In just over two weeks’ time, the UK goes to the polls, with a major upset to the fortunes of the two parties of government – Labour and the Conservatives – increasingly likely.
County councils in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk are predicted to swing to Reform, as are those in the ‘red wall’ heartlands of Sunderland and Wakefield, according to pollcheck.co.uk. Overall, nearly 3,000 council seats could be lost by the two biggest parties, according to Elections Etc. Reform and the Greens are expected to be the main beneficiaries. A seismic shift may be about to take place.
Why?
It’s the economy
In 1992, James Carville, a political adviser to Bill Clinton, coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid”. Those four words, to my mind, help explain what may be about to happen.
When the prime minister was explaining “the Mandelson situation” in Parliament, the top-rated comment in the Guardian’s politics live feed was essentially this: forget the media’s appetite for yet another leadership change, people are worried about having enough money to get through the week.
Ipsos polling supports this view: seven in ten Britons agree the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful, and 66% say traditional parties and politicians do not care about people like them – a figure that has risen sharply since 2021. That data, published by Ipsos in 2024, may now underestimate the scale of the problem, given the economic impact of conflict in the Middle East.
We have been living through an age of austerity for nearly 20 years. The finger, in many ways, points to the dominant economic model in both the UK and the USA – neoliberalism.
Inequality and disillusion
According to research by the University of Manchester, post-1980 income inequality in the UK reversed its post-war decline sharply: the richest 20% of the population now have an average income more than 12 times that of the poorest 20% – far higher than comparable European countries such as France or the Netherlands, where the ratio is roughly 4:1.
“Trickle-down” wealth creation has failed to materialise.
So we are not seeing voters turn away from mainstream parties because they have suddenly embraced far-right or ecological ideologies. They are doing so because the value of their income has shrunk while wealth at the top continues to grow.
History is full of examples of scapegoating minorities at times of economic hardship, and I want to believe that is what we are seeing now.
The roots of neoliberalism
So: neoliberalism. The “free-market” economy, where nationalisation is avoided and state assets are privatised. Older readers may remember “Tell Sid” and the sell-offs of gas, electricity and telecoms – the list is long – delivering quick returns to those able to buy shares that were often undervalued and quickly “flipped”.
Thatcher, in power when these policies were introduced, drew heavily on Reaganomics. But where did that economic thinking come from?
To understand how we got here, it is worth stepping back.
Around three months ago, I was lying in bed one night wondering how we all got into this state. Where did things go so badly wrong – and who was to blame? A name rose unbidden into my thoughts: Robert McNamara.
There was no obvious reason, or so I thought at the time, to blame everything on the former president of the Ford Motor Company and US Secretary of Defense under Kennedy. But after digging a little deeper, I may have stumbled across an answer: McNamara, j’accuse.
Bear with me.
Chile: the neoliberal experiment
There is a very good, if little-known, film of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, which is how I first came across the story of Chile in the 1970s.
Allende’s cousin, Salvador Allende, was president from 1970 to 1973. By that time, McNamara had left government to become head of the World Bank. In the years before Allende’s election, the World Bank had loaned nearly $100mn to Chile, and repayments were up to date.
But a socialist government in a country with significant US business interests was anathema to the Nixon administration. Nixon wanted to “make the [Chilean] economy scream” after Chile nationalised US copper companies and refused compensation on the grounds of historic excess profits.
The method was simple: withhold World Bank loans under McNamara’s leadership.
In 1973, with army tanks surrounding the presidential palace, Allende took his own life during a coup backed by the CIA. General Pinochet took power – a name many older readers will remember – and was later feted by both Reagan and Thatcher despite presiding over a regime responsible for the disappearance of thousands.
As soon as Pinochet was in control, World Bank lending resumed. Chile became the testing ground for neoliberal policies.
On paper, the results looked impressive: GDP rose from $14bn in 1977 to $247bn by 2017. But inequality soared. Today, 1% of the population receives 28.1% of total income, making Chile one of the most unequal countries in the world.
From Chile to Britain
The rest, as they say, followed. The apparent “success” of Chile’s model – where state assets were transferred to private enterprise – was emulated in the USA, the UK and beyond.
“Trickle-down” economics did not deliver for most people.
And so we find ourselves here: voters looking for alternatives to the parties that have upheld this system, even if those alternatives offer little real economic security.
There, then, is your scapegoat – not the people in boats.
A warning before polling day
Try to tell as many people as you can before the next election, though I suspect many will not want to hear it.
Buckle up. However strange the last decade has been in the UK, if Reform come to power, it may come to look calm by comparison.
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