MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's take a step back for a few minutes and talk a bit more about why voters in the U.K. are so frustrated with their political leaders that they've gone through six prime ministers in 10 years. Idrees Kahloon has a theory about that in a new piece just out in The Atlantic titled "How Britain Became As Poor As Mississippi." He's also the former Washington bureau chief for the UK-based publication The Economist. Good morning. Thanks so much for joining us.
IDREES KAHLOON: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: You point out in the piece that outside the areas where a lot of tourists may go, living standards have fallen hard and fast. And this is not a century-old problem, but a relatively recent one. I mean, you write that shortly before the global financial crisis hit in 2007, incomes were up. The pound was strong. London was becoming the center of global banking. So what happened? I mean, you call it self-sabotage.
KAHLOON: The problem is, after the financial crisis, Britain stopped growing. Wages after inflation stayed flat for almost 18 years. You know, that's an incredible period of stagnation. And there were a lot of problems that caused it. But, you know, this preceded Brexit - it's important to note. You know, wages had been flat almost 10 years before Brexit happened, and they've been flat in the 10 years since.
You know, the decisions taken by the government after the financial crisis was to cut spending on benefits, cut spending on welfare, borrow from the capital budget for the health service, all of which led to lower growth, all of which led to anger, which, in turn, led to the Brexit vote. And since then, there have other - been other problems with the housing market, inability to build infrastructure, all of which has led to the U.K. having an economy that's really fallen behind the rest of the industrial world.
MARTIN: You know, the Conservative Party was in power between 2010 and 2024. And obviously, you know, Conservatives were split over Brexit. David Cameron was against it, but he called for the vote. He resigned when he lost, which, you know, he should have done. But does that mean that Conservatives were - are mainly responsible, or is this a problem of both parties?
KAHLOON: So this was the argument that Labour made in 2024 when Keir Starmer was elected with that huge majority - that the Tories had been in charge for 14 years. The Tories had broken Britain because they had called this Brexit referendum to hold off the far right. It had been a gamble that failed. They then implemented it. They did it poorly. Inflation increased on their watch. Living standards stagnated on their watch. And their argument was that if the right people are in charge, all of this will fix itself.
Well, the fact that Keir Starmer has now resigned less than two years into or just about two years into his premiership, despite the parliamentary majority, proves that it's actually not that simple, that actually there are deep problems that the U.K. has - a budget that is very tight, debt that's very high, these structural problems and their inability to build housing, inability to build infrastructure that predate the Tories to some extent but also have not really been fixed.
So, you know, Burnham is, you know, the new guy on the block. He's coming in as an outsider. But really, the importance of his election when it does happen, which seems inevitable at this point, is that he's probably the last chance of either the Labour or the Conservative Party to have someone in charge before Britain turns power over to Nigel Farage, who's leading the Reform Party, which is the right-wing nationalist party which is now at the top of the polls.
MARTIN: Does he - does - look, obviously, this is a complicated problem. We don't have time to dig into all of it here. But does Farage actually have ideas that resonate? Or is it a situation where, you know, he hates the same people that we hate, and so therefore - or is it the other parties don't seem to have fixed the problem, so why not try something new?
KAHLOON: So it's a bit of, you know, the Labor and Conservative Party have failed, so why not try something new? But it is backed up with some ideas about how they would sweep away a lot of the rules and regulations that have been put into place in the U.K. But their argument is essentially that, you know, these people have been in charge for too long. We need to vote the bums out.
You know, I don't know what the drain-the-swamp equivalent is in the U.K., but it's a very similar argument to that. And it's very persuasive in the sense that they're leading the polls. They're one of the few parties that's not been either Labour or Conservative to ever even top the polls. And if an election were held today, they probably get close to a majority in parliament and be in a very good chance of forming a government, which is why they're agitating for a general election even though it probably won't happen.
MARTIN: So before we let you go, are there lessons for the U.S., do you think, as a person who's done reporting on both sides of the Atlantic?
KAHLOON: Yeah. I mean, you know, America has been blessed with very high economic growth over this period, especially compared to our peers. But, you know, the determinants of that growth are within the government's control to adjust. And, you know, it's important to be very careful in terms of what kind of rules you put into place, what kind of regulations you put into place and to make sure that - you know, not to take growth for granted, you know, 'cause it's very sensitive to economic policymaking, as the U.K. has shown.
MARTIN: That is Idrees Kahloon. He's a staff writer for The Atlantic. Thanks so much for joining us.
KAHLOON: Thanks for having me.
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