Thanks. To be more specific on what I’ve seen by YouTubers touring outside London is just boarded up shops, minimal economic hope, lots of abandoned homes again outside London. The narrative being essentially the de industrialization having now gutted the entire economy except for the well off and financial services etc. which of course shocked me cause I always pictured England as quite wealthy and having made that transition out of factory economy quite well. Which then led me to wonder if Britain is just just a few years ahead of the rest of us.
There are some high streets that are struggling, but that is mostly due to the move to online shopping and the rise of big retailers in different locations.
Unemployment has been low most of the past decade, although it is rising this year.
De-industrialisation is much exaggerated because there is a perception that the UK makes nothing because there are so few British branded consumer goods, but there are a lot of things made in the UK either foreign branded (e.g. Nissan cars) or parts or non-consumer goods (from drugs to satellites to get engines). While we are at the bottom end compared to other large developed economies, its only marginally so compare to, for example, France or Canada. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?end=2024...
I have lived in two English counties (Warwickshire and Cheshire) in the last few years, and have visited a lot of different places this summer (from Somerset to York to Liverpool to Cambridgeshire and a few other places) and overall its a pretty pleasant country to live in in terms of everyday life. A lot of places (Manchester and Coventry, for example) seem to have improved over the last decade or two.
That's the picture you'd get if there was an unemployment problem, but what we actually have is an aging population and a productivity problem: it's really telling that most people's idea of changing their working life for the better is in effect to move to a lower productivity role in the higher end of their market: Individually making and selling things, or having their own tiny influencer brand, or leaving a company to start a one-man business.
We have a housing deficit, so abandoned houses are unusual, and mostly in places where people are moving away.
However "having transitioned quite well out of the factory economy" is definitely too rosy. We did "what the market wanted" but it turns out the market is not a strategist. And we have too large a population to exist purely as an offshore financing hub.
The southeast of England is well-off, everywhere else is less so. It has basically always been like this. There have also obviously been repeated hammerblows since 2008, with austerity (which is still happening), Brexit (a remarkable self-own), and then covid (an unprecedented upwards transfer of wealth). The political and economic establishment is also essentially monopolar, a process begun with Blair and now approaching culmination.
People just don’t have the money to spend on things. Wage growth is non-existent and prices have risen dramatically. For my own part I have get a real “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” feeling. All we ever hear on the news is how spending will have to be cut yet again and taxes will have to go up.
Being from Northern Ireland I personally hope for unification with Ireland, although without significant changes I worry nothing much will change as Ireland has its own very similar issues.
One of big blows to the economy is uniquely British (Brexit) so others would not necessarily follow.