People feel powerless and disillusioned when they talk about “Broken Britain”
There has been a loss of trust in institutions that once felt stable - the NHS, schools, the police, the postal service, all struggling. Repeated scandals such as expenses, lobbying, banking crises, exposed hypocrisy, etc., reinforce the idea that elites look after themselves rather than the public. When promises of ‘fixing things’ are made but little changes, trust erodes further.
People have everyday experiences of decline. They witness long NHS waits, buses being cut, and town centres being hollowed out. These aren’t abstract issues. They are things people feel in daily life. It breeds a sense that society isn’t working as it should, no matter what statistics say about GDP growth or employment. When politics doesn’t address those lived realities, people disengage.
Political debate often shifts to symbolic battles such as flags, trans issues and cancel culture, instead of material concerns like wages, housing, or services. People feel politicians are ‘talking past them,’ fighting each other instead of fixing problems. This creates cynicism: the sense that politics is performance, not problem-solving.
The media amplify this sense of failure. 24/7 news and social media focus on crises and failures. One bad train journey or one shocking crime story becomes a national metaphor. Constant negative framing builds the idea of ‘brokenness,’ even if some aspects of life are improving quietly. Positive achievements command less attention, feeding despair.
While young people face high rents, insecure work, and slim chances of owning a home, older generations often remember more reliable services and more affordable housing. Regions outside London feel left behind by decades of centralized policy-making. This makes many feel the system is rigged against them, and that opportunity is for many based more on where they come from rather than on what they do.
Many people feel that power is concentrated in a small political and economic elite, including Westminster politicians, corporate executives, unelected bureaucracies, and journalists who pursue an ideological agenda instead of reporting on what matters to people.
Local voices, including those on councils and communities, seem sidelined, leaving people feeling that they can’t influence change. Disillusion grows because citizens sense they’re treated as passive consumers of politics, not active participants.
There’s a psychological element too: a story people tell themselves about national decline along the lines of ‘we used to be great, now everything’s falling apart.’ This narrative can be self-reinforcing: once people believe the country is broken, every frustration seems like proof. It also creates nostalgia, which no government can fully satisfy, because even if things improve, they won’t feel like the past that people remember.
In short, people feel powerless because they experience decline personally, see leaders as self-serving, and sense that the system doesn’t listen. But disillusionment isn’t just about failing policies; it’s about a broken relationship between people and power.
To older people, this sense of decline and powerlessness has a familiar feel to it. It was like that in the 1970s, when a Britain that had once been great had slipped into what was thought to be an inevitable decline. But it changed. A new government with fresh ideas turned the economy around into growth and expansion. A new foreign policy abandoned ‘managed decline’ and reasserted British interests and Britain’s voice. People once again felt optimistic about their future and that of the country.
It could happen again.
Madsen Pirie