Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

Once the Tory-led coalition began to force through its austerity agenda, the strain that immigration allegedly imposed on the NHS and social services provided a lightning rod. Britain’s lopsided growth added further to the sense of frustration. Whereas the production sectors of the UK economy—manufacturing, construction, etc.—stagnated, between 2010 and 2014 financial services surged ahead by 12.4 percent.11 Driven by the wealth of the City, in London and its environs, house prices rocketed by 50 percent between 2013 and 2016, spectacularly outstripping growth in the rest of the country. London was the cosmopolitan global city par excellence, the preferred home of oligarchs. In economic terms “rebalancing” was a myth. In political terms it was not. Across much of the UK, London’s cosmopolitan affluence aroused a deep antipathy.