‘In 10 years we have devalued our nation and made our lives poorer and harder’

The end of this decade marks the lowest point in Britain’s modern political history. Tom Peck on the Tories who have broken the country, hammered its economy and ripped its social fabric to shreds

Tuesday 31 December 2019 00:06 GMT
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Boris Johnson makes a statement in Downing Street after the Conservative Party was returned to power
Boris Johnson makes a statement in Downing Street after the Conservative Party was returned to power

We must invest in “the industries of the future”. A “green revolution ... clean energy ... high-speed rail”. We must usher in “a decade of shared prosperity”, and not allow “the privileged few to protect themselves”. This was what the leader of the Labour Party had to say as the decade drew to an end, but unfortunately he and the voters had other ideas. The leader in question, you have surely worked out by now, is Gordon Brown. The decade in question, the previous one. The decade of “shared prosperity” of which he spoke in his new year message 2009 has instead seen the use of food banks rise from the tens of thousands into the millions.

By New Year’s Eve 2009, according to Gordon Brown, the UK had already “seen off the worst of the recession”. But a decade of vanishingly low interest rates had not yet begun an obscene property price boom that has entrenched equally obscene inequality across the generations. And for all politicians’ lukewarm words and stone-cold efforts, the brutal truth is that the only effective remedy will be an equivalent crash that will wreck millions of lives.

The green revolution has had its moments. UK carbon emissions have fallen by about 33 per cent in the last decade. Trouble is, globally they’ve risen by 33 per cent, and it’s only the global number that counts for anything. The UK can set a good example, but it cannot lead by example. Certainly not now it has chosen, of its own free will, to become an international laughing stock.

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