Shattered Nation
Danny Dorling, Verso, £14.99

THIS excellent book from Danny Dorling provides a comprehensive picture of the way in which the UK has effectively shattered as a functioning country.

Education, health, welfare, transport and the utilities have all been destroyed by the neoliberal creed of the market knows best, making it “a society that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”

The central thesis of Shattered Nation is how Britain has become one of the most unequal countries in the world. In Europe, it is second only to Bulgaria when it comes to inequality. Not that it was always thus — Britain was one of the most equal countries back in the 1970s. Income disparities were at their lowest in 1974.

Dorling adapts William Beveridge’s five evils from his famous 1940s report — want, squalor, idleness, ignorance and disease — for today. So, the new categories are hunger, procurity, waste, exploitation and fear.

The analysis of how things have and continue to break down is alarming. Also, the malaise that seems to stop the country breaking out of this mess.

The text is illuminated with a variety of alarming facts, such as that there are 66 million rooms available in the UK, 22 million of which are empty. Homelessness is the main cause of death for those in Oxford under 65.

Dorling does suggest solutions along the way, such as increasing the cost of owning second homes and providing rent controls and greater security of tenure.

He takes a very internationalist stance in the book, underlining that apart from the US, no other country is on this divisive path of destruction. Greater solidarity and cohesion is developing, particularly, among other European countries.

The closest any part of the UK comes to heading in such a direction is Scotland, where the limit on child benefit to the first two children does not exist, and rail and water are under public control. Nor do Scottish students have to pay university fees.

The splitting up of the UK seems an inevitability if the inequalities continue to grow and the society shatters.

Dorling also highlights a dysfunctional electoral system that saw the Conservatives gain an 80-seat majority in 2019, despite getting just 14 million votes. Some 17 million voted for other parties, whilst 23 million did not vote at all. The electoral system has to change.

This book provides a masterful critique of just why this country is in the shattered state it is. Austerity cost more lives than the Covid pandemic. The pandemic was handled so badly due to the inequalities of the society and fragmentation through privatisation of so many parts of the public sector.

A country as unequal as Britain is also more unhealthy, so a health emergency costs more to address than it would in a more equal country like, say, Finland.

The book also provides some pointers as to how things could be put right.

But the warnings are clear as to what will happen if Britain continues along this disastrous path. It will become an increasingly isolated island that operates in a situation of perpetual crisis. In the end, it simply won’t function at all.

There are messages for everyone in this book, none more than politicians across the board, most of whom seem determined to move ever more quickly toward the abyss. The message is that red lights are flashing, and it is time to act.