Unsung Britain: a wake up call over sliding living standards buried under Westminster drama
Despite the talk of wages stagnating, living standards falling, it was telling that as usual the media just wanted to know if Andy Burnham supported Keir Starmer.
On Tuesday, I attended the launch of the Resolution Foundation’s Unsung Britain report, a real wake-up call for anyone serious about the UK’s deeper economic malaise.
At its heart, the report challenged the idea that we’re on some broad path to recovery. Instead, it paints a picture of quiet, grinding stagnation for the 13 million working-age families living below the median income. These aren’t necessarily the very poorest households, more mainstream Britain: parents without secure, well-paid careers; workers putting in longer hours while pay barely covers the essentials; carers whose contribution doesn’t show up in GDP because it’s unpaid.
“Over the last generation, this segment of society has been quietly contributing a lot more to the economy (by working harder) and wider society (via more care, particularly of disabled adults),” The report notes. “And yet the rewards this group enjoys have not been adjusted in line with the rising effort.”
One of the most striking findings is just how dramatically the story of rising living standards has stalled. For decades up to the mid-2000s, low-to-middle income households saw steady growth in disposable income. Since around 2005, that progress has almost completely flatlined, shifting from incomes doubling roughly every 40 years to growth so weak that, at current rates, it could take more than 130 years to double again.
Held in Westminster, the conference felt like a window to voters’ everyday reality. Wages have barely moved in real terms, and benefits have been squeezed, so rising costs hit even harder. Work simply isn’t the reliable route to security it once was.
A couple of speakers really underlined issues that don’t always get the attention they deserve. Charlie Mayfield, who chaired the Keep Britain Working Review, reflected on his findings and urged employers to take a genuinely forward-thinking view of disability and accessibility. Too many workplaces are still stubbornly unprepared to integrate the millions whose contribution is limited not by ability but by physical or cognitive barriers.
Sarah Hughes, CEO from Mind, brought the focus to mental health, warning that the fallout from Covid hasn’t gone away. The pandemic deepened existing inequalities, left many people struggling quietly, and created economic costs that are only now starting to surface.
And then there was the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, delivering a keynote to a standing-room-only audience packed with journalists (I think we can all guess why). The timing was hard to ignore. Just days after Keir Starmer had faced one of the most destabilising weeks of his leadership, here was the man often tipped to succeed him, offering public support while pointedly urging the government to shift left. Irresistible political theatre.
Burnham called on the government to broaden its agenda to address the plight of the “underdog”, making a broader case for shifting economic priorities. “Our aim as a country should be very explicit: lower rents, lower water bills, lower energy bills, lower rail fares, lower bus fares,” he told the conference. “Recent events have drawn a heavy line under a political culture that was too close to wealth and power, and too distant from the people we’re talking about today.” He also stressed the importance of working with devolved powers and local authorities, stressing that meaningful change will require coordination across the UK’s patchwork system.
Inevitably, much of the coverage that followed focused on the political subplot rather than on the substance of the Unsung Britain findings themselves. There’s an irony there: a report about the millions whose struggles are routinely overlooked ended up partially eclipsed by Westminster psychodrama. And so the story goes.
What Tuesday’s conference ultimately showed is something simple but pretty profound. The political obsession with growth as the sole measure of progress is short-sighted. Without distribution, growth can leave millions behind, just as employment without quality leaves families permanently on edge. And as the Mayor of Greater Manchester made abundantly clear, policies divorced from everyday reality slowly corrode trust in politics itself.
Will the government listen? Who knows. But it’s certainly a lot harder to ignore the underdog when they’re being championed by your fiercest political rival.■
About the author: Zoë Grünewald is Westminster Editor at The Lead. She is a regular political commentator on TV and radio and a panellist on the Oh God What Now podcast.
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