From the archive: Is society coming apart?
We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.
This week, from 2021: Despite Thatcher and Reagan's best efforts, there is and has always been such a thing as society. The question is not whether it exists, but what shape it must take in a post-pandemic world
By Jill Lepore. Read by Kelly Burke
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Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Daily Mail
ALEX BRUMMER: If this is a fixed economy, I'd hate to see a broken one
Nearly half a century has passed since Margaret Thatcher skewered the incumbent PM James Callaghan at the 1979 election with her famous ' Labour Isn't Working' poster, which showed dole queues stretching across the horizon. We are not quite there yet. But after years of low unemployment in Britain, Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer have brought chaos – in just 11 months – to what was one of the strongest labour markets in Europe. Last October's Budget and its central and perhaps most hated policy – an increase in employers' National Insurance to 15 per cent – added no less than £23 billion to bosses' wage bills. And for all this Government's promise not to raise taxes on 'working people', it's now clear that this misguided and self-defeating pledge is having a vicious impact on jobs. Companies are proving reluctant to take on new workers, are deliberately not replacing colleagues who move on and are taking the opportunity to cut costs by making people redundant. The only silver lining is slowing wage increases, at least in the private sector, should make it possible for the Bank of England to lower interest rates by a further 0.25 per cent this summer to 4 per cent – making mortgages and borrowing cheaper. The public sector is another matter, of course, and has enjoyed lavish raises at the expense of the productive part of the economy – to say nothing of its far more generous gold-plated pensions, paid out of direct taxation. But overall the picture is dire. The National Insurance increase, along with a hugely generous rise in the minimum wage – now one of the highest on the planet – surging fuel costs and rising business rates, have shattered business confidence. Companies are shedding jobs at an alarming rate. Figures collected by HMRC show that 55,000 jobs were lost in April alone and numbers 'were notably weaker' than expected, according to bankers Goldman Sachs. Vacancies are tumbling, too – these stood at 736,000 in the three months to April, down from 760,000 in the previous period, and were at 1.4 million as recently as 2022. The unemployment rate, which was 3.6 per cent of the workforce prior to the pandemic, has now zipped up to 4.6 per cent. And the worst part? There's more to come. Businesses are steeling themselves for socialist firebrand Angela Rayner's beloved Employment Rights Bill, currently grinding its way through Parliament, which will make hiring new workers even more expensive. To peals of outrage (and a front-page Daily Mail headline: 'Deluded'), this week Sir Keir claimed to have 'fixed' our public finances, thus making possible his Government's U-turn on snatching the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners. Well, if this is what 'fixed' looks like, Sir Keir, I'd hate to see the economy 'broken'. Rising unemployment is a menace. It inevitably raises the cost of Britain's already gargantuan welfare bill – and it simultaneously reduces Government revenues due to lower income tax and National Insurance receipts. In 1979, unemployment stood at 5.3 per cent – and, despite the Iron Lady's famous poster, it rose to a staggering 11.9 per cent by 1984 on her watch. We are a long way from those days. Yet as I have said before, Ms Reeves – with last year's £40 billion tax-raising Budget, locked Britain into a doom loop of plummeting business confidence, rising unemployment and reduced job choices. Yesterday's multi-year public-spending review will splash the cash on investments in nuclear power, science and technology, roads and railways. As helpful as all that may be, it will mean more Government borrowing and debt that will take years to pay off. Expect unemployment to keep on rising until the Government changes course.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
UK may have failed to protect wild birds with environmental laws, watchdog finds
The government may have failed to protect critical wild bird populations by neglecting to implement environmental law properly, the environmental watchdog has found. Wild bird populations are declining across the UK. Under the EU certain parts of Britain's landscape were designated specially protected conservation zones when the UK was still a member state. They include estuaries, coastal areas and peatlands, as well as wetland areas where wading birds live, and places birds of prey prefer to nest. However, according to the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), the government has failed to ensure adequate protections for these areas and as a result, wild bird populations are declining. Concerningly, ministers are currently passing the planning and infrastructure bill, which would deregulate these specially protected areas and would put more than 5,000 of England's most sensitive, rare and protected natural habitats at high risk of development, according to a Guardian analysis. The OEP was set up after Brexit to hold the government to account under the Environment Act 2021, which was passed to replace EU law. It has sent information notices to the government laying out the issues and giving it two months to respond. Helen Venn, chief regulatory officer for the OEP, said: 'Government has a legal obligation to maintain populations of wild birds and ensure they have enough suitable habitat. One way in which they do this is through special protection areas, which are legally designated sites that protect rare and threatened wild birds.' She added that the government appeared not to be meeting its legally binding plans and targets to halt and reverse the decline of species abundance. Recent government data shows that overall, bird species have declined in number UK-wide by 2% and in England by 7% in the five years since 2018. Faring the worst are farmland birds, which have declined in number severely – by about 61% over the long term (since 1970) and 9% in the short term (the five years between 2018 and 2023) – and woodland birds, whose numbers have fallen by about 35% over the long term and 10% in the short term. 'However, wild bird populations continue to decline across England … Our investigation has found what we believe to be possible failures to comply with environmental law relating to the protection of wild birds and we have therefore decided to move to the next step in our enforcement process, which is to issue information notices setting out our findings.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion A Defra spokesperson said: 'Britain is a proud nation of nature lovers, and we are taking bold action to reverse decades of decline. This includes £13m to improve our protected sites and better strategic approaches to restore native species and habitats. 'We will continue to work constructively with the OEP as they take forward this investigation.'
ITV News
2 days ago
- ITV News
Moment of truth for Labour on 'cliff edge' housing crisis
For the past 45 years Britain has been on a mission - to sell off as much affordable housing as it possibly can without replacing it. And in that mission, we have been extraordinarily successful. According to the government's own data, the number of social homes - the most affordable housing for rent - has dropped by 25% since 1980, while the population has grown by 14%. We have sold off 1.9 million social homes largely under the Right to Buy scheme, which allows tenants to buy the property they rent at a generous discount. It has transformed the way Britain is housed. When Margaret Thatcher came to power, a third of the country lived in a council house, while the number of people who privately rented was just 10%. Today, that trend has almost exactly reversed - millions more people rent from private landlords at a time when rents are at historically high levels. Thatcher started this trend, and every government since has stuck to the plan - a plan which has proven foolish and short-sighted, and the consequences profound. Today, the number of homeless children in England is at the highest level on record. The number of families stuck in temporary accommodation is also the highest since records began. There are 1.3 million households on a waiting list for a social home. Most will have to wait years to get one, many won't ever get one.I will never forget sitting on the grass in a park in north London with a homeless family who were living in a temporary budget hotel after they were unable to find anywhere affordable to rent. I asked eight-year-old Callis what his dream was - footballer, astronaut, doctor? His response: 'Somewhere to live, and to stay there.' This all comes at an enormous cost. The government spends more than £20 billion a year on housing benefit, subsidising the rent of people who cannot afford to pay it. That has doubled since 1997. The state is spending more on helping people pay unaffordable rents than it is building homes. Those living in a social home are increasingly made to feel they should be grateful for owning one, even if this means living in a run-down, mouldy, damp, or even dangerous home in desperate need of repair. I have spent four years reporting on the crisis in housing conditions, and the state of some of Britain's housing stock is a stain on the country, homes that would not look out of place in a Dickens novel. Complaints too often go ignored. Where else are they going to go? Last week, a report by the Housing Ombudsman found 45% of Britain's social homes were built before 1964. And what happened to those homes that the state decided to sell at a heavy discount? Forty per cent are now private rentals, according to the New Economics Foundation, let out at maximum market price to the same kinds of families who 40 years ago would have rented from the state at a much more affordable rate. It isn't getting better either. Last year, England sold and demolished more social homes than it built. At a time when affordable housing is in desperate need, the country is still in negative equity. Successive governments have prioritised home ownership at the expense of everything else, but that's no longer working out either. The number of homeowners has been in steady decline since the early 2000s. Enter stage left: Rachel Reeves. The chancellor is under enormous pressure to halt five decades of decline and offer up cash to build more social homes, and fast. The Starmer government has promised to build 1.5 million homes by the next election. I can't find anyone across the housing sector who thinks they can achieve that, even with its plans to overhaul the planning system, but if they do, it will only be by building more social housing. The last time Britain built more than 300,000 homes in a year was 1977, when half were built by the state. This, of course, means money. Housing campaigners have been relentless in their lobbying of the Treasury to put money in the pipeline to ensure tens of thousands of new social homes are consistently built every year. The last government committed £11.5 billion to the affordable housing programme between 2021 and 2026, but 'affordable' includes shared ownership and rents at 80% of market value (social rentals are typically at 50%), which the vast majority of people on waiting lists cannot afford. The programme hasn't touched the sides when it comes to social housing delivery. Housing charities want to see billions more on top of that £11.5 billion figure. One chief executive told me an extra £12 billion is needed, but £6 billion would be a good start. An extra £12 billion would allow, charities estimate, around 45,000 social homes to be built each year. Last year, England built 9,866. Across the sector, it is widely agreed that 90,000 are needed each year just to keep up with current demand. 'For too long, governments have allowed thousands of social homes to be lost each year, while funnelling public money into so-called 'affordable homes' which are priced far out of reach for many,' Mairi MacRae, Director of Campaigns & Policy at Shelter, told me. 'The result has been record homelessness, and families, young people, and key workers priced out of their communities. 'Social homes are the only genuinely affordable homes by design because rents are tied to local incomes and are around two thirds lower than private rents…the government must commit to building 90,000 social rent homes a year for ten years.' One major bugbear for campaigners is the reluctance and/or refusal by Labour to say how many of the 1.5 million will be social homes. They want the Spending Review to be the moment where that changes. They want to see targets, and any money accounted for the affordable housing programme must, they say, stipulate how much is specifically for social housing. Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, told me: 'The spending review must be an opportunity for investment in new social homes to see homelessness levels come down. 'We need a clear commitment on the 90,000 new social homes required each year and a level of investment that starts the process of delivery to get there. Only then will we tackle head on the huge problem of temporary accommodation we currently face.' My colleague Robert Peston has reported the last few days on a stand-off between the chancellor and the Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, who herself grew up in social housing in Manchester. Before she entered government, she and I talked a lot about the desperate need for social homes, what it meant to her personally to have that safety net as a child and how she wants that for others. Rayner knows all the arguments laid out here, knows the statistics and the stories behind them. She understands them perhaps more than any minister that has ever worked in government. She is now in that age-old battle with the bean counters at Number 11, who, for decades, whichever party has been in charge, have not stumped up the cash to build houses. The country is now paying an enormous cost. In economic terms, building social housing is a smart use of public money. It is infrastructure that will last decades and in the medium to long term would save money, reducing that big housing benefit bill while dragging families out of poverty and unhealthy homes that are making them sick. Britain has undergone a 45-year experiment. By every measure, it has failed. Even the last Conservative government and its Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, said the failure to build social homes has been a mistake. There is now a political consensus on the need to end the experiment and build. Charities warn Britain is on a cliff edge. Refuse to intervene and the government risks ever-rising homelessness and councils going bankrupt trying to house those without anywhere to live. Wednesday's spending review has become D-Day for the housing market and for millions of families with nowhere to go.
