When Britain Stopped Being Great: A Potted History of Managed Decline.
How we turned the fifth-richest country on Earth into a laboratory for extracting wealth from ordinary people while Finland proves we're being lied to.
You want to know when Britain stopped being Great? I can give you the exact date: 1979. That’s when we stopped making things and started taking things from each other instead.
Let me walk you through forty-five years of decline dressed up as progress. Forty-five years of political theatre where PM’s Question Time is reality TV Punch and Judy. It’s a game show. It’s Big Brother without the celebrities where we vote them out - except they all work for the same production company and nothing actually changes.
Forty-five years of being told there’s no alternative while watching a handful of people get obscenely wealthy and the rest of us fight over scraps. Forty-five years of choices presented as inevitabilities.
This isn’t conspiracy theory. This is documented fact. And it’s worse than any conspiracy because it’s been done in plain sight, with your consent, one election at a time.
Every time you voted, believing it would be different. Every time you swallowed the “no alternative” line. Every time you blamed immigrants instead of asking why the system had no capacity. Every time you accepted austerity, while billionaires doubled their wealth.
That’s on us. We kept believing. We kept voting. We kept the cycle going.
The Thatcher Shock: When Industrial Britain Was Executed (1979-1983).
Between 1979 and 1983, 1.5 million manufacturing jobs vanished. Gone. In four years. Another 500,000 industrial jobs disappeared alongside them. Unemployment doubled from 5.4% to 10.7% - hitting levels not seen since the Great Depression.
This wasn’t creative destruction. This was industrial execution.
Margaret Thatcher’s government deliberately let the pound soar to record highs, making British manufacturing uncompetitive overnight. Interest rates hit 17% - the highest in post-war history. They slashed support for industry. Regional policy funding collapsed from £1.8 billion annually to £242 million. They crushed the unions so workers couldn’t fight back.
Steel works closed. Coal mines shut. Shipyards died. Entire communities built around making things discovered they were surplus to requirements.
The official narrative? We were becoming a “service economy.” More sophisticated. The future.
The reality? We’d stop making things and start taking from each other instead.
The Big Lie: Financialisation (1990-2008).
Here’s what they sold us: Britain would become a global financial hub. We’d all get rich from services instead of dirty manufacturing.
Here’s what actually happened: we turned the entire country into an extraction machine.
In 1990: 15 billionaires, £65.8 billion in combined wealth
By 2024: 165 billionaires, £619.5 billion in wealth
That’s not wealth creation. That’s wealth extraction. Look where it comes from:
Over 1 in 4 billionaires make money from property and inheritance (2 in 1990, 42 by 2025)
Over 1 in 4 from finance - moving money around, taking fees
Inherited wealth now makes up 9% of GDP - double the 1980s figure
They’re not building anything. They’re sitting on assets, watching values inflate, extracting rent.
The richest 50 families hold more wealth than 34 million people - half the population. The poorest 50% own just 9% of everything. People aged 20-40 hold only 8% of Britain’s total wealth, while boomers aged 55-75 own over half.
Young people now pay 28% of income on housing vs 5-10% for boomers at the same age. This isn’t economics. This is generational theft by policy design.
New Labour: Same Con, Better Marketing (1997-2010).
Blair and Brown looked at Thatcherism and thought: “What if we did it with focus groups?”
They kept the financialisation. Kept the light-touch regulation. Kept worshipping the City. Added some tax credits to look caring.
By 2008, 50% of Britain’s wealth growth came from financial services. We’d bet everything on the casino. Then it exploded.
Banks got bailed out with public money. Bankers kept bonuses. Everyone else got austerity. Manufacturing output collapsed 11.7% between 2007-2009.
Austerity: Extraction Accelerates (2010-2024).
The Conservatives returned with a simple message: there’s no money. Tighten your belts. We’re all in this together.
Except we weren’t.
During austerity:
Number of billionaires: 74 to 117
Their wealth: £250.2bn to £442.5bn (nearly doubled)
£87 billion added to UK billionaire wealth 2021-2023 alone (during COVID, Brexit, cost-of-living crisis)
Everyone else got:
NHS collapsing (waiting lists at record highs)
Schools literally crumbling (concrete falling, buildings unsafe)
Councils bankrupt (one-quarter facing insolvency)
Housing unaffordable (average deposits now impossible for most young people)
Sewage in rivers (water companies pay dividends while pumping waste)
Real wages stagnant for 15 years
Then they told us immigration was the problem. Genius. Starve services for decades, refuse to build housing, and blame foreigners when the deliberately underfunded system breaks.
Meanwhile in Finland: Proof We’re Being Lied To.
Finland has been the world’s happiest country for eight consecutive years. Not by accident. By choice.
Their taxes: Top rate 57.3% - highest globally. Government spending 55.8% of GDP
Our taxes: Top rate 45%. Government spending 33.5% of GDP
Their happiness score: 7.7/10
Our happiness rank: 23rd globally and falling
They pay more. Much more. And get:
Healthcare that works (88% satisfaction vs 71% EU average)
Free university education - genuinely free, zero debt
Subsidised childcare and generous parental leave
Public services that function (73% satisfaction with admin services)
Lower inequality, higher trust
During COVID, most Finnish families reported no disruption to wellbeing because their systems held
Finland has Muslim immigration too - 2.3% of the population vs our 6.5%. But they’re not melting down about it because when immigrants arrive, there’s housing capacity, school places, and healthcare that can cope.
We built systems designed to fail on purpose, then blamed immigrants when they did.
The Mirror You Need to Look In.
Every time you voted, believing the promises.
Every time you accepted “there’s no money” while billionaire wealth grew.
Every time you blamed immigrants instead of asking why the systems had no capacity.
Every time you bought into the “all politicians are the same, so what’s the point” line while still voting for them.
That’s on us.
We kept the game going. We kept believing despite all the evidence. We kept accepting the scapegoats instead of confronting the actual problem.
Finland proves every excuse is a lie:
“High taxes kill growth” - Finland’s GDP per capita is strong, and inequality is low
“We can’t afford public services” - Finland spends more and delivers more
“Immigration breaks the system” - Finland manages it because their system has capacity
“There’s no alternative” - Finland IS the alternative, and it’s working
The difference isn’t that Finns are better people. The difference is that they made different choices and stopped accepting lies.
Where We Are Now: Still Being Played.
Current state of Britain 2024-2025:
165 billionaires, £619.5bn wealth, while food banks feed millions
NHS waiting lists are breaking records monthly
Schools with literal holes teaching about economic opportunity
Housing deposits are mathematically impossible for median earners
Water companies pump sewage, pay shareholders
Councils are bankrupt across the country
This is the fifth-richest country on Earth. This isn’t poverty. This is policy.
Labour’s back in power. What’s changed fundamentally? Nothing. Both parties serve the same extractive model. They argue about management, not the system.
The Choices That Got Us Here.
Starting in 1979, we chose to:
Destroy industry, build casino capitalism
Crush unions, empower capital
Sell public assets, let corporations extract profit from essentials
Cut taxes for wealth, gut services for everyone else
Turn housing into speculation vehicles, price out generations
Let wages stagnate while wealth is concentrated
Build systems with no capacity, blame immigrants when they break
Every choice made a handful richer while making the majority poorer. Every choice was defended as necessary, inevitable, pragmatic.
And we kept voting for it. We kept believing the promises. We kept accepting the scapegoats.
The Brutal Question Finland Forces Us to Ask.
If Finland can tax properly, spend properly, invest in people, and produce the happiest population on Earth - why can’t we?
The answer isn’t that we can’t. It’s that we won’t. Because the people making decisions, funding parties, and owning media all benefit from the current system.
Changing it would require confronting them. So instead we get:
Theatre about managing decline more efficiently
Scapegoating immigrants for systemic failures
Promises that evaporate after elections
The same extraction with different branding
What This Means for You.
You’re living in a country that chose extraction over production. Finance over industry. Billionaires over people.
You’re watching services collapse while being told there’s no money, even as billionaire wealth grows by billions annually.
You’re seeing infrastructure decay while being told immigration is the problem, even as Finland manages immigration with functioning systems that have capacity.
You’re experiencing managed decline while being told this is just how things are, even as other countries prove alternatives exist and work.
We stopped being Great when we chose to become a laboratory for extracting wealth from ordinary people and funnelling it upward.
Forty-five years of this. Both parties. Every government. With our votes. With our belief. With our acceptance of the lies.
Stop Looking Away from the Mirror.
Finland’s success isn’t about being Nordic or small or homogeneous. It’s about making different choices and funding them properly.
We could do that tomorrow. We choose not to. Every election. Every time we believe the promises. Every time we accept the scapegoats. Every time we vote for the same system with different faces.
That’s not a conspiracy. That’s history. That’s a choice. That’s us.
And unless we stop believing the lies and start confronting who actually benefits from this system, the next forty-five years will be more of the same - just with angrier scapegoats and slicker marketing.
The question isn’t whether Britain can be great again.
The question is whether we’ll finally stop voting for people who profit from making sure it isn’t.
Key sources: Office for National Statistics (manufacturing job losses 1979-1983), House of Lords Library (UK economy 1980s), Equality Trust (Billionaire Britain 2025), World Happiness Report 2025 (Finland ranking), OECD Trust Survey 2024, Finnish Immigration Service statistics, UK Home Office immigration data.
The Almighty Gob writes satirical commentary on what’s bleeding obvious to anyone not invested in pretending otherwise.