One damned thing after another: Britain’s crisis-ridden century so far

Asked about the greatest challenges he faced as prime minister, Harold Macmillan is said to have replied: ‘Events, dear boy, events.’ The first quarter of this century has seen no shortage of events that have blown prime ministers off course. There was Tony Blair by 9/11 and the resulting war in Iraq; Gordon Brown by the financial crisis of 2007-8; David Cameron and Theresa May by Brexit; and Boris Johnson by Covid. With the exception of May, none of these people had any inkling, on taking office, of the bolts from the blue that would ultimately define their premierships.

The idea behind George Osborne’s austerity cuts, that ‘we were all in it together’, was ‘a travesty’

Andrew Hindmoor, a professor of politics at the University of Sheffield, has produced a magisterial account of our life and times in this fraught century so far. His range is vast, his judgments balanced, his prose elegant and his sources impeccable. Haywire is a weighty tome, divided into 36 easily digestible chapters.

The banking crisis was a pivotal moment, says the author. ‘New Labour bet the bank on a conviction that globalisation was not only unavoidable but could be reconciled with its version of social justice.’ The resulting crash was ‘the moment at which New Labour’s centrism was discredited; the boom went bust and everything started to go wrong at an accelerating rate’.

George Osborne and his cult of austerity was another key determinant. One of the (few) weaknesses of this book is that it does not adequately document the cynicism with which David Cameron and Osborne, who had been hitherto pledged to match Labour’s spending on the main public services ‘pound for pound’, set about trying to pretend that the financial crisis, which as everyone knows began in the American mortgage market, was really the result of Labour profligacy. Who now remembers those mendacious, repeated slogans: ‘The mess that Labour left us’, ‘Gordon Brown’s debt’ and ‘Failing to fix the roof while the sun was shining’? 

Hindmoor might also have explored the link between Blair’s decision to involve us in the Iraq war and the election to the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. One can basically draw a straight line between our involvement in Iraq and Corbyn’s remarkable rise.

Austerity, according to Hindmoor, did lasting damage. Although the cuts in public spending were not as drastic as Osborne had promised, or indeed as his critics alleged, the overall impact was to load the cost of the recession on to the most vulnerable. The idea that we were ‘all in it together’ was, says Hindmoor, ‘a travesty’. He concludes that austerity’s most significant legacy was the collapse of public-sector investment – the consequences of which we live with to this day. And it didn’t even resolve the debt crisis.   

As for Brexit, says Hindmoor, the decision to hold that fateful referendum was ‘mainly, but not entirely’ about managing the Conservative party. Eight years on, the overall economic impact is becoming clearer. Although not as bad as some predicted, ‘Brexit has come at an economic cost and… it is going to take a spectacular reversal of fortunes for that to change’.

Although Hindmoor is careful to explore both sides of every argument and lay out evidence for his conclusions, one can read this book as a documentary about a nation that is in steep decline – a trend reflected in what he calls ‘the growth of modern miserabilism’:

There is a long tradition in British politics… of arguing that the country is in decline and everything is getting worse. Democracy, by its nature, produces losers and winners. Yet Britain would seem to have become a country in which everyone thinks they are, and have been for a long time, on the losing side.

This despite the fact that we remain a country that is relatively prosperous, democratic and peaceful.

Hindmoor is nuanced in his conclusions:

The premise of this book is that a measure of anguish about the twists and turns of the last quarter century is warranted. The crises Britain has experienced since the year 2000 have been large in number and lastingly destructive in terms of their effects on Britain’s international reputation, people’s faith in politicians, the integrity of the United Kingdom itself and, most directly, on the lives of millions of people living in it. Britain is not by any means a failed state. Neither, however, has it simply been the victim of a run of bad luck that will, sooner or later, come to an end. Far from it. The British state as organised has… exacerbated and at times caused crises that other countries have avoided altogether or successfully mitigated.

As for Keir Starmer, who rates scarcely a mention, it remains to be seen if he is any luckier or cannier than his predecessors.