Rising living costs, political scandals and growing inequality dominated the headlines in the past year. Trust in institutions is slipping, while online misinformation and polarised culture wars are fuelling division.
Against this backdrop, it’s natural to ask if we are witnessing the collapse of UK society, and if it’s possible to turn things around.
Social cycle theory suggests that societies move through cycles of growth, stability, decline and renewal. Western democracies have faced crises before, moments of fear and uncertainty that tested their resilience and left a shadow on society.
Looking back at these turning points can help us understand what’s happening now and how we move forward.
1905 and the politics of panic
In 1905, Britain passed the Aliens Act, its first law restricting immigration – ending its open-door approach and legitimising the notion of the ‘undesirable immigrant’.
It targeted European Jewish refugees fleeing persecution, portraying them as a threat to jobs, housing and national identity. This wasn’t just about public anxiety; it was a political strategy. Leaders deflected attention from their own structural failures, such as poor housing, exploitative labour markets and inadequate welfare provision, by blaming vulnerable newcomers.
While the Aliens Act contained some asylum provisions, its main legacy was exclusion. For arriving Jewish families, the reality was harsh – cramped living conditions, hostility from unions and a legal framework that legitimised prejudice. This episode shows how law can hardwire discrimination into governance, when fear is weaponised.
Lesson: Scapegoating is often engineered to mask deeper systemic failings. Policy and law written in (often manufactured) panic can be used to manage the moment, but it also overshadows generations.
The 1970s: Far right on the streets, hope in communities
Economic turmoil in the 1970s (unemployment, inflation and strikes) created fertile ground for the far-right National Front to seize the moment. Its marches and propaganda again channelled anger away from structural failures, including policies which favoured deindustrialisation and those which led to housing shortages, and blamed migrants for job losses and social decline, turning anger into a political weapon.
However, this period also demonstrated how communities and broader society can push back. Grassroots movements, trade unions and cultural campaigns such as Rock Against Racism mobilised thousands, turning music, art and protest into tools of resistance. Beyond countering hate, these coalitions reframed the narrative, insisting that inequality and poor governance, not immigration, were the real culprits.
Lesson: When politics drifts toward division, civil society can pull it back. Culture, organising and everyday solidarity matter when polarisation spikes.
Culture wars (1990s onwards): Don’t misdiagnose the illness
Since the 1990s, as neoliberal reforms deepened inequality and austerity reshaped public life, cultural conflict has increasingly been weaponised as a political tool.
Polarisation dominates headlines, but research shows much of today’s culture war is manufactured and amplified by political actors and algorithms, and not a clash of values in society.
Issues like climate action or racial justice are framed as existential threats, while structural drivers of insecurity, like low wages, housing shortages and weakened welfare, are sidelined.
This misdiagnosis is convenient for elites and opportunists, who deflect scrutiny from policy failures by turning economic pain into cultural grievance and individual responsibility. Social media accelerates the cycle, rewarding outrage and deepening divides.
Lesson: Renewal depends on naming the real problem. Treating inequality and democratic erosion as cultural disputes offers no real solutions and simply leaves the root causes untouched. Resilience starts with structural honesty.
From key workers to villains: Gig workers and migrants face the sharp edge of post-COVID-19 enforcement
During the pandemic, delivery riders and gig workers were hailed as ‘essential’. Yet recent crackdowns and ongoing targeting of migrant workers show how scapegoating has once again become a convenient hiding place for policy failure. The very workers who kept economies moving, now face hostility, isolation and exclusion.
It is easier to blame the vulnerable than regulate those shifting responsibility and risk and extracting profit through exploitation. Under the banner of illegal work, enforcement focuses on asylum seekers and migrants in precarious jobs, while companies escape accountability for worsening conditions.
Lesson: When policy zeroes in on illegal work without tackling exploitation, low wages and opaque algorithmic management, the most vulnerable pay the highest price, and trust erodes further. Renewal cannot be built on such foundations. Protecting dignity and rights for those at the sharpest edge of crisis is not peripheral; it is central to democratic health.
Technology and truth
Since 2016, populist movements have exploited digital platforms to increase division; first through targeted ads and misinformation, and increasingly through AI-generated content and deepfakes which blur reality and corrode trust.
While evidence of direct electoral impact is limited, the wider harm is clear; a world where truth feels negotiable.
Fatalism (where everything is declared ‘fake’ if it doesn’t fit a populist narrative) only deepens the problem.
Lesson: Renewal in the digital age means protecting truth for everyone. This goes beyond fair elections – it means building systems that protect democratic conversations from manipulation.
Practical steps to tackle fatalism include clear rules for campaign conduct, rapid verification and fact-checking and improving media literacy, but these require political will and investment.
History shows decline isn’t destiny
History reminds us that collapse touches all civilisations in some form, but it also teaches that decline need not be destiny. Renewal follows crisis when societies confront the realities of policy failure and reject division and convenience.
It comes when success means improving life for the most vulnerable, not just benefitting the few, and when scapegoating stops and people work together to fix problems caused by years of harmful economic choices.
These are the principles which once underpinned the so‑called golden age of capitalism in the UK and US. Today, they must begin with those at the sharpest edge of decline, including people living in poverty, whose lives have been most brutally shaped by austerity, stigma and scapegoating – notably gig and platform workers (and others in precarious forms of work), migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, disabled people and those with the least protection, for whom safety and dignity are not side issues but the foundation of democratic health.
These lessons from history offer us three practical steps:
- Diagnose honestly. Inequality and insecurity are core drivers of economic anxiety. Global research on migration and development shows that scapegoating offers little in terms of answers and meaningful change. Rather, adopting other cultures is a natural process which happens over generations, countering claims that identity must fracture with migration.
- Protect rights and dignity as the floor for reform. When governments flirt with ‘bonfires of rights’, it may briefly please the divisive headline pushers, but it weakens trust and social protections we all rely on. Renewal rests on inclusive communities, stable rights, fair work and accessible public services.
- Invest in democratic transparency and sustainability. Independent institutions, engaged civil society and rules that limit the worst online harms are just some of the ways we can strengthen democracies against populist shocks.
If this is our apex of decline, our best chance of meaningful renewal comes from tackling root causes, ending division and distraction, and committing to honesty and transparency in policy and daily civic life.
David Dahill, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for People, Work and Organisational Practice, Nottingham Business School
Maranda Ridgway, Associate Professor of People and Inclusion, Nottingham Business School
Bristol University Press/Policy Press newsletter subscribers receive a 25% discount – sign up here.
Follow Transforming Society so we can let you know when new articles publish.
The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Policy Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
Image credit: Adrian Raudaschl via Unsplash