There was never any formal announcement to the effect that modern British politics would no longer call on its citizens to make significant sacrifices. It just turned out that way. Perhaps it was after the 1970s oil crisis that politicians began to suspect such appeals were too great an electoral risk. Perhaps it got another push from the financial crisis of 2008. Either way, the mindset still remains strong of not trusting or relying on the public to stay the course when normality is put on hold.
No modern British politician would now make the speech that Franklin Roosevelt did when he became US president in 1933. “If I read the temper of our people correctly,” Roosevelt said in his first inaugural, “we now realise as we have never realised before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.”
