Decline is a spectre that has haunted this country for at least a hundred years. Through the retreat from empire, postwar recessions and growth panics, and our inward turn since Brexit, the worry that Britain is falling behind other countries – or deteriorating in absolute terms – has repeatedly gripped journalists, politicians and the public.
We are in one of those periods now. Seven out of 10 people in a recent Ipsos Mori poll agreed that the country was in decline. Commentators in other countries look on with a mixture of pity and schadenfreude.
The idea of national decline has drama: it provides a story, suggests scapegoats, and offers the possibility of rescue. Yet what it actually means, how it affects different groups, and whether it is in fact unavoidable, for a small country that once controlled a hugely disproportionate part of the world – these more complex topics are less discussed.
Instead, declinism acts as a powerful political simplifier. It can prompt revolts against the status quo, such as Thatcherism, or a kind of mass paralysis, as sometimes existed under the drifting, but dominant Tory governments of the 1930s. Which path Britain follows this time will decide not just the next election, but our longer-term future.
One reason that the decay of so much under the Conservatives since 2010 has not yet provoked decisive opposition is that the decline has been patchy. To adapt the novelist William Gibson’s famous remark about the future, Britain’s new reality as a relatively poor country on the fringe of Europe is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed. If you’ve paid off your mortgage, work in finance or a senior corporate role, use private rather than public services, and live in a prosperous part of London or the home counties – still one of the wealthiest regions in Europe – then Britain’s decline may seem little more than a melodramatic media story. This year, the pay of FTSE 100 chief executives has risen by an average of 23%.
But for the rest of us Britain has undeniably become a poorer, colder, less healthy country. Deprivation that is common today, such as people living without heating or regular meals, would have seemed dystopian to most Britons only a few years ago. Yet for some of the most disadvantaged, this decline in living standards began decades ago, under Thatcher and then New Labour. One way to think about Thatcherism, and all the British governments it has influenced, is not as a project to end national decline – as she claimed – but as a way of confining that decline to social groups that mainstream politicians and swing voters don’t care a lot about.
The Conservatives’ problem now is that this decay has spread again, through much of society. The last time there was such a pervasive sense of stagnation and gloom in Britain was also under the Tories, in the early 90s. Then there was an acclaimed national newspaper largely devoted to the subject, the Independent on Sunday, edited by the great melancholy journalist Ian Jack, who died last month. It was the first paper I worked for, and its downbeat outlook was powerful, even addictive. We felt we were documenting the last days of free-market Tory Britain. When the paper moved to Canary Wharf in east London, then surrounded by disused docks and abandoned office schemes, we called one of the views from our office tower “the avenue of capitalist defeat”.
Yet the paper’s take on Britain was only half right. The Conservatives were about to be swept from power, but their economic ideas were not. And apparently rundown London, like some other British cities, was in fact in the early stages of a major revival, featuring bankers and Young British Artists, the invention of the gastropub, a booming dance music culture and new public transport. To an extent, previous decline made this revival possible: by creating dissatisfaction, and derelict spaces where new schemes could start.
Could a similar process happen again? The circumstances for reversing Britain’s decline seem tougher this time. There are no EU subsidies available; the global economy is stumbling rather than surging; there is conflict with Russia rather than a post-cold war peace dividend. The sense of political disillusionment may also be even wider than it was in the early 90s, when rightwing Britons at least still believed that Thatcher had saved the country. Today, even Tories struggle to find positive things to say about their governments since Brexit.
Meanwhile Keir Starmer, though improving as a political performer, lacks the freshness and charisma needed to personify a better future, as Tony Blair did in the 90s as opposition leader. These days, with the Labour left marginalised, the Lib Dems and Greens stunted by the electoral system, and the devolved Scottish and Welsh governments limited in their powers, voters who want Britain as a whole to take a radically different course lack options.
This country has no automatic place in the mainstream of relatively comfortable and liberal European societies. Only a few decades ago, three other countries on the edge of the continent – Spain, Greece and Portugal – were dictatorships; while another – Ireland – was a depopulating backwater. To visit those countries now is to see, sometimes inspiringly, that decline can be reversed. But it’s also to be reminded that things in Britain may have to get worse first.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
