Andy Beckett's Blog, page 11

Striking workers are providing the opposition that Britain desperately needs | Andy Beckett

The strikes are gaining momentum, and public opinion is behind them – could they transform our economic landscape?

In Britain, more than in most democratic countries, going on strike is a risk. Your employer, the government, most of the media, much of the public and often the opposition parties are likely to be against you – or, at best, unsupportive. Your loss of income is unlikely to be made up by strike pay. Your behaviour on the picket line will be subject to what Tony Blair described approvingly in 1997 as “the most restrictive” trade union laws “in the western world”.

In very public ways, you will be breaking the rules of the modern economy: refusing to work, inconveniencing consumers, acting collectively rather than individually, and making demands for more money openly – rather than in private, as more powerful people do. If you are on the left, you are likely to be told again and again that your strike is politically counterproductive.

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Look around, the Great Conservative Experiment has failed in the UK | Andy Beckett

Beneath the bluster and big promises, Conservative rule has become no more than shifting the blame for Britain’s problems

This country is in crisis. So say the opposition parties, most of the media and, increasingly, the evidence of our own eyes. With transport chaos, seemingly out-of-control inflation, constant political scandals, a sinking currency, a fragmenting United Kingdom, worsening public finances, struggling public services and a wave of strikes that may last months, this country is no longer the stable, successful state it often claims to be.

It may not be time to panic quite yet. Proud, old countries that used to have empires – France is another – can suffer periods of decline and self-doubt while, for many people, remaining good places to live by global or past standards. Plenty of Britons will have been muttering to themselves this week about the country going to the dogs, while enjoying everyday comforts their ancestors could only have dreamed of. During this week’s tube strike, the hot streets of London were crawling with air-conditioned SUVs.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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A bike, a skateboard or the Elizabeth line? It depends where you want society to go | Andy Beckett

Though people have new, often liberating ways to travel singly, it is shared, publicly funded services that weld us together

In a lot of ways, cities are about movement. Commuting, cultural visits, consumer binges, social trips or just staring out of the bus window, feeling part of the flow: motion makes urban life fulfilling, sometimes very tiring and occasionally sublime. Over recent years, without much discussion, the way we move around cities has changed. The change started before the pandemic, but Covid accelerated it, and it has continued as the pandemic has apparently receded.

Since 2010, the UK has acquired bike-hire schemes and Ubers, more than 1 million electric bikes and electric scooters, and a fleet of other personal transport solutions, from electric skateboards to bikes with trailers. A whole new world of what transport theorists call micromobility, some of it backed by corporations, not all of it legal, has appeared on urban roads.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Rampant inflation breaks the status quo – no wonder the government is spooked | Andy Beckett

Soaring prices are familiar to older Britons. But their return could lead a fragile, divided country into uncharted territory

When a government pinches a key opposition policy it has spent months deriding, and which goes directly against its ideology, you know something pretty big is going on. The Tories’ screeching U-turn over a windfall tax on energy companies in order to fund payments to “ease” the cost of living crisis is in part a typically crude attempt to change the subject from Partygate. But it is also a more revealing signal: that the government has, belatedly, become very worried about the politics of inflation.

It is right to be. For a lot of voters, many of them Tories, high inflation is very frightening. Savings shrivel. Pay rises are rarely enough. Investing safely seems impossible. State benefits are even less sufficient than usual. Luxuries, small treats and even essentials become unaffordable. The whole process of personal enrichment promised by capitalism goes into reverse. The solidity of money – the basis for so much of our lives – is revealed as an illusion. It becomes clear that money can decay, like everything else.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Boris Johnson rose on promises of a glorious future. Now all he has left is a painful present | Andy Beckett

From Brexit to ‘Boris Island’, he made a career out of vague, eye-popping plans that have all turned to dust

The future used to be Boris Johnson’s great friend. During his many years manoeuvring for the Tory leadership, he used fantastical building proposals such as the “Boris Island” airport to keep his national fame alive. During the dominant first phase of his premiership, he won over voters with huge promises about Brexit. And he persuaded a party that had been in power for a decade – usually too long – that its best days in government were still to come.

In a country that often feels weighed down by the past and gloomy about its prospects, Johnson’s relentless optimism was unusual and powerful. After believing for years that politicians could achieve little, many Britons persuaded themselves that he would be different, despite his terrible record as a minister and lack of significant achievements as mayor of London. Any democracy needs periodic infusions of belief from voters if it is not to collapse into total cynicism and apathy, and the personality cult of “Boris” provided one. To millions of voters, he was a superhero who would somehow transform the country.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Keir Starmer the grownup needs to rediscover the radical youth he once was | Andy Beckett

The Labour leader hopes his sober, moderate image will take him to No 10. But a nation in need of change demands more of him

Keir Starmer is a grownup. He is serious, capable, responsible, authoritative and realistic – or so he and Labour would like us to believe. Ever since he became leader, two years ago this month, one of his main goals has been to present himself as a much-needed political adult: repairing the damage done to the party by the supposed perpetual adolescent Jeremy Corbyn; poised to rescue the country from the naughty schoolboy Boris Johnson.

From his strict suits and haircut to his no-frills speaking style and carefully researched Commons questions, Starmer has sought to come across as a sober prime minister in waiting, a reassuring figure in troubled times. He is 59, and if Labour wins the next election, he is likely to be the oldest successful candidate for prime minister since Harold Macmillan in 1959. It’s almost possible to imagine Starmer as a politician back in those more stable times.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The Tories profited from Labour ‘chaos’ in the 1970s. Can Starmer do the same now? | Andy Beckett

Labour must hammer the message home that these are the worst of times, and pin the blame squarely on Boris Johnson

In a usually stable country like Britain, how periods of crisis are portrayed and remembered is a very powerful political weapon. For nearly half a century, the turmoil of the 1970s and the sense that the decade’s governments couldn’t cope have been used by the Conservatives to argue that Labour is never truly fit for office. Despite the relative competence of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s premierships – a competence that Keir Starmer aspires to now – the association between Labour governments and chaos has never been completely broken.


This picture of the 1970s is highly selective. The decade also brought many Britons greater freedom and equality, and the Conservatives were in power for almost half of it. But these realities have not lessened the influence of the Tory narrative. Constantly presented by rightwing newspapers, politicians and historians, it has a powerful simplicity. For the many voters who have seen post-imperial Britain as a country in decline, Labour’s struggling 1970s prime ministers have been perfect scapegoats.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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From the archive: Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs – podcast

We are raiding the Audio Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2018: Work has ruled our lives for centuries, and it does so today more than ever. But a new generation of thinkers insists there is an alternative. By Andy Beckett

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Betraying old friends, making new enemies: the Tories have lost the plot | Andy Beckett

Treating group after group of voters as expendable is a luxury the Conservatives may not be able to afford

Boris Johnson’s government loves to boast. Often it seems to do little else. Talking up its achievements, real or not, gives the impression of momentum where there is more often chaos and indecision – as there was this week, with the government twice changing its position on LGBT conversion practices. With a prime minister not known for his administrative abilities, and yet many voters and newspapers still invested in the idea that the Tories are the natural party of government, for today’s Conservatives, constant bragging plays a crucial distracting role.

One of the government’s more potent claims is that it represents a wider range of Britons than its predecessors. In some ways, this is actually true. Johnson has a bigger majority, drawn from more parts of England and Wales – if not Scotland – than any Tory government since the early 90s. Most strikingly, he has a more multiracial cabinet than any previous prime minister.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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How the British upper class came to serve the global elite | Andy Beckett

Who better to understand the needs of global capitalism’s mega-rich than Britons who grew up with staff themselves?

Britain is good at wealth. Not necessarily at generating it, or distributing it in ways that make a contented society, but at looking after it, helping it grow and making it respectable – converting it into social and cultural capital. For centuries, British bankers, lawyers, accountants and other assistants to the wealthy have discreetly performed these roles.

Their customers used to be mostly British: slave traders, self-made industrialists, people who had extracted fortunes from our colonies. But in recent decades, foreigners have become the main beneficiaries of Britain’s readiness to serve the rich regardless of how they made their money. So significant is this change that Britain has become “butler to the world”, according to a persuasive new book by the anti-corruption campaigner and journalist Oliver Bullough.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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