The Economy of the UK Is in Serious Trouble

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The problem with the UK is that it is run by billionaires for billionaires, most of them are not even British.

Sadly with each passing day we can see the impact this awful policy has had on the UK. Tied up in red tape and tariffs with lower GDP than before the pandemic whilst the others in the G7, including Italy, are above. The lower GDP means we do not have the headroom to pay our way in the world and must resort to borrowing.Whilst there are rich people in the UK; a great many of us are poor and now we are poorer still. What steps can we take to generate more income during quantitative adjustment?

The UK didn't really learn from the financial crisis. They thought it was a temporary blip on the never ending gravy train of banking and financial services. Austerity destroyed any chance it had of reshaping the economy to be more diversified and solid. When it was apparent the world had moved on from deregulated banking as a bedrock of the economy it was left behind. Couple this with being a huge import economy with a weakening currency and actively voting to make importing more difficult and a government who still blindly believes everything is going fine and we are where we are.

London cannot ruin Britain. It achieved that decades, if not centuries ago. London has always behaved as if it is a separate state rather than the capital city, and the North-South divide has been an issue from before the Industrial Revolution. The government is full of platitudes about levelling up, but achieves little. Politicians generally see little benefit from levelling up. They may be, supposedly, the representatives of the whole country, but their every thought is influenced by the Londoncentric way that the country is run.

Unfortunately, the video doesn't comment much on regional inequality at all, which I was expecting from the thumbnail, premise or introduction. Otherwise, it's a nice case study.

For as long as I can remember the UK economy has been in serious trouble (I'm 59) I asked my 94-year-old dad if he remembered a time when the UK was not in crisis...he couldn't....

Much of the wealth in UK, especially London, lies in property. At some point, the penny will drop and people will realise that London is overvalued as a place to work and live and when that happens and property prices plummet, there will be a huge drop in national wealth across the board

As an American who moved here for his British wife, here's my perspective: As an IT professional with >20 years experience, the wages for those jobs are abysmal in the UK as compared to the US. Friends I have spoken to across the entire professional spectrum all say the same. The salaries offered elsewhere are more appealing for the same work. It is brain drain, pure and simple. Then you compound the decades of under-building and the housing shortage and you're just constantly fighting this unnecessary uphill battle. We're moving out of country in 2024.

France and Spain have both managed to create regional centres. Places you visit that feel significant and of importance; Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyon or Bilbao, Santander, Seville. Good infrastructure investment and good regional politics with local decision making seems key.

Trying to get investment for a technology company in Scotland (or anywhere not London) goes like: "why not in London?", "Because the company is in Scotland and most of the demand and opportunity for wealth growth via the investment is in Scotland", "oh" (and in one particular case this was an Aussie investor too) And foreign investment in London typically means the assets and revenue will in the future not be via the UK (usually moves to the US), so it literally extracts wealth from the whole UK on average.

This was not really as insightful as I expected as someone who actually works in financial services in London. Agree with the comments that say this should talk more about the other regions in the UK

We should point out that our current PM was one of the investment bankers directly responsible for kicking off the 08 crash

Governments need to realize focusing so much on financial services in pursuit of immediate gdp growth is short sighted. The British government should exist to serve the British people, not to serve gdp growth

Economies heavily reliant on a single industry, such as finance in the UK, oil in Venezuela, and tourism in Spain, will always be prone to instability and vulnerability to global market changes. In the UK, post-Brexit, this problem of over-reliance is often overshadowed in media discourse by a focus on low-skilled migrants, ignoring the critical need for economic diversification and the reluctance of high-skilled migrants to relocate there. Neither the Conservative nor Labour parties have adequately addressed this diversification issue. The UK government’s move from an Industrial Strategy to a new Plan for Growth post-Brexit raises further doubts about their commitment to a diversified economic future.

I’m a long time fan of your content I must say as an economics channel, advertising an investment platforms rubs me slightly the wrong way

Osaka use to be called the Manchester of the east, it has since overtaken - Osaka's current GDP per capita is around $59k vs Manchester $37k.

Productivity has been in decline in the UK since the mid-nineties. Its been overdependent on financial services for decades, whilst the rest of Europe had grown a deep culture of mid-sized businesses, manufacturing, managment and business process expertise. Faced with the question about productivity, outside of finance, no one in the UK really knows how to go about this and what it would take. It will be a long road to get there...

London has been toxic to the average Brit for centuries. We're seeing more devolution now but it's almost too little too late. I'm from Birmingham, what was once an international city. A little known fact was that the UK Government, concerned about the size and success of Birmingham, introduced the Distribution of Industry Act and something called the ‘Brown Ban,’ attempted to shift industrial and office activity away from the city to other parts of the country. My city suffered. Business relocated and London swallowed everything. It's a real shame.

The thing is, London is so absurdly expensive that few Londoners even get to enjoy the extra money.