No, Britain is not about to collapse
5 min read
Readily available data is a good antidote to hysterical recent talk of 'broken Britain'.
Is Britain safe to visit? Leading columnists warn that Britain is 'a Tinderbox waiting to explode', 'on the edge of financial disaster', overrun by 'barbaric fanatics', gagged by 'online censorship', leaving many ‘hoping for a military coup’. A leading politician worries that his daughters might be raped by marauding asylum seekers. A visitor could conclude that Myanmar or the Congo are safer.
Dystopian stories of chaos and race war are, however, not new. An alarmist, hate-filled campaign against asylum seekers led Balfour’s government to exclude ‘aliens’ — Jewish refugees — in 1904. Britain’s port cities experienced serious race riots in 1919. More recently, there have been riots in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Dewsbury, and Oldham; though none matched Powell’s 1968 prediction of 'rivers running with blood’.
But should we now be worried that Britain is — finally — broken? Aside from assertion and anecdote, what is the evidence? Fortunately, there is a wealth of reputable survey data monitoring changes over time and between countries.
According to the Edelman Trust Indicator, British institutions (government, business and media) are currently ranked 24 of 28 countries in terms of public trust. Government ranks 23. But Britain is not unique. Other democracies (France, Germany, the USA and Japan) are as bad or worse. The most trusted governments are efficient autocracies: China and Saudi Arabia.
The Edelman surveys show that the underlying problem is a failure of Western democracies since the 2008 financial crisis to sustain the optimism that the next generation will be better off. But economic growth is only one dimension of well-being.
The World Happiness Index looks at both objective measures (living standards and life expectancy) and subjective assessments (perception of ‘corruption’, ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’). There is a consistent story that Scandinavia comes out on top: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway. The UK is about average for rich countries: 23rd out of 147 countries, close to Germany and the USA, and well above France, Italy and Japan. There is nothing here to suggest that Britain stands out as the Land of Discontent.
Our critics, especially from the USA — like JD Vance, who seems to take a perverse pleasure in humiliating his sycophantic hosts — single out Britain’s loss of freedoms, lighting the road to the coming multi-cultural Armageddon. The American NGO, Freedom House, has created a composite index of political rights and civil liberties, including free speech. The usual Scandinavian suspects all score over 95 out of 100, as do Canada, Estonia Netherlands and Japan. Britain makes a respectable 92 ahead of France and Italy, and well ahead of the USA, which lags Argentina and Mongolia.
Much of the current discontent specifically relates to immigration and asylum. There is clearly a damaging level of distrust arising from the inability of successive governments to stem the flow of undocumented migrants. But, aside from ‘small boats’, data on public attitudes is much more nuanced than the current anti-immigration narrative suggests (which I have summarised in an ODI Global Working Paper).
The public debate is framed by impression rather than fact. Surveys show that an average response to the question ‘what is the share of foreign-born people in Britain?’ is 27 per cent as against the actual 14 per cent. American studies show similar exaggerations of the size of ethnic minorities. Attitudes, moreover, seem unrelated to numbers. Over 90 per cent thought that there was ‘too much immigration’ when surveys began in the 1960’s and the number has steadily declined to around 50 per cent as immigration has risen. The numbers judging immigration to be ‘one of the most important issues’ are highly volatile, reaching record levels, almost 60 per cent, in September 2015 before the Brexit referendum and falling to 10 per cent in 2019/20 before rising again more recently.
As for an incipient race war, public attitudes have softened in general. The proportion judging immigration to be ‘harmful’ fell from 54 to 20 per cent between 2012 and 2022. The share of those thinking that diversity made Britain a better place to live rose from 30 to 50 per cent between 2002 and 2022. In the 1960s, an election-winning slogan was: 'If you want a N***** for a neighbour, vote Labour.' A World Values Survey showed that only 5 per cent now object to an immigrant neighbour. And censuses show a steady, overall trend to residential integration and rising educational attainment by minorities.
The survey data is a good antidote to recent hysteria. But it is ambiguous. Many people see immigration as positive, but want less; others want less immigration but want more of specific groups. There is hostility to asylum seekers but not to the principle of asylum.
The underlying problem remains: frustration caused by anaemic economic growth, stagnating living standards and stretched public services, which affect most developed countries to some degree.
But outside the realm of political hyperbole, it is simply nonsensical to talk about a ‘broken country’ on the brink of societal collapse.
Sir Vince Cable is a former leader of the Liberal Democrats.
