STRIKES United Kingdom | The UK’s decline: the legacy of more than a decade of Conservative governments

After almost 13 years of conservative governments, the world is wondering what is happening in the UK. What was a leading economy among the industrialized countries is the only one of that group in recession. Public health is now ten times worse than in 2011 and for the first time in history nurses have joined the strike pickets this winter at the gates of saturated hospitals.

The protests and strikes spread to the entire public sector and several of the services that were privatized, such as the railways or the Royal Mail (post office). The current crisis, exacerbated by the increase in the cost of living, has exposed The consequences of more than a decade of ‘Tory’ austerity policy, with budget cuts in public and social services. The weaker classes are paying the highest cost.

“We say that we are a rich country, a G7 country, buto The poorest fifth of the population is poorer here than in most of the poor countries of Central and Eastern Europe”, explained economist Stephanie Flanders, director of Bloomberg News Economics. “A good part of the population would live better, even being poor, in poor countries of the European Union. It is a phenomenon that is increasing”.

toilet leak

Nigel Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s former finance minister, once described British public health (NHS) as “The closest thing to a national religion.” That healing, which was the envy of the world, has ceased to be a model. Hospitals are continually working with patients two to three times their capacity. As professionals go on strike, there are 9,000 medical and 50,000 nursing positions open. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to retain experienced nurses, particularly the more specialized ones, and a large proportion of students leave even before graduation,” says Tony Hockley, from the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics.

It is an exodus of professionals that successive conservative governments have ignored, although without duly qualified and financially rewarded nurses, the care that patients receive is degraded and even dangerous. “Patient deaths after surgery is 25% higher in hospitals with the smallest number of staff on their floors. Public hospitals in England are understaffed and are having trouble getting back to pre-pandemic levels of operation,” Hockley warns.

Schools on the brink of bankruptcy

Insufficient employees and lack of investment are common problems among the different sectors on strike. In Education, public schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. Nine out of ten schools in England do not have a sufficient budget to adequately cover the school yearr. “The lack of investment from the Government over the past decade is forcing us to cut staff, support students and activities that enrich the school every day,” says Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, the professional and trade union association representing over 45,000 members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“Despite all the rhetoric about more investment, the truth is that lSchool budgets continue to be under enormous pressure. A much more ambitious government program is needed if schools are to provide the education that the current generation of students needs and deserves,” he says.

Some schools are providing food and assistance to parents who cannot afford the rising cost of living. Families in which the salary of a member, even if he works piecework, does not reach. It is the new face of poverty, which used to affect the elderly and the unemployed the most. Now in poor homes, there is at least one person employed.

In the year of 2010, when the conservatives came to power with David Cameron, food banks in Britain distributed 60,000 food parcels. Last year that number was 2.5 million. The human cost of certain political decisions is enormous. Poverty affects 14.5 million Britons, 1.5 million more than a decade ago.

According to United Nations report published in 2019, the government in the UK has “systematically and deeply eroded”, the social safety netwith massive cuts to local government and social services “deliberately removing them and replacing them with a hard line, without values ​​or compassion”.

degradation of democracy

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The Conservatives have also degraded British political life and democracy. The Boris Johnson Administration institutionalized corruption and disregard for the law to levels not seen in recent UK history. Both he and Liz Truss, they are trying to recover the position from which they were expelled. It is the behavior of a new class of “leaders rejecting any responsibility for their own actions,” she noted in a recent article in The Times by the former head of the ‘Tories’, William Hague.

“If you have become prime minister, with a majority behind you and a reasonable mandate ahead, but you yourself end all that in the midst of chaos, There is certainly someone to blame: It is you”. Given the balance of the last 12 years and the current drift, it is easy to understand why the conservatives are hopelessly sunk in the polls.