Today’s country bears little resemblance to that of seven decades ago, which drowned and lives in a “nervous state” because of prices
When a very young Elizabeth II took the throne in 1952, the United Kingdom was still an empire, butter, bacon and meat were still rationed and the long shadow of World War II still hung over the islands. As today, inflation had fallen in double digits. As today, the UK was not part of the European Union.
The land that Carlos III inherits is little like that of seven decades ago. It was then a nation in crisis, but still powerful and influential. The waters are turbulent again – some observers will say when not – but the UK no longer occupies the same global position as it did then.
Immersed in a political crisis that seems to have no end, drowned by inflation, swept up by the ballast of Brexit and threatened by secessionist impulses, the British often feel as if they are walking on quicksand. The only institution that lasted, the only thing that remained solid, was the Queen. Until now.
The change could hardly have been more radical. In just two days, the British have woken up to a new head of state and a new head of government. Charles III and Liz Truss met for the first time at Buckingham Palace on Friday. They may have seemed a little nervous, after all, two rookies on their first day at the office.
The king reigns but does not reign, so it will not be Carlos, but the new prime minister who will soon have to deal with the most urgent and all-consuming crisis, that of the cost of living, energy prices and the strikes that are starting to fill the calendar. Carlos’s challenge is of a different nature: to keep the monarchy afloat after his mother’s death and try to maintain the influence and international prestige that Elizabeth II brought to the United Kingdom through the crown.
“The UK is currently a country in a state of nerves due to the economic crisis and the cost of living. A country that has not felt stable since the Brexit referendum in 2016, where everything has been so unpredictable. There have been concerns about what the economy would look like after Brexit, we’ve had the pandemic and besides, the political scene has changed very quickly and nobody knows where it will end,” said Anand Menon, director of the think tank, in a telephone interview. interview with this newspaper tank ‘UK in a changing Europe’.
Winter ventures very difficult. The energy bill is expected to double, despite the shock plan of more than 170,000 million euros with which the Truss government wants to freeze the electricity and gas receipts of households. Still, many families are already on the brink of energy poverty, and some will have to decide between feeding themselves or warming up when the cold sets in.
Inflation always goes hand in hand with strikes. Rail workers, carriers, teachers, lawyers, postal workers or health workers have already announced union mobilizations to demand primarily salary increases to help them cope with price increases.
The landscape is black. The economy is on the brink of recession, or is already fully engaged, as some institutions indicate. Inflation could rise to 14% this year. “Almost nothing seems to work in the UK. And it could be worse”, headlined the weekly magazine ‘The Economist’ grimly this summer.
“Charles has inherited a country that is far less powerful and influential than the United Kingdom was when Elizabeth II became queen. We have seen the relative decline of Europe, or the rise of China and India. Globally we have less power, although we are still an influential country with many allies,” notes Menon.
Much of the economic crisis is global, spurred on by the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic. But in the UK, “other layers of uncertainty” are being added that are quite British, Menon warns, such as Brexit “contributing to the economic crisis,” political instability, with four prime ministers in the past six years, “concerns about North -Ireland, where there are people who think it could return to a conflict situation, or the same uncertainty about Scotland’s future ».
The pandemic has camouflaged the true impact of Brexit for a while, but the consequences are more than palpable. Not only in the queues at European ports and airports that the British now have to contend with, but also in the staff shortage that affects large sectors of the country, such as health care, care, hospitality, agriculture or construction.
A recent study by the think tank ‘Resolution Foundation’ and the London School of Economics concluded that leaving the European Union “has reduced the competitiveness of the UK economy”, which will have its corresponding impact on productivity and the economy over the next decade. wages.
Moreover, Brexit is not yet completely resolved. The British Parliament passed a law in June that aims to unilaterally cancel parts of the protocol on Northern Ireland signed with the European Union. If it goes through, Brussels has threatened to expel British scientists from the Horizon research programme. The aftermath of the scuffle has heightened tension in the area and revived fears, for the time being, of a possible resurgence of the conflict that ended the Good Friday Agreement.
But the biggest challenge to secession right now is Scotland, whose nationalist government is demanding a new independence referendum just six years after the ‘no’ vote was won by just over 10 points. According to them, the circumstances after Brexit have changed. His prime minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has even set the date, October 19, 2023. The legal battle, which could unleash a constitutional crisis, threatens to get long and complicated.
The new king will have a lot of work to do there. Secessionism has traditionally been linked to republicanism, although it is not clear whether a hypothetically independent Scotland would not keep the British monarch as head of state, like Canada, for example. But Carlos, they remember from Scotland, is not Isabel.
For Manon, “her greatest challenge will be to solidify the monarchy, because the monarchy was their mother to many people, and the danger the institution now faces is that many will question it.”
A pint of ale is still a pint of ale and Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’ can still be seen every night in London’s West End. But in many other respects, the United Kingdom Elizabeth II found bears little resemblance to the United Kingdom her son Charles now inherits.
In 1952, the United Kingdom was the third largest economic power in the world, after only the United States and the Soviet Union. Today it is the eighth economy in terms of purchasing power, surpassed even by its former colony, India. The industry then dominated and employed 30% of the workforce. Today it is barely 7%, while services – especially finance – and trade are the engines of the economy.
Most of the trade in the British Isles was concentrated with former colonies and Commonwealth countries seven decades ago, but with the accession to the European Union in 1973, this focus changed. Despite Brexit, European countries are still the most important trading partners and increasingly China.
When Isabel II took the throne, families were able to buy a house on a single salary, something that today, with the house turned into a speculative asset, seems like a legend. Two salaries are in many cases insufficient to acquire a home. An average house in London assumes an expenditure of almost 600,000 euros.
The houses themselves have also changed. More illegitimate children are born today than married parents. The population has increased by a third, from 50 million to over 67 million in the UK. But as the country grows, it does so fundamentally because of immigration. 14% of people living on UK territory were born outside of it, which has made the UK a very diverse nation.
Source: La Verdad
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