The stunning victory of Britain’s Labour party at elections on Friday was driven by the profound disillusionment and anger in the population, according to Politico.
It was not a new “lurch to the left,” but rather “broken promises and broken trust,” along with failing public services, that were the driving force behind Labour’s triumph, speculated the publication. The new Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who led his party to a landslide victory, appears to have his work cut out.
The country has witnessed a dizzying turnover of leaders at No 10 in past months, and presents a bleak picture.
The UK’s eagerness to pump funds into the West’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine helped drive inflation to a 40-year high in 2022.
The economy shrank 0.1% between July and September last year and then by another 0.3% between October and December, signaling a recession at the end of 2023.
Anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the West over Ukraine backfired spectacularly on European economies, resulting in accelerated inflation and prompting energy prices to soar. In the UK, where gas is used to heat 85 percent of homes and to generate about 40 percent of electricity, the fallout from these policies hit household finances hard.
Living costs have surged, with food prices about 31% higher than they were three years ago, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Food inflation is at 2.5%.
The consumer price index of 11.1% in October 2022 was the highest in 41 years.
The cost of an average home (£281,000/$359,932,) grew by nearly £100,000 in a decade.
Wages in the UK have stagnated for 15 years after adjusting for inflation.
Food bank use has almost doubled in five years. Trussell Trust reported a 37% increase in demand for food parcels between 2021/22 and 2022/23 and another 4% increase between 2022/23 and 2023/24.
Lackluster growth has prevailed, with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increasing by 4.3% from 2007 to 2023, according to research by the Resolution Foundation.
The National Health Service has a backlog of 7.6 million cases, and the target to eliminate waits longer than 65 weeks by March 2024 has been missed.
Poor road maintenance resulted in vehicle breakdowns growing by 9% in the last year due to potholes, RAC reported.
Prisons are full. In April 2024, the prisoner population of England and Wales stood at 87,481 while the operating capacity of prisons was 88,889.
Social care reform was never delivered, plagued by staffing shortages and rising waiting lists.
40% of England’s universities are expected to run budget deficits this year, a report by the Office for Students (OfS) stated.
The surge in irregular migration via small boats crossing the English Channel from Europe was at an all-time high in 2022, and the Tory government’s Rwanda policy and the Illegal Migration Act have been costly failures.
All of the above fuelled the results of the elections in the UK, which, in effect, became a protest vote, leaving the Labour Party staring at a dismal web of challenges.