The term "managed decline" when referred to Britain has been banded around for decades, ever since the end of the Second World War also marked the beginning of the end of its Empire. Joining the then EEC was about banding together with other European nations as a way to recognise the reality of Britain's diminished status as its Imperial status fell away. Since then, and in the last thirty years especially, Britain has seen a "restructuring" of the economy away from those sectors that effectively relied on its Imperial status for its survival and towards a service and finance-centred economy that was more dynamic to modern demands.
That "restructuring" is what the Tory Libertarians in government see as Britain's future. They see Britain outside the UK acting as a "Singapore-On-Thames", free from the shackles of EU regulation, free to trade with developing economies around the world; a "stripped-down" state that encourages its labour force to be forward-thinking and proactive about the country's challenges.
This vision is as delusional about the future as it is dishonest about the past. Just to name one example, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, is now talking about how the government ought to in the future grant subsidies to allow fields to return to their natural, wild state. As he claims, the CAP benefits wealthy landowners to provide perverse outcomes to agriculture. Thus, "Brexit Britain" will be about returning some of the countryside to its pre-industrial state.
This kind of policy would be considered laughable, except that this is a policy recommended by the chief minister responsible for agriculture. It is certainly true that the current rules benefit landowners; but to suggest that the answer would be for the government to pay for land to left deliberately unused is, for one, financial suicide from the government's point of view, and two, an utterly inefficient use of a commodity when the country will need to make money from all the land it can get after Britain leaves the EU. This "solution" also offers nothing on the much bigger issue of how much of the land in the UK is owned by a tiny number of people.
In other words, the government identifies a problem, then recommends the worst possible "solution". This has been a trend in this government for years. Other examples include the subsidies that the government pay to the privatised train companies (some of which are owned by foreign governments); the subsides paid to the privatised energy companies (some of which are also owned by foreign governments); the money now paid to universities by government in the form of student loans (much of which will remain unpaid) to pay for its policy of hugely-increased tuition fees. Then there are the numerous companies that the government "outsource" to in various capacities, from the justice system (prisons and detention centres), to the welfare system, and so on. These companies then almost always do the job that government did in a far more incompetent manner, because they have much tighter overheads to worry about (even with government assistance).
To pay for all this corporate largess, one solution the government came up with was "austerity". In the government's (false) narrative, the financial crisis was the result of the Labour government's overspending. Therefore, the Conservative government's main priority was to reduce government spending in any way it could. This also served the wider purpose of fitting in with the Libertarian agenda close to the heart of some in government, including those also in favour of Brexit. In this way, "austerity" was a means to an end: about permanently changing the perception in society that government was a reliable "safety net".
Cameron's idea of the "Big Society", formed prior to his conversion to the "austerity" agenda, was originally about the community helping out those in trouble, in order to help government. Instead, the "Big Society" under an "austerity" government has become a sick joke: where Food Banks are established in order to help those who cannot even afford to properly feed themselves (even those in work!), thanks to the government's own policies. In this manner, the government now praising the "Big Society" during a time of government-imposed austerity is a little like being attacked on the street, to then see the attacker later visiting the hospital where you are being treated for your injuries, in order to praise the staff for their work! The "austerity agenda" has spread into the welfare state, so that thanks to changes to disability assessment and the introduction of Universal Credit, more and more people are now unable to afford simple essentials, and some are homeless as well as starving.
A "failed state"?
In this way, aspects of Britain under the Conservative government have took on the appearance of a "failed state": where the government has effectively wiped its hands clean of whole areas of civil government and social welfare. Local governments are now deliberately starved of cash, with the result that essentials like bin collection and street lighting (without even mentioning the closing of "non-essential" things like local libraries) have been downgraded due to lack of money. Parts of the country look increasingly grubby and ill-maintained precisely because central government refuses to provide the cash. Meanwhile, the nakedly-visible increase of homelessness seen on the streets is the marker of a government that is failing its citizens.
Bear in mind again, these are conscious decisions by central government: they are choosing to do this. The money could be found if it wanted it; it simply chooses not to find it, and chooses to allow these services to wither.
In other areas such as policing and the prison service, cuts to funding have a direct consequence on public safety: the increase in violence and street crime is there for all to see, while the police state openly that certain crimes (like petty theft) will go un-investigated because they simply lack the resources. In prisons, violence is reaching levels closer to those seen in the developing world, rather than those expected for a G7 country.
Meanwhile cuts to defence also have reduced the country's ability to even properly monitor its own borders, let alone its involvement in overseas engagements. Vanity projects like the huge aircraft carriers now being put into service simply act as concrete evidence that the government is more interested in vain distractions than the reality of Britain's pygmy-like status on the military front, compared to its rivals.
The "austerity agenda" has now morphed into the "Brexit Agenda" since the referendum, but the goals are almost identical, in terms of its internal impact on the country.
The Libertarians in government behind the "austerity agenda" are the same people behind "Hard Brexit". They believe in a stripped-down state because their faith in the free market comes above all else, and clouds their judgement over the positive effects that government can have on society. Because they believe that free market will always do things better than government, it follows that for their agenda to succeed, "government", by definition, must be seen to "fail". If government is seen as efficient, this hampers their agenda for the free market to take the place of government services. To give one example, the success of the temporarily re-nationalised "East Coast" train service is an "inconvenient truth" that goes against their belief that privatised rail must, by definition, be better than state-owned rail. The fact that no other countries in the world operate train services like they are done in the UK (because it is seen by outsiders as madness) is besides the point. Following this logic, only if society sees that government cannot function will society believe that the private sector is better than the public sector.
The government's agenda is to prove to society that government cannot work. As they see it, this is the only way that people at the lowest rungs of society can be pulled from their torpor of dependency - the toughest form of "tough love". If the result from this agenda is mass poverty, homelessness, an epidemic of crime and a breakdown of the social fabric, this is just a "means to an end".
Put in this light, the "Brexit Agenda's" advocates inside government are working to effectively bring down parts of the system of civil administration from within. It is about destroying faith in government by deliberately destroying government. Because its advocates are from a wealthy elite that pays for services that it does not use (such as the welfare state), the predictions of economic collapse following a "Hard Brexit" perversely work in their favour, as a trashed economy would be ripe for the picking. This also explains why, on the other hand, those in the corporate elite who are the beneficiaries of government largess (while the rest of society gets a metaphorical kicking) are tied to those in government. The corrupt connection between Westminster, Whitehall and the corporate elite, through the common thread of the establishment, explains all this.
The largess promised on the landed elite after Brexit, like the example Michael Gove has given, is another form of patronage in a broken system. The "managed decline" that was first seen after the Second World War was, for some parts of the country, not rectified by being in the EU, but was used by the Thatcher government and its successors as an excuse to "restructure" a society stripped of union power. This explains why there are parts of the country, in the North of England and South Wales, that look more like a kind of urban dystopia, plagued with under-investment, unemployment, ill health and crime.
This policy of deliberate "managed decline" is another facet of the "stripped-down" version of the state envisaged by some Brexiteers. The parts of the country (and the economy) that are dynamic should be encouraged; the parts that are not should be allowed naturally to "die". This is a form of Social Darwinism by another name.
Whether the advocates of this agenda are dangerously delusional or deliberately dishonest is unclear; but the outcome for the rest of society from this agenda is as clear as day.
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