UK’s 100-Year Economic Decline - No 1 to Failed State

Aug 19, 2024 | A look at the relative decline of the UK economy in the past 110 years.

The Long Brexit Decline | Opinion

Janan Ganesh, the FT's chief political commentator, and Miranda Green, political columnist, discuss the future of Britain and the latest Brexit developments

South of Italy in 'Catastrophic Decline' after Recession

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Southern Italy is undergoing catastrophic demographic and industrial decline after six consecutive years of recession, report warns

The sandy beaches, Baroque towns and vineyards of southern Italy have made it popular with British holiday makers and second-home owners for decades, but a new study has warned the region is undergoing catastrophic demographic and industrial decline.

The decline of the "Mezzogiorno", the southern regions, has been under way for years, but the report by an economic think tank revealed that its levels of unemployment, industrial contraction and population loss have dramatically worsened after six consecutive years of recession.

For the first time since the First World War, the number of people dying in the southern half of Italy has surpassed the number of babies being born, according to the report by Svimez, the Association for the Industrial Development of the Mezzogiorno. » | Nick Squires, Rome | Thursday, October 30, 2014

France: A Disintegrating Country That Could Ruin Us All

MAIL ONLINE: The queue for cabs outside the Gare du Nord is stretching round the block. Newcomers are told that it may take more than an hour to reach the front of the line.

For many, though, a taxi is the only way of reaching their destination here in Paris.

Among today’s assortment of strikes across France is one which has brought a large part of the Metro network to a halt.

In recent days, everyone from the dentists to the bailiffs have been on strike here, while President Francois Hollande’s socialist utopia teeters on the brink of economic collapse.

This month, it was confirmed that France’s public debt has topped two trillion euros for the first time and will soon reach 100 per cent of GDP (the official EU limit is 60 per cent).

Put another way, the last time it was this bad, France was occupied by the Nazis. Read on and comment » | Robert Hardman for the Daily Mail | Saturday, October 18, 2014

'EU Faces Catastrophe with Pain, Suffering Equal to WWII’

The Red Cross says Europe is heading into a long period of mass unemployment, inequality and social despair. The organization believes austerity policies are to blame according to a report obtained by Britain's Guardian newspaper. It forecasts bleak times ahead for about 120 million Europeans living in, or close to, poverty. The report says those out of work for more than a year amount to 11 million. For more thoughts on Europe's sinking economy RT joined by Chris Clarke, a senior lecturer at Nottingham Business School.

Related »

Austerity Pushing Europe into Social and Economic Decline, Says Red Cross

A homeless beggar in Athens

THE GUARDIAN: Critique of response to EU debt crisis highlights unemployment, widening poverty gap, and growing risk of social unrest

Europe is sinking into a protracted period of deepening poverty, mass unemployment, social exclusion, greater inequality, and collective despair as a result of austerity policies adopted in response to the debt and currency crisis of the past four years, according to an extensive study being published on Thursday.

"Whilst other continents successfully reduce poverty, Europe adds to it," says the 68-page report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "The long-term consequences of this crisis have yet to surface. The problems caused will be felt for decades even if the economy turns for the better in the near future … We wonder if we as a continent really understand what has hit us."

The damning critique, obtained exclusively by the Guardian, of the policy response to the debt crisis that surfaced in Greece in late 2009 and raised fundamental questions about the viability of the euro single currency, foresees extremely gloomy prospects for tens of millions of Europeans. » | Ian Traynor in Brussels | Thursday, October 10, 2013

Is Detroit America’s Economic Future?

Detroit in Ruins
THE OBSERVER: Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre's extraordinary photographs documenting the dramatic decline of a major American city

To the photo gallery >>> | Sunday, January 2, 2011

America Will Need Another Ronald Reagan to Reverse President Obama’s Pitiful Legacy of US Decline
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan on the White House lawn. Photo: The Telegraph
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – NILE GARDINER: The Obama administration is bracing itself for more bad news this week with the release of stunning census figures which are projected to show the biggest increase in poverty in the United States since the 1960s. As Associated Press reports:

The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat’s presidency — are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings.

Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent. Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis.

The new figures are an indictment of President Obama’s handling of the economy, and will add to the growing perception that his Big Government agenda has been a spectacular flop. Despite a huge $787 billion stimulus package (with another $50 billion in spending on the way), and a wave of public bailouts, unemployment continues to rise towards 10 percent, and the housing market remains on a downward trajectory.

Added to this grim picture is a spiraling budget deficit which threatens America’s long-term economic prosperity. As I’ve noted before, the United States is drowning under a mountain of debt, with a Greek-style financial crisis a strong possibility. Under its alternative fiscal scenario, the Congressional Budget Office projects that US debt could rise to a staggering 87 percent of GDP by 2020, to 109 percent of GDP by 2025, and to 185 percent of GDP in 2035. >>> Nile Gardiner | Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The New Politics of Decline
THE SPECTATOR: Trevor Kavanagh says that Britain’s pitiful standing on the world stage is not just about al-Megrahi or the recession, but is the result of Labour’s disastrous mismanagement. Everything now depends on Cameron

For the incurable optimist — of which there are no doubt several in the Downing Street bunker — there are signs that Britain is starting to recover. The stock market is booming once more, confidence is returning to the housing market and the recession may soon be over. Is it possible Gordon Brown really has saved the world — even if it is too late to save himself? Or, as Labour used to warble, might things only get better?

If only. The bleak truth for UK plc is that after 12 years of stupefying Labour incompetence, the worst is yet to come. Britain is once again on the slide towards the margins of economic influence and military clout. We have the worst public finances of any comparable western economy. The British Chambers of Commerce warned this week that the UK faces a ‘grim’ economic future, with a high risk of a relapse. Unemployment is not just spreading but setting like concrete for years to come. And our shabbily treated troops, once a match for the world’s best, will soon be driven humiliatingly out of Afghanistan.

This is not the slow, managed decline of an empire looking for a role. It is a sudden, embarrassing discovery that we don’t count on the world stage any more. Thanks to our lumbering Prime Minister, we have been given the unwelcome gift to see ourselves as others see us. And it ain’t pretty.

I am writing this from New York, whose citizens once saw Britain as a staunch economic, diplomatic and military ally. It is only a few short years since they hailed Tony Blair as a 9/11 hero and awarded him the Congressional Medal he was so embarrassed to collect. That was the high-water mark for New Labour.

Today, thanks to the Oil-for-Megrahi fiasco, we are a bitter disappointment to America. Newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Daily News are still running every fresh turn in this tawdry story.

It was perfectly summed up by a devastatingly editorial in the News: ‘Gordon Brown has given grounds to believe today’s British are a cowardly, unprincipled, amoral and duplicitous lot. Because he is all of those.’ Those are cruelly exaggerated words, but they put the finger on a single identifiable cause of Britain’s collapse. The new decline in Britain’s standing on the world stage is not just about Lockerbie. Nor is it even the decision to trade a convicted mass murderer for Libya’s vast oil reserves. It is about the shifty, furtive and ultimately disastrous management of a country which, in 1997, had every conceivable chance of becoming great again.

Labour strode to power with a huge Commons majority, the goodwill of the British people and the prospect of at least two terms in office. For the first time, Labour could ride an economy which had just taken off on a long and sustainable boom.

Tony Blair could have done one or two truly great things. His government had the cash and clout to transform a welfare state in which almost three million were on incapacity benefit. Instead, it left them to rot while importing migrants to fill almost all of the three million new jobs created. It could have performed drastic but urgently needed surgery on the lumbering National Health Service. Instead, it poured truckloads of taxpayers’ money into a giant bureaucracy, entrenching inefficiencies that will cost us up to £40 billion a year, every year. >>> Trevor Kavanagh | Wednesday, September 9, 2009

New Dark Age Obamonomics! US Cities May Have to Be Bulldozed in order to Survive
THE TELEGRAPH: Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity." >>> By Tom Leonard in Flint, Michigan | Friday, June 12, 2009