UK’s 100 Year Economic Decline - No 1 to Stagnation

A look at the relative decline of the UK economy in the past 110 years.

0:00 Intro
1:04 1920s
2:25 Great Depression
3:04 Post-War Period
4:10 Loss of Empire
4:56 1970s Discontent
5:37 1980s
7:38 Financialisation
9:32 Credit Crunch
10:10 Austerity
11:30 Brexit

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ABOUT
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[forestfan]

Britain has raised generations of people from the Oxbridge nexus to run Britain with emphasis on finance, insurance, banking, and real estate of land ownership. So London thrived but the UK has never had a coherent industrial policy - lost the aerospace industry, the space industry, the auto industry, the steel industry, and companies were allowed to be bought by American global businesses that used the British factories as offshoots of the global business. Easy to shut down. UK citizens have been misled for a hundred years by these people.

[Ghengiskhansmum]

Most of Britain's top people in government and business got there because of wealth and family contacts getting them into select schools and universities, then onto the top positions through the same connectioe. All without any genuine experience of most of the populations everyday lives and struggles. Their arrogance, self importance and privilege has been disastrous for the many.

[Kidderman]

When I was at University in the 1970s, I shared a room with an Economics student. He told me there was a joke that if you asked two economists what was wrong with the British economy, you would get three different answers.

[AussiePom]

The class system is still entrenched in English society. A lady with law degrees tried to get work with solicitors but couldn't because she came from a working class background and not an upper class background. Her father had not been a barrister or judge so she stood no chance.

[anwarmi]

I worked in a global leading US tech company. This company bought a pioneering UK company and I was sent from India to go there and facilitate technology transfer to India. Soon, they announced shut down plan for UK company. They bought the company only to get access to the marquee customers UK company had build over decades. They didnt want people or the site, they just wanted the business.

[johndover]

After 100 years, Britain is largely still run by the tiny class of people and mindset that helped to start World War One. Militarily, we won, but economically it was an unmitigated disaster, triggering the break up of the British empire which that class had fought so hard to preserve for itself. It's been downhill ever since, with us trying militarily to prove that we can "still punch far above our weight", instead of concentrating on putting bread on the table for all our citizens.

[davepubliday]

I don’t get how house prices “going up 35% in a single year” can at all be seen as part of an “economic miracle”, seems to me to be an economic disaster.

[bensmithy]

Main issue not discussed here 1) UK is NOT a manufacturing economy its a service economy with focus on Banking & Finance which was affected by Brexit & Covid. UK is running mostly because of London, outside London, UK is in pretty bad shape and things are only going to get worse unfortunately. I think all the signs are there if you watch the news.

[Nousmourronsseuls]

Allowing successive governments to be “captured” by big business. Allowing big business and finance to legally avoid paying their fair share of taxes, despite making profits out of the British people. Allowing mass immigration ensuring that wages are suppressed and the cost of housing is increased. Failing properly to regulate utilities, transportation, telecommunications, selling off British owned assets to the highest bidder and allowing them to run down infrastructure and services whilst extracting maximum profits to the cost of the British people. Failing to invest in the training and education of its indigenous population and instead relying on the unsustainable importation of over 10, 000, 000 immigrants and millions more to come. Allowing the ideology of globalisation, no borders, free trade and diversity to terminally weaken a once great culture and society.

[mjbucar]

As an American, I have had MANY U.K. friends, and still do now. HOWEVER, to describe the demise of the U.K. in MANY WAYS, it can easily be condensed into one (1) word - ARROGANCE !!!!

[guyh]

Britain did not become broke defending the Empire in the first half of the 20th century, it was involvement in two European wars.
Australian PM John Curtin thought Churchill was mad pursuing a "Europe First" rather than "Empire First" strategy in 1942 because it inevitably meant the end of the Empire and along with it Britain's status as a global power.
By 1945 Britain was broke and could not even afford to support the British Pacific Fleet relying on the Australian government to supply and fund infrastructure and logistics support. Australia was also required to provide the bulk of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan.
In 1968, Harold Wilson had closed the bases and withdrew forces from SE Asia in order to fund welfare, under his East of Suez strategy. The British had finally acknowledged that Britain was no longer a global power although the odd Brit still lives in a state of denial.

[tonyparkin]

When you go on holiday, you now feel like staying abroad.

[steveburke]

Britain always has favored the rich with it's economic policies to the detriment to the middle class/poor. It isn't bad luck...it's decades of bad governance.

[NickMoschopoulos]

I just read an article called "Is the UK Becoming A Third World" Country in The Luxury Playbook that says exactly what you describe and goes even more in depth. Unfortunately we are doomed.

[turingtrading]

How did Norway have the insight to invest a proportion of oil revenues into an investment fund which now funds their government budgets and why did we not?

[BeresDrager]

I'm 54 and my wife and I are VERY worried about our future, gas and food prices rising daily. We have had our savings dwindle with the cost of living into the stratosphere, and we are finding it impossible to replace them. We can get by, but can't seem to get ahead. My condolences to anyone retiring in this crisis, 30 years nonstop just for a crooked system to take all you worked for.

[gazunkafonegazunkafone]

As a brit i know whatever happens, the civil service and clowns in goverment will do its absolute best to make our lives worse outside the m25👍🏻

[Talus-hallux]

Getting involved in two world wars, loss of freebies from the colonies, delusion of empire and exceptionalism, Thatcher, Tories, and Brexit! RIP

[flicksbyhans]

The problem with success in the past is that the Brits just keep holding on to it without looking for a future. If a policy position isn't taking them towards a past state, it is not worth pursuing. It is a nation stuck in its success running off of steam

[paulmcphie]

As an Australian I'm always amazed that the UK is unable to produce enough food to feed itself, a situation that almost lost it 2 world wars.