The United Kingdom’s public sector is in crisis. More than a decade of chronic underinvestment is now manifesting in threadbare public services delivered by an underpaid, overstretched workforce. What we’re witnessing is worse than postpandemic pressures — it’s the managed decline of the public sector itself.

The term “managed decline” is generally used to describe the deterioration of industries and places, not public services. Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor Geoffrey Howe infamously used it to describe why her government should effectively abandon the city of Liverpool during deindustrialization in the 1980s. But it could equally apply to government policy towards the public sector over recent decades.

The National Health Service (NHS) is a prime example. As the UK’s population grows older, public spending on health and social care needs to increase. But in the decade following the financial crash, the health service faced the most prolonged spending squeeze in history, forcing trusts to deprioritize investments in staff, infrastructure and prevention just to keep day-to-day services running. COVID accelerated and exacerbated the problems that built up as a result, leading to a growing backlog and heightened workforce pressures.