Our national decline is even worse than the British public think.
Incredibly, many voters assume we are as rich – or richer – than America
There’s a whiff of the 1970s in the current depressing state of Britain: the same gloom, the same sense of economic malaise, the same doubts about politicians’ ability to master our problems. But there is one big difference – where we thought we stood in the world.
Back in the Seventies everyone knew that Britain was the sick man of Europe. Britain’s decline was a commonplace of debate. It was brought viscerally home to me on my first school exchange trip to the then West Germany in 1980.
There the buildings were cleaner, the cars were smarter, the goods in the shops were a world away from the shabby supermarkets I was used to. It was just a wealthier, more successful society. Everyone knew it. And it was that feeling of national failure, a sense that something just had to be done, that helped drive the Thatcher revolution.
Unfortunately our national decline is not so clear to British voters now. You can see that from a report we at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) are publishing today entitled (with a deliberate question mark) A Growth Mindset? It’s based on a big new poll and focus group studies, conducted by Freshwater Strategy with the support of the John Templeton Foundation, and it tries to gauge voters’ opinions about where Britain stands in the world and what is needed to make us prosperous again.
The report bears a full reading, and we will be briefing all political parties about the results shortly. But one aspect is particularly interesting. We asked participants where they thought Britain stood economically compared to our main competitors. It turns out voters are living in a dreamworld.
Nearly half of British voters think that we are as rich, or richer, than Switzerland. Over half think we are as rich or richer than Australia, Singapore, or Germany. And, incredibly, over half of us think Britain is as rich as, or richer, than the United States.
The truth of course is that we are poorer than all those countries – according to the IMF, we are10 per cent poorer than Germany, 20 per cent poorer than Australia, about 40 per cent poorer than America or Singapore (remember all those “Singapore-on-Thames” scare stories? If only), and only half as rich as the Swiss.
We asked our focus groups what they made of this. The dominant reactions were shock, surprise, disappointment, and embarrassment. “It’s kind of shocking to think actually we’re quite a lot lower down than expected,” said one participant. Another commented: “The UK is quite well known as being quite a wealthy country, so it did surprise me.” Another said: “I was quite surprised and a little bit angry.” People were particularly shocked to hear that Poland was on track to overtake Britain in a few years – a “real eye-opener”, as one put it.
In a way, this is in itself surprising. After all, most voters rightly think that the British economy is going downhill fast. In our poll, two thirds describe the British economy as “poor” and 40 per cent think it has no strengths at all. So why would people believe we were doing better than America?
My explanation is that most people never see the contrast. It’s easy for the establishment class to overestimate how much international travel most people do (one reason, of course, why they keep moaning about post-Brexit passport queues, a matter of sublime indifference to most).
Over half of UK citizens take no flights at all in a given year, and the average number of overseas trips is one or two. Overwhelmingly most go to the European countries comparable to or even slightly poorer than the UK, such as Spain, France and Italy. Hardly anyone visits the wealthier places like Germany, and very few travel outside Europe – a hundred times as many Brits go to Spain every year as to Australia.
The result is that most voters are never directly exposed to the huge contrasts in wealth so apparent in the figures. Very few will have experiences like mine in Germany in 1980. Yet it takes feeling the difference, understanding what a wealthy society looks like, to ram the reality home.
If it can’t happen through travel, then our politicians have to take the lead, just as they had to in the 1970s. The good news for them is that our polling showed that learning the truth shifts the mood among voters. From feeling things were bad but Britain was still respectably placed, participants started to realise the problem and wonder what policies they might accept to achieve faster growth. As one, initially sceptical about free-market policies, put it: “Nice to try something else. Who knows, we might end up being like America”.
Time for our politicians to get with the programme. Who knows, they might end up being able to deliver that change we all voted for.
- Total Debt: As of February 2026, the Public Sector Net Debt (excluding public sector banks) was provisionally estimated at £2,879.5 billion (£2.88 trillion).
- GDP Ratio: This amount of debt represents approximately 93.1% of the UK's annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
- Forecasts: Forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) suggest that debt will reach or exceed £3 trillion in 2026 before potentially rising higher in the coming years.
- Context: This level of debt is more than double the amount seen in the 1980s, largely driven by borrowing for the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and recent energy support measures. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Lord Frost led the negotiations that finally took Britain out of the EU in 2020. See more