Britain’s dysfunctional dynamic: the public wants change, but those in power always tell them it’s not possible | Andy Beckett

In an old, often anxious and conservative country, the perception of risk is a potent political weapon. If a policy or a project for reforming the UK seems too risky, or can be made to seem so by its opponents, then it can usually be quickly killed off. It can be added to the pile of possible futures that never occurred.

In politics as in life, riskiness is sometimes real. To see that Brexit or Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not end well did not require huge foresight. Yet often the perception of risk is politically constructed: a reflection of powerful forces, their self-interest, and what they do or don’t want to happen.

Thus the possibility of war with Russia within a few years, despite it already being bogged down in Ukraine, increasingly dominates discussions about British defence spending; as does the argument that spending should be funded by benefits cuts. The arms industry and military-media complex, where journalists who have never held a gun excitedly amplify the demands of supposedly politically neutral senior military men, is now a stronger lobby than that for the poor and jobless. And so the risk to the most vulnerable people of yet more austerity – an approach much of the media supports for reasons of ideology more than practicality – is presented as less real than the risk of conflict with a country we haven’t fought for a century.

Another, even more important and biased way in which our political discourse treats risk concerns the wider state of the country. Across the party spectrum, from the hard right to the radical left, the idea that Britain is in deep trouble has become commonplace. The cost of living, the funding of public services, productivity, inequality, high streets, housing, the electoral system, the climate: some or all are agreed to be in crisis.

So to continue with this status quo, you might reasonably conclude, is an enormous risk. Yet over the past decade, whenever a government or potential government has proposed major change, a consensus has quickly formed in much of the media, the electorate, big business and Westminster that the proposals are reckless and impractical: too vague, too expensive, too disruptive.

John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for a more equal economy; Theresa May’s 2017 scheme to reform social care funding; Boris Johnson’s promise to level up the country; Liz Truss’s pledge to accelerate growth through tax cuts; Ed Miliband’s plan to create jobs through clean energy – all these very different remedies have been dismissed as fantasies, or warned against as profoundly dangerous, or both.

Some of these plans – notably those of Johnson and Truss – have been less thought out than others. But the breadth of the hostility to reform has been revealing, as has been the speed with which the most recent five prime ministers, starting with May, have become derided, often hated figures. Much of this country is desperate to be rescued, it seems, but can’t stand anyone who tries to do it. For our next would-be saviour, Andy Burnham, this is an ominous dynamic.

After a decade and a half during which, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies reported in 2024, “Living standards have languished … especially in comparison to other wealthy countries”, many voters are so angry that their outlook verges on nihilism: rejecting or ignoring almost anything a government proposes, demanding a different government and then turning against that government, too, within a few months.

Alongside this restlessness is a slower, older and more conservative impulse, particularly strong in the more melancholy corners of the rightwing press, to say that the country is in decline and that little can be done about it – that Britain’s time has passed. The empire is gone. Europe as a whole is losing ever more ground to China and the US. In Britain, traditional values are in inexorable retreat. If the long trends of history are against us, why risk further disruption by vainly trying to reverse them? “To be conservative,” wrote the English conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott in 1956, “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown … the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded …” In a time of national crisis, many people withdraw into their private spaces and family lives – the things traditional conservatism has always prioritised.

And even in a troubled society, there are still winners. Prosperous property owners, retirees with good pensions, people with well-paid jobs, successful entrepreneurs and the super-rich are all over-represented in public conversations about the risks of reshaping Britain. Many of the most privileged are yet to be convinced that a more functional country, which would have to have a more equal distribution of amenities, opportunities and assets, would be better for them.

Meanwhile, other interests profit from instability, such as private equity firms, hedge funds and bankruptcy specialists. In their still influential 1987 book Blood in the Streets: Investment Profits in a World Gone Mad, the former Times editor William Rees-Mogg and rightwing investment guru James Dale Davidson approvingly used a quote commonly attributed to the 19th-century financial trader Nathan Rothschild: “The best time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.”

Overcoming Britain’s aversion to fundamental reform is not impossible. In the last century, David Lloyd George, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher managed it, for three very different governments in three very different contexts. Each of these figures was not afraid to make enemies; in fact, they sometimes welcomed them, arguing that they were examples of the vested interests that necessary reforms needed to overcome.

Politics is even more divided now. There are more major parties, and more ways for opponents of reform to make their views widely and quickly known. So if Burnham does want to change Britain, as his sweeping but largely detail-free recent statements suggest, then his government is likely to be unpopular for long stretches.

To get through them without suffering fatal damage, he will need all his famed abilities to connect with people and persuade them, to explain problems and solutions in everyday language. Many voters do want change. That’s why they’ve revolted so often over the past decade. But they will need regular and effective reminders about why the overheated, unhappy, unequal Britain of 2026 had to be left behind.