Politics should order power so decisions make sense to the people who live with them. For two decades we have mixed up the order of ideas with the order of things. We chased abstractions and neglected maintenance. The result is a country that talks a lot and delivers too little.
What I am saying, in plain terms:
We tried to engineer the “common good” from the centre and took our eye off the basics. We pushed authority upwards, which thinned accountability. We governed for headlines: triple lock, austerity, pre-crash short-termism, under-investment. At the same time, immigration ran at record levels, which altered pressure on services and, in places, on wages.
1) Post-Liberalism: virtue by instruction
The creed puts the “common good” first. The state should guide culture, steer markets, and even shape private behaviour in the name of social order.
The cost is subtle but real. When the centre casts itself as tutor, citizens begin to feel like pupils. Rules turn into moral architecture; persuasion gives way to decree. The language grows grand while everyday services thin out: GPs, trains, policing, councils. The common good survives only when it is built from the bottom up with consent. Command and control cannot substitute for that work.
2) Power above the nation: tidy theory, messy chain of command
For years, we exported decisions to distant bodies. Call it pooling sovereignty or alignment; the effect was the distance between a vote and its outcome. Our political elites have been obsessed with the supranational body, alliances and international relations.
Brexit was a blunt reply to that distance. People wanted cause and effect to line up again.
Precision matters. Free movement was an EU policy (see the EU explainer on free movement and residence). Human-rights and asylum rules mainly come from the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights under the Council of Europe, not the EU (see the Council of Europe’s short “don’t get confused”). These are different bodies with different powers. We blurred them and then wondered why control seemed to slip.
Repatriating powers was never enough. Competent use of those powers is the point.
3) Immigration: scale, speed, and wages
Between Blair and now the UK has experienced the highest sustained immigration on record. Peaks have eased, yet levels remain high.
Year to Dec 2024 (ONS): 948,000 long-term arrivals; 517,000 departures; net +431,000. That is down from about 860,000 in 2023, but still above most of the 2010s. Post-Brexit arrivals are largely non-EU. Source: ONS long-term international migration, YE Dec 2024. Long view: net migration has been positive since the mid-1990s and stepped up from the late 1990s onward. See the Commons Library guide to the stats and the Migration Observatory’s overview. Since the year 2000, 11.4 million people have immigrated to the UK.
Does a large inflow of people willing to work for less slow pay growth in some sectors? In specific places and occupations, yes. Labour supply rises where bargaining power is already weak; unless demand, skills, investment or enforcement improves, wages come under pressure. UK evidence finds small average effects, with larger downward impacts in lower-paid, lower-skilled services; there are offsetting gains where migrants complement rather than substitute local workers. See the Migration Observatory on labour-market effects and a Bank of England study on semi- and low-skilled services wages (working paper).
None of this is a moral charge against migrants. People move to improve their lives; so would we. The policy task is to match numbers to capacity: visas and enforcement, training and house-building, and inspection that protects lawful employers and workers.
Where lawful hiring is complex and enforcement patchy, the worst actors prosper. Underpayment and bogus self-employment undercut firms that follow the rules and pull wages down at the bottom. See HMRC’s minimum-wage enforcement report and the Director of Labour Market Enforcement’s 2024/25 strategy. The surest protection for wages is simple, lawful hiring and credible enforcement, not slogans.
It is reasonable to look at the numbers and say the change has been rapid. That is capacity planning, not prejudice.
Of course, some British people are racist and need to address their attitudes, but to show displeasure at the rate of immigration is purely rational.
4) Popularism: austerity, outsourcing responsibility, and the bill that always arrives
Short-term politics prefers applause to compounding work. Two moves defined the era.
Austerity over investment. After 2010, public investment was cut hard and stayed low for much of the decade even while borrowing costs were historically cheap. See the IFS on the 2010s squeeze (overview), the OBR on net investment (explainer), and the Institute for Government on service impacts (report). Monetary policy filled the gap: near-zero rates and quantitative easing up to roughly £895bn in assets. That can support demand; by itself it does not train a nurse, fix a road, or raise productivity. See the Bank of England’s QE explainer and the Lords Library note on £875bn gilts plus £20bn corporates (briefing).
Outsourcing responsibility. We invested less in our own people and hoped a mix of imported skills and cheap money would fill the gap. Employer and state training fell across the 2010s. Adult skills funding declined; employer spend per worker dropped in real terms. See the IFS on skills investment (briefing), the NEF estimate of around 19% less employer training between 2011 and 2022 (analysis), and Learning and Work Institute evidence on long-run trends (report).
Add the triple lock and you see the pattern. It pleases a large and reliable voting bloc yet ratchets long-term costs and volatility. The IFS calls it unpredictable and fiscally risky (final recommendations); the OBR sets out the long-run risk to pension spending (Fiscal Risks & Sustainability 2025).
Popularism defers investment and central maintenance. The bill always arrives.
What actually broke?
We reached for big, abstract goods and neglected small, concrete ones.
Post-Liberalism centralised judgment and crowded out local problem-solving. Supranational drift diluted responsibility and then returned as anger when nobody seemed in charge. Populism chose austerity over investment and leaned on immigration and monetary policy as substitutes. High, fast immigration without matching capacity changed the mix and bargaining power in parts of the labour market. That is a policy failure, not a moral failing by migrants.
Meanwhile the groundwork stalled: homes, skills, infrastructure, policing, competent services, and a tax system that rewards effort and pays for what we actually use.
And now?
Draw clear lines. State what is national, what is local, and what sits above the nation. Own the consequences. Fewer moral homilies; more delivery.
Judge by dull metrics that matter. Recover the commons of fact. Argue hard, from evidence. Change course when the data requires it.
If immigration is high, build for it; if you will not build, set the dials lower. Do not make immigration a moral issue, but one of practical consideration. Enforce the rules so good employers are not undercut. Invest like you mean it. Stop outsourcing the future to QE and wishful thinking. Train people. Fix the pipes. Back projects that compound. Be honest about trade-offs. Adults can handle limits. Fantasy corrodes trust.
This is not doom. It is a maintenance job: political, legal, and administrative. Clear lines, honest speech, limited promises, and a bias for what works. Keep that up, and the country stops feeling broken. It starts working.
