There is a great deal of commentary recently about the poor health of the UK economy, with rapidly rising prices and taxes, falling disposable incomes, reducing access to credit and so on. People of middle incomes are feeling most of the pain, targeted as they are with most of the new tax burden, but not rich enough for it not to matter. In parallel, seemingly every newspaper carries daily gripes about the poor public service value-add for the increased taxes, with appalling health, education, policing, and transport systems. The relatively generous public sector pay, especially pension costs, which are far more generous than most private sector employees receive, will steadily become a bigger issue until it is tackled. Poorly targeted and imbalanced welfare is making too big a drain on middle earners, who see too little reward for working hard. And a wide range of poorly thought-through policies have resulted in a very degraded social fabric.
People have little choice over this system, with their politicians unwilling or unable (or both) to address the problems. Some of the more able and mobile just emigrate, and we are already seeing a serious brain drain again, but most people can't just leave, they have commitments here, or don't want to uproot and move to a strange new place. So the UK socio-economy is effectively a fairly well-sealed system, only slightly leaky (in fact, with the added pressures caused by immigration, it is worse than that, with an effective one-way valve). Pressure can build and build in a sealed container with little obvious activity until it reaches a certain level, and then a sudden release occurs.
I believe that we are not very far away from a backlash. This is not a party politics issue -many people don't like the existing government and think they are incompetent, but have little faith in the opposition either. They are very disillusioned with our supposed leaders, of all flavours. But while the British population is notoriously tolerant, and will put up with huge amounts of discomfort before saying or doing anything, there is a breaking point.
When people feel that they are being steadily squeezed from all directions, that their own needs are seemingly always ignored, that their government seems to treat them as an enemy, that their own quality of life has been eroded by legislation and taxation for too long, so that they feel abused, neglected, and that in spite of all their best efforts they can no longer sustain a reasonable quality of life, then they no longer feel any allegiance to the state, nor any civil duty to stay calm and respect the authorities.
The pressures are not just financial. People are certainly feeling much poorer, although they are working harder. But there is also an increasing perception of too much state-imposed cultural change. There is too much uncontrolled immigration. There is too much surveillance, too much erosion of privacy. There is too much serious crime, while the police and local authorities pay most of their attention on minor offences by the largely law-abiding majority, such as speeding offences, or leaving a bin lid open. In short, the state has become too big, too invasive, too controlling, too expensive, and coupled with serious and frequent incompetence, that is rapidly building resentment in middle class Britain. The state is becoming people's enemy instead of their friend.
We saw disorder during the poll tax mishandling in the 80s. There were many demonstrations and some violence. But technology has moved on more than a little, and it is a better educated class that is affected this time. The potential for organising rebellion via today's and future IT is vastly greater. My own perception is that we are now about 2 to 3 years away from a serious backlash, which will include widespread and well coordinated civil disobedience, demonstrations, and probably significant violence.
Such widespread and effective disruption will of course have enormous implications across the board. We should expect some major changes in government policy to be imposed by a new government, a wholesale redesign of taxation and welfare, reforms of the public services and the pay and conditions for public sector workers, and generally a great deal of legislation abolished or rewritten.
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