and most likely long before that.
The conservative playbook in the UK and elsewhere is to say there's not enough money and they must cut services. > it is not exclusively Tory, Labour did the same when in power. The people don't trust either, and are waiting for the coming election. I don't think Labour will win simply because too many voting people exist who went through hard times under Labour rule and will use their vote to prevent that happening probably for a few decades more.
They still go along with it. Why? > Fear. Being in a state of destitution or being the one with a job and watching those who didn't get a job drift into poverty creates a very worrying environment.
So born 1983.
> I don't think Labour will win simply because too many voting people exist who went through hard times under Labour rule and will use their vote to prevent that happening probably for a few decades more.
Have you seen a poll lately? How old are you, if you have any functional memories of 1979?
We have hit an all time low of Brexit success in opinion polls, but that's still 30%. Cameron held on to power with 33% of the vote. As much as I would like to see the Tories out, I'll believe it when I see it.
Opinion polling in the run-up to the 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_U...
Recent polling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U...
I'm older than you (not by much) and my earliest political memory is of the 1979 election. Nobody aged under 60 is voting based on what happened in the 70s, and damn few people over 60. Maybe some are still using it as an excuse, but I think most of them have moved on to the Iraq War as their acceptable fig leaf.
By your logic (hordes of "Never Labour" voters still replaying the winter of discontent in their heads) 1997 couldn't have happened.
They would have grown up in the 90s. The Labour government oversaw a great rise in living standards, the largest reduction in child poverty, and the largest increase in GPD. Which the Tories have cut and spent since.
Probably not the best example.
It's all completely wrong though.
Blair came in 1997, stayed steady in 2001, and was already losing seats by the 2005 despite the improvements to living.
Take a look at the graphs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_Kingdo...
Poverty in the UK dropped significantly under Labour, and after they were replaced it flattened.
2008 was a global financial crisis, so a little harsh to blame it on Labour. Could it have been handled better? Maybe, but the recovery here was pretty quick until the Tories decided to do what they can to extend it through breaking the country up via austerity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_...
I suppose it's not really new. Many English kings had to beg their robber barons for money.
Accordingly, "their" costs inevitably exceed revenue. It is obvious they're spending more than ever.
(I got a letter a while ago from the local Liberal Party —for the yanks, this means a pro-small-business anti-regulation centre-right party— and its opening sentence exhorted solidarity with our compatriots)
Everyone here loves to trot out north European countries as prime examples of the glories of socialism, neglecting to point out what makes them work better than, for example, various South American countries.
Small business organizations might be perfectly happy organizing themselves into political action, while rejecting the notion that society as a whole would benefit from being organized by the government itself.
If a government organised its society instead of a society organising its government, that would suggest democracy must have a different meaning than it does here.
(and, yes, I'm completely open to the idea that these words do have different connotations in different cultures; part of the trouble is vastly different experiences: it is easy to be skeptical of governments in general if one has never personally experienced a functional one)
The truth is, they don't really have a choice. The Conservatives and their financial backers have been taking full advantage of the electoral system in the UK, which is how they reached 56% of seats in the House of Commons by winning only 43.6% of the vote.
That’s lazy. Taxes are the go to solution for incompetent politicians. The uk needs lower taxes, and a more efficient, less corrupt government. You cant keep throwing money at services hoping they will magically work. The uk is not understaffed, it’s under skilled. With european expertise thrown out those left have no competition - meaning they can slack all they want. Everywhere you go you bump into mediocre quality and people that lack any desire to be better at their job. I am sorry but i dont want my tax money to patch their gaps in interest and skill, or to cover for government inefficiencies.