Read this, and you may just put your head in your hands, gather up your family and plan to emigrate. This year’s annual living standards audit from the Resolution Foundation contains graphs that risk plunging readers into downright despair at this benighted country’s state.
It has come to this: UK household income growth between 2007 and 2018 fell behind the rest of Europe, with only Greece and Cyprus below us. Ireland grew by 6%, France by 10%, Germany 19%, while the UK fell back – yes, backwards – by 2%. All countries struggle in this energy shock, but after 15 years of income stagnation, “global Britain” is the hardest hit and least resilient.
“A toxic combination of both low growth and persistently high income inequality” is this audit’s definition of the British disease. Among EU countries, only Bulgaria is more unequal than us.
Hope so - but it also looks like a bit of a right/left split (insofar as the Tories have a ‘left’) - the dyed-in-the-wool brexiters seem to be backing Johnson…
Good grief, is there a single Conservative MP with even half an ounce of sense? He’s clearly a nobody (in terms of the party, I’m sure he’s a pleasant chap) making a slightly desperate attempt to get a bit of press attention to increase his profile, posts his resignation letter on to social media like he’s one of the big boys of the party, not Rt Hon Dr…Who?, and uses a Nokia 2210 from 1996, or his favourite vintage camera from 1910 with a pot of Vaseline on the lens, to take the photo so it’s virtually unreadable, and then still thinks ‘that’s perfect for the Twitter photo!’. People actually vote for these idiots, you couldn’t make it up!
Thanks for giving me a big hearty laugh incredible how these total unknowns suddenly appear, feeling all important - jokers.
Also just listening to Starmer on Sky, and to be honest, he’s also a complete joker - no clear policy - only ever criticizes the Tories.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone appointed who wasn’t just full of complete waffle and bull, had some integrity, professionalism and decisive leadership! We can but dream!
unfortunately plummet and keep plummeting - the markets hate uncertainty even more than bad news and not all the bad news will be out yet for a long time and the market knows it.
Anyone dependent on a UK income, particularly a UK income where the state has a hand… let’s just say I am not optimistic
There will need to be, to get the UK out of this mess. Like it or not the UK’s opportunities are elsewhere and it’s time we stopped moaning about trying “Can we have our ball back” with the EU.
Going back to the comments about Starmer’s brexit policy statement (which I missed earlier), I think there were 2 main points missing:
Starmer is not focused on directly engaging red wall or any other voters - the key to understanding this, and most of his other initiatives as leader, is to see them as aimed at the media - initially mitigating opposition from the Mail & Murdoch stables, but via this influencing the whole UK media ‘agenda’.
The current timidity should be seen in this context - baby steps to ‘alignment’ at first, but I’ve no doubt that this will lead to rejoining the single market and customs union, and ultimately the EU (quite possibly via the kind of half-way-house membership Macron etc have floated). This will happen eventually whatever party comes to power, because the economic and geo-political logic is inescapable. How quickly it happens will depend on how bad things get in the UK economy. But don’t worry about Starmer ruling it out - he made all sorts of promises in his Labour leadership campaign, and subsequently ignored almost all of them.
