For four solid decades, the UK has been run according to an economic orthodoxy that claims to trade equality and sustainability for prosperity and dynamism. The result is that we have neither.
Instead, the UK is on track to be one of the worst-performing major economies in the world this year and has the worst rate of growth in productivity of any G7 country. Privatised infrastructure, an underregulated labour market and our governing class’s addiction to austerity has meant the latest inflationary crisis has torn through British society. Our health system, utilities and public transport are more expensive and worse performing than our European neighbours’. Wages are at 2005 levels, and falling. Three million food parcels were delivered by the Trussell Trust last year, a 50% increase on 2019 and an almost 5,000% increase on 2010.
The job of the left is to turn the social crisis into a political one – to make the rich afraid rather than the poor despondent. On paper, the response has been strong. In the past year, we have seen the UK’s largest wave of industrial unrest so far this century, waking whole sectors – most notably the NHS – after decades of slumber. A series of wider campaigns, from Enough is Enough to the energy bill non-payment campaign Don’t Pay UK, had the potential to mobilise millions. But more than a year on from the RMT strike that marked the beginning of the resistance to the cost of living crisis, the social movements have failed to materialise. Through a mixture of attrition, lost strike ballots, and Rishi Sunak’s “final offer” of around 6% for the public sector, the strike wave is falling back from its high-water mark.
