--- description: The pound is weak, jobs are scarce, and the economy may slip back into recession. But few Britons believe the next government will fix what ails their country title: Why Britain Is Feeling Bleak image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [World](/section/world/) # Why Britain Is Feeling Bleak by [Catherine Mayer](/author/catherine-mayer/) Mar 29, 2010 4:00 AM CUT by [Catherine Mayer](/author/catherine-mayer/) Mar 29, 2010 4:00 AM CUT The giant wind turbine stands over Dagenham Heathway like an exclamation point. To Ford Motor Co., the U.S. corporation that erected it six years ago, the turbine is a vigorous declaration of modernity, generating the sustainable energy that drives what it calls a “global center of excellence for diesel engineering.” These days, however, the 394-ft. (120 m) structure seems to punctuate the cry of pain that was once a busy shopping street in this hardscrabble East London suburb. Ford Dagenham produced as many as 340,617 cars annually and employed 40,000 people at its peak in the 1960s. Ford’s diesel-engine plant, the only business left on the 475-acre (192 hectare) site, has a workforce of just 4,000; also gone are 60,000 other jobs that depended on the car industry and its employees. It’s a depressing tableau, one all too familiar: just like Detroit, this once vibrant center of auto manufacturing seems stuck in a spiral of persistent decline. On the main street, stores that once sold everything from household staples to electronics and jewelry are now outnumbered by pawnbrokers. During lunchtime on a crisp Monday at Albemarle & Bond, Nicola — she doesn’t wish to give her surname — 26, white and unemployed, holds a fistful of rings. “Can I get 10 quid for this?” she asks. After haggling with the assistant, she leaves with half that sum, passing a display case of trinkets earlier customers failed to redeem, including a clutch of diamanté rings spelling out the word _Mum_. Sentimentality is an indulgence nobody in Dagenham can afford. [(See pictures of the U.K. at home.)](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1816056,00.html "undefined") If Dagenham’s decline is emblematic of the ebbing of Britain’s manufacturing prowess — and the way in which shifts in the global economy can strip a place of jobs like a hurricane takes leaves off a tree — then its main street captures a national mood of hopelessness and anger. All of Britain is in a deep funk: although its economy is finally growing after a prolonged recession, that growth is so tender that many fear it will shrivel and give way to a second, deeper contraction. Britons are downcast, their politicians discredited. In one of the world’s oldest democracies, there’s little enthusiasm for the national and local elections due in early May. Polls show that neither of the two largest parties — the Labour incumbents or their Conservative challengers — is on course for an overall majority in Parliament. There’s little enthusiasm, either, for their respective leaders, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and David Cameron. For the first time since the 1970s, Britons may find themselves ruled by a minority government. Back then, Labour’s pact with the smaller Liberal Party proved short-lived, and the government eventually fell to a no-confidence motion. Britain’s third party now has a longer name — the Liberal Democrats — and hopes to exert a more enduring influence on any new administration. Smaller parties will flex their muscles if there’s a hung Parliament. This raises the specter of political instability, gridlock and even a second general election within the year. Such an outcome could only exacerbate the economic turbulence that has contributed to the recent roller-coaster ride of the British pound. After a recent poll showed Labour and Conservatives running neck and neck, the pound plunged 2% against the dollar in a few hours. Britain clings to a nostalgic sense of its place in the world as a top-tier global economic power. It’s still the world’s sixth largest economy, but other numbers are not so flattering. Britain’s budget deficit — £178 billion, according to the Treasury — is the largest as a proportion of GDP among G-7 nations. Unemployment stands at 2.46 million, a rate of 7.8%. That’s not as bad as some pundits predicted, but the ranks of the long-term unemployed have swelled to levels not seen since 1997, and the number of people working part time because they’re unable to find full-time employment has reached a new record. Although the pound has lost a quarter of its value against the dollar since 2008, Britain’s global goods deficit actually widened in January, with exports declining 6.9%. A weaker pound means the U.K. has to pay more for imports like fuel, increasing fears of inflation. [(See pictures of London.)](http://www.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1846986%5F1852529,00.html "undefined") This all adds to the daunting challenges facing Britain’s next government. Its first priority will surely be to get the economy out of the emergency room. The parties disagree on the speed and severity of action needed to cut the British deficit, but all accept that there must be reductions in public expenditure. Inevitably such cuts will hit the nation’s most deprived communities hardest. And it is in such communities that the social consensus that underpins Britain’s democracy is fracturing. [See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/picturesoftheweek "undefined") [See the Cartoons of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek "undefined") **Someone to Blame** Expecting little from the main parties that failed to arrest Dagenham’s decay, some locals are turning to the British National Party (BNP), a hard-right party that proposes to repatriate residents of foreign descent and stop all immigration. Charisse, a young, unemployed mother who declined to give her last name, says people will vote for the BNP “not because they like them but because we’re so pissed off.” Her own grouse: she has three children, and thus her one-bedroom public-housing apartment is too small. Her companion, who has turned his back, growling that he doesn’t wish to discuss politics, suddenly interrupts. “She’s been trying to get a decent place for 12 years, but they’re giving the houses to them,” he says, jabbing his finger in the direction of a black passerby. Barking and Dagenham — the two neighborhoods elect separate members of Parliament but make up a single London borough council — have witnessed rapid demographic change since the last national census, in 2001\. At the time, 80% of locals identified themselves as “white — British.” There’s been a big influx of nonwhite families since then, with many blacks and Asians — British-born as well as new immigrants — looking for cheap housing. “There’s a sense of competition for finite resources,” says Jon Cruddas, Dagenham’s MP and a Labour Party member. “These are generic forces, but they collide in an intense form here.” [(See pictures of 20th Century Britain.)](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1862723,00.html "undefined") The racial tensions suit the politics of the BNP, which controls 12 of 51 local council seats, making it the second largest party after Labour. There are concerns it will grow even stronger after the May 6 council elections. And national BNP leader Nick Griffin is campaigning to unseat Barking’s veteran Labour MP, Margaret Hodge. Griffin, once convicted of inciting racial hatred, has pledged to represent “the interests of our people instead of all sorts of others and all sorts of greedy banks who ponce on \[freeload off\] every council in the country.” It’s hard to remember now, but Labour rose to power in 1997 on a wave of optimism, even idealism. “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” said the fresh-faced Prime Minister Tony Blair, greeting the sunrise of his victory. Now 73% of Britons distrust politicians, according to a recent report by the Hansard Society. For many, the last straw was the revelation last year that MPs from all parties had taken advantage of a loose expenses regimen to subsidize their pay, some of them charging taxpayers for such essentials as moat cleaning, duck houses and sparkly toilet seats. Charisse can’t even be bothered to cast a protest ballot for the BNP. “I don’t vote,” she says. “What’s the point? Politicians are only out for what they can get.” [(See pictures of Tony Blair’s 10 years as Prime Minister.)](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1618974,00.html "undefined") **How Did It Come to This?** The last time Britain felt this bad about itself was in 1976, when soaring inflation and unemployment forced the Labour government to seek a humiliating bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives took power in 1979 and went on to abolish exchange controls, cut taxes and engineer the 1986 deregulation of financial markets, known as Big Bang, restoring London’s position as one of the world’s most important financial centers. Blair’s New Labour did nothing to restrict the unfettered growth of the City, as London’s financial district is called. In 1998, Blair’s adviser Peter Mandelson, now the most powerful member of Brown’s Cabinet, said Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” The expansion of the financial-services sector and growth of the British economy masked a sharp decline in manufacturing. Faced with Britain’s notoriously tetchy industrial relations and high costs, many companies chose to relocate their factories to countries offering more pliant workforces and cheaper real estate. With the strength of the pound making its Dagenham plant look wincingly expensive compared with similar subsidiaries in other countries, Ford closed its car-production lines there in 2002 after 71 years. Dagenham MP Cruddas describes the resulting job losses and social tumult as “globalization ripping through a microclimate at great speed.” [See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/picturesoftheweek "undefined") [See the Cartoons of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek "undefined") The impact was greater because Britain’s growing wealth has fueled growing inequality. The gap between rich and poor is only slightly narrower in the U.K. than in the U.S. and yawns much wider than in other European countries. Social mobility has stalled. The gulf between City financiers and low-income Londoners is profound. “The bankers look down from their gleaming towers in the City, and they see a depressed and depressing East End,” says Dominic Carman, the parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrat Party in Barking. “From the East End, the City looks like an El Dorado of gleaming spires and towers. It might as well be 10,000 miles away because it’s so unreachable, so unfathomable.” **Fool’s Gold** That distant El Dorado may have enriched only some Britons, but the turbulence shaking it is felt by everyone. There’s little agreement among politicians or economists about quite how much of a basket case Britain has become. “Although the economy is now growing, recovery is still in its early stages and remains very fragile,” Brown said in a March 10 speech in the City. Labour says the recovery is due to the government’s lead in global efforts to stabilize the banking system and its $30 billion of fiscal stimulus and argues that stimulus spending must continue. Conservatives, however, propose swifter action to reduce Britain’s borrowing. That view has been bolstered over recent weeks with the world’s three biggest credit-rating agencies raising concerns that the scale of debt puts Britain at significant risk of default. That might seem to raise the mortifying prospect of another British Prime Minister going cap in hand to the IMF. Ironically, the IMF backs Labour’s more cautious approach to deficit reduction, warning in February that stimulus packages needed to be maintained “well into 2010 for a majority of the world’s economies.” [(See pictures of the City of London.)](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1847501,00.html "undefined") Brown bears some of the responsibility for the economic mess: he was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Blair and has been Prime Minister since 2007\. But he has deflected blame to global pressures and has made political hay of his rival’s lack of experience. “This is no time for a novice,” declared Brown in September 2008 as the global financial crisis gathered pace. A Conservative poll lead of 20 points has eroded to the narrowest of margins, not least on fears of the youthful opposition team’s collective inexperience. There’s another factor that counts against them: the Conservatives have traditionally been seen as the party of the rich, and few Brits are feeling flush. Moreover, Cameron and many among his front-bench team were born to wealth and privilege. Voters wonder if they can understand the concerns of ordinary folk. “This area is going down the _khazi!_” The speaker’s use of the archaic Britishism identifies him as an Englishman of a certain age. Having been winged by a beer can during a fight among schoolkids in a Barking McDonald’s, he’s shocked and furious. “I want law and order,” he tells Liberal Democrat Carman, who happens to be canvassing voters in the street outside. “That’s why the BNP is the only choice.” [(Read: “Why Angry British Voters Are Tuning In to Bigots.”)](http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1931977,00.html "undefined") The BNP has gained strength by mobilizing the resentments of alienated voters. The far right will not be the only purveyors of extreme ideologies to spot opportunity in Britain’s fraying social fabric. If the country is to regain the self-confidence, tolerance and humor that marked it as a great nation long after its influence declined, it needs to rediscover a faith in human nature. The mainstream politicians who did so much to dent that faith may not find it easy to lead its restoration. Carman gamely argues with the BNP supporter, asking him to “vote anyone except the BNP. In a quiet, reflective moment, I urge you to think again.” His interlocutor remains unconvinced. Yet on such exchanges — and on the ability of the political classes to reinfuse a dispirited population with a shared sense of purpose — Britain’s future depends. _— With reporting by Meg Handley_ [See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/picturesoftheweek "undefined") [See the Cartoons of the Week.](http://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6596923/why-britain-is-feeling-bleak/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6596923/why-britain-is-feeling-bleak/"},"headline":"Why Britain Is Feeling Bleak","datePublished":"2010-03-29T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T06:29:11.567Z","description":"The pound is weak, jobs are scarce, and the economy may slip back into recession. 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