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Image by Thomas Cole, public domain. Image cropped.

By Louise Perry, First Things, December Edition 2024

Louise Perry is the author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.

All politics is local, as they say. And so, before we proceed to the big question of this essay—Can modernity survive for much longer?—I want to start with a small one: Will the recent change of government make a difference to the people of Britain?

The recently departed Conservative government was sunk partly by a set of challenges that will be familiar to anyone in a high-income country—or, increasingly, a middle-income one. To start with, taxes are the highest they’ve been in generations, and yet the Conservatives felt compelled to keep funneling money towards health (20 percent of public spending) and pensions (10 percent of public spending) because both kinds of spending benefit their most reliable voting bloc. The Labour Party, in winning power, made exactly the same promises, and for exactly the same reason: the grey vote. This means that spending is not going to fall and neither will taxes, the under-housed and over-taxed young be damned. …

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