Addendum B: Shifting Public Attitudes in an Age of Anger
There are political consequences from running a system in which all the gains go to the very top for an extended period of time. It’s not politically sustainable, there is inevitably a backlash. This is in good part why politics in Britain are taking the form of an ‘Age of Anger.’[61]
There is very little of substance currently on the table that could mitigate rather than worsen Britain’s deepening systemic crisis – collapsing infrastructure and public services, pent-up pay demands, the grinding cost of living crunch, and more.
Significant political challenges emerge when people begin to lose belief in the things that once mattered – especially the performance of the system with regard to its professed historic values that are supposed to give meaning to democracy and public life. The opinion polling shows all the hallmarks of a profound legitimation crisis in the making.
After a decade of revolts and rebellions, from the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum to Brexit to the Corbyn surge, the British state and its establishment owners have just about held the line on maintaining the status quo. What the historian R.H. Tawney once called ‘the oldest and toughest plutocracy in the world’ has once again shown its resilience and mettle in resisting radical challenge.[62]
Beneath the surface, though, the counter-insurgency of recent years has come at enormous cost to the authority and legitimacy of the state. The public is quite understandably boiling with rage at a political class that has delivered two lost decades.
“Over the last several decades, popular opinion regarding the condition of democracy has shown a dramatic decline amidst decaying trust and faith in political institutions.”
On a range of social and economic issues – including migration, taxation and spending, and welfare – there are signs that British attitudes have been shifting in recent years in keeping with this Age of Anger.
While it is impossible to establish causation, and there are many other factors at play (including the rise of the Reform Party and the failures of the new Labour government), these changes roughly correlate with the onset of the cost-of-living crisis after the COVID-19 pandemic. There has also been a steady erosion of public confidence in some of the key institutions of Britain’s democratic system.
The UK is clearly in the throes of what political scientists have termed a “legitimation crisis” – an era in which the values it affirms are contradicted by the profound reality of so many important societal trends moving in the opposite direction.
Over the last several decades, popular opinion regarding the condition of democracy has shown a dramatic decline amidst decaying trust and faith in political institutions. Many Britons feel that their elected officials are more influenced by major campaign contributors than what is best for the country; that they don’t have much say in what the government does; and that political representatives are more interested in serving special interests than their constituents.
5.1 Economic Attitudes
In 2019, 53% of Britons supported increasing taxes and spending, while just 5% favored reducing taxes and spending. In 2024, however, 40% supported increasing taxes and spending (a drop of 13 percentage points) and 15% favored decreasing them (a rise of 10 percentage points).
Similarly, in 2019 47% of Britons disagreed with the idea that people on social security were undeserving of assistance; while 15% agreed. By 2024, the number that disagreed had fallen to 36% (a drop of 11 percentage points), while the number that agreed had increased to 24% (a rise of 9 percentage points).