Affluenza: the new British disease

Britain’s body politic is sometimes struck down by illness. From the 1960s it was “the sick man of Europe”, lagging its continental peers. In the 1970s it suffered from the “British disease”, when stagnation and maniac trade unions laid the country low. Now a form of “affluenza” is the malady of the age. Britain combines the obligations and expectations of a wealthy country with the means of one that is much less rich than it thinks.

Affluenza is a cross-partisan affliction. Those with the most bombastic approach to Britain’s affluence are often found on the left, where any spending pledge is justified by the statistic that Britain is “the sixth-richest economy in the world”. The NHS can have more money; benefits can always be increased. As an argument, it is absurd. Few accept that since India is the fifth-biggest economy in the world it should have a more generous welfare state than Britain. The figure that matters is income per person. Britain is poorer than its near neighbours on this basis. The first step for curing affluenza? Swap “sixth-richest economy in the world” for “significantly poorer than Belgium”.

The new British disease is the cause of the country’s biggest screw-ups. Brexit was a decision of an affluenza-riddled nation. Warnings that it would leave Britain poorer were borne out. Not that voters refused to believe them; rather, they did not care. Affluence leads to the sort of carelessness F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about in “The Great Gatsby”, creating people who “smashed up things…and then retreated back into their money”. Affluenza breeds recklessness without the cash to protect against the consequences. Outside the EU, Britain is poorer—but no happier.

Since Britain is an inevitably affluent place in the minds of its voters, they enthusiastically support permanent spending with little thought. The triple lock guarantees that the state pension increases by the higher of inflation, earnings or 2.5%. Although introduced in only 2010, it is an immovable fixture. At the moment the state pension is £12,000 ($16,100) a year. By 2070 the state pension is set to be worth about £30,000 in today’s money, according to the Centre for British Progress, a think-tank. To its defenders, the triple lock is the price of a civilised society. To its critics, it puts public spending on an unsustainable path. It is a promise that could be offered only by those bamboozled by affluenza.

The illness affects even matters of state, where the government should be at its most realistic. Affluenza is at the heart of Britain’s defence policy, which still cannot decide whether it wishes to play a global role. Military obligations pile up quickly, while the means to meet them lag far behind, even as Sir Keir Starmer pledges to increase defence spending to 3% of gdp by the next parliament. And so a British aircraft-carrier can sail serenely through the Singapore Strait, while land wars break out in Europe and Russian boats decide which cables to slice in the North Sea.

Vast one-off cheques are written without protest, like a rich man offering a credit card before even looking at the bill. Britain is in the middle of atoning for a colossal sin in which 30,000 adults and children were infected with diseases ranging from hepatitis C to hiv. Compensation of £12bn is being paid. But what is the going rate for accidentally giving a child HIV? Better to go with what the judge said. It is more than other countries offered, but so what? Britain can afford to ignore such awkward questions. We are an affluent society, albeit one with a debt-to-gdp ratio of 96%.

Affluenza can lead to lifestyle creep. Britain’s infrastructure costs are among the world’s highest. Capital budgets may have been constrained for decades, yet somehow only deluxe versions of infrastructure end up getting built. The travails of HS2, the high-speed rail line from London to Birmingham, are well known. A 1km tunnel to protect a few hundred bats at a cost of over £120m is one of Britain’s most famous building sites. Other costs were added to protect another endangered species: Tory voters. Billions were spent digging 16km of tunnels through the Chiltern Hills. A huge obligation—vast infrastructure for purely aesthetic reasons—was signed off by a Conservative government whose project was deficit reduction. Affluenza can addle even the most tight-fisted.

A common way to alleviate the symptoms of affluenza is resorting to an accounting trick. Britain’s government makes bold promises that other parts of the state must pay for. Such “unfunded mandates” were once an American affliction, but have become a British condition. Sweeping obligations—such as for care for the elderly—are set by the government, but the money to deal with them never follows.

Eventually, caring for the elderly comes out of the pothole budget and voters are left wondering why the streets of “the sixth-richest economy in the world” look such a mess. To a healthy onlooker, it is the consequence of a state that refuses to account honestly for what it promised. For those suffering from affluenza, it is proof that money is being somehow mislaid or misspent. The idea that money is being wasted is far more comforting than the recognition that it was never there.

A politics built for affluence struggles in a time of scarcity. The idea that people must pay more for (at best) the same is anathema to voters suffering from affluenza. Britain’s political parties are unwilling to dole out medicine. Neither the Conservative Party nor Reform uk is able to say what obligations the state would ditch to save money. Meanwhile, Britain’s left-wing parties insist spending can increase by a little (in the case of Labour) or a lot (in the case of the Greens) without broad-based taxes rising. The affluenza fever shows no sign of breaking. Before it can get better, Britain must do one thing: accept it is sick. ■