With the UK facing stubborn inflation, stagnant wages, and rent hikes, the country faces pressing questions about its economic direction. We brought together four undergrads for a roundtable discussion. They came from different subjects and different political perspectives, but shared similar frustrations about the economic outlook, the sustainability of pensions, and the strain on public services. They argued over the triple lock on state pensions, debated how to fund the NHS, and considered whether Britain should rejoin the European Union. Despite small points of optimism, the group agreed on one thing: politics as usual is not working, and no party seems ready to change that anytime soon.
If you had to describe how you feel about the direction of the UK right now in one word what would it be?
Michal: Dire
Yassin: Overstretched
Charlie: Apathy
Catherine: Nostalgia
Nostalgia?
Catherine: Not a good sense of nostalgia. When I say nostalgia, I mean a lot of the sort of populist right has this nostalgic rose-tinted view of the past, which seems to be colouring a lot of present politics.
You’re all very negative in your words, care to expand?
Michal: Well the budget is not looking particularly good. Just for some brief background, Labour has been banging on about the £22 billion fiscal black hole that we’ve had since the Conservatives lost the election. And in order to try and mitigate this, they have tried raising taxes to raise about £40 billion, and this is all underpinned by the context of huge inflation, which cumulative from 2019 till April 2025 was 28% which to put in perspective is the equivalent of 14 years of inflation. So it’s not looking good.
Yassin: Since 2008, the average real wage growth in this country has been 1%. That is less than half of the baseline rate from 1997 to 2010 and it’s even lower than under the Thatcher years. And so we’re looking at stagnation at the same time we also have insane structural pressures. Currently 55% of the social welfare budget goes to pensioners. We are spending £145 billion on the state pension, which is triple locked, so it will increase. So you’re telling me, in a situation like that, every pensioner who may own a house, who has enjoyed generational wealth, often enjoy tax-free benefits. They have guaranteed state income, whereas people who are working have more and more precarious working conditions. And on top of that, you have surging property prices and rents. So it’s a very gloomy economic situation. So I would say pretty overstretched and that’s before the defence budget has to increase.
Charlie: I say apathy, because you have all of these problems, this sort of general sense that the economy is not going anywhere. It’s literally just a constant negative spiral. And neither party seems to be willing to, like, take a look at the bigger picture. Everyone’s chasing, like, 1% growth in the next year. What good’s that actually going to do anyone in the long run? It’s like they’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it’s going down.
So we’re all fairly gloomy about the future but now I want to try and push on the specifics of what we’re doing wrong and what we should be doing instead. We’ll start with something you mentioned. The triple-lock on pensions, keep or scrap?
Michal: Scrap
Yassin: Scrap
Charlie: Scrap
Catherine: Scrap
Yassin: First of all, we have to understand the triple lock only came in in 2010 and the UK debt-to-GDP ratio in 2010 because of the recession and the bank crisis, obviously went from around 60% to around 80% but then it was on a decreasing trend. And then we started immediately having austerity. But the triple lock, crucially, was the only part that was spared from austerity. And so you have this concentration of wealth, which is unfair because you’re taxing working people to basically subsidise people who are benefiting from rising state pensions, and it’s unsustainable. Why should I be paying taxes that are if you earn £100,000, 45 plus percent, when some geezer who has a million pounds in wealth is entitled to £11,000 per year, as I get basically no real income wage, and I’m the one suffering in the private rental market. He owns the house which he bought because the government built it cheaply. I don’t think it’s generationally fair. I don’t think it’s sustainably fair.
Charlie: I absolutely agree that it’s completely unsustainable. And I mean, we know that as a broad sort of growth perspective, the wealth being concentrated in the hands of people with pensions is generating less economic activity. If it’s in the hands of young people, they’re going to spend it and put it back into the economy, whereas if it’s just sat there in someone’s pension fund, then it’s less likely to be providing further economic stimulus.
Charlie: What’s so frustrating about it is, we can all sit here, and all of us know it’s not working, but do any of us actually think that the Labour Party are going to axe the triple lock any time soon? And it’s so evident that we’re just headed for disaster, or things are just going to get worse, and yet no one is willing to actually change it. Because it’s just like political suicide, like everyone is chasing that voter block because they actually turn out. And it’s just like, we all know that they’re not going to change.
Next big issue, do we want to increase NHS funding?
Charlie: Yes, but you need to do so in an efficient manner. You don’t just go in the black hole of NHS management. More investment is needed, but there also needs to be a serious rethink of exactly how we’re spending it to get the best results for the population.
Yassin: I’m lucky enough to have avoided having to stay in hospital. But the last time I went to A&E about a decade ago I waited 12 hours to be seen. And I’m judging by the responses around the room that things probably haven’t gotten that much better in the past ten years. So I think the issue with the NHS is threefold. Number one, capacity. Beds are being taken up by people who are recovered but need social care. They can’t go somewhere alone, but there is no one there, and so the safest place to keep them is in the hospital bed. So actually, the NHS crisis isn’t even about healthcare necessarily. It’s actually about social care. And I think, you know, we should be forcing people in social care who can afford to fund it themselves. Because I think it’s absurd again, for lower-income or middle-income people to be paying taxes at the highest rate since 1945, more or less to support a class of people who are comparatively speaking, rich. They can sell their assets and finance it, they just don’t want to. So we pay for it, and then they die, and then they get to pass that on as an inheritance. But number two, the NHS crisis also can be fundamentally pinned down to poor planning. So if I look at UK population growth, the UK population around 2000 was 56, 58 million people. Today it’s about to become 70 million. Almost all of that growth is from immigration. Immigration itself is fine. I mean, if it can be planned, skilled workers. I don’t mind. I myself, I’m an immigrant from the Netherlands. But if you look at the stats, most immigrants cluster in specific areas, so some areas are worse off in terms of pressure on social services, on infrastructure, than others. The NHS just hasn’t planned properly for this in terms of where it should be building hospitals. And finally the third thing is political control. I think the reason I’m waiting for 12 hours is probably because it is controlled by politicians. Most countries in Europe or even in Canada, which is the closest we have in terms of a counterpart to the NHS model, have a much greater acceptance of private healthcare. And I don’t necessarily want to support private healthcare insurance, but if you look at the planning system, it makes sense. Most governments would subsidise it for poor people. Those who are middle class and higher income would have it anyway, because they already do with Bupa. So if you’re looking at a sustainable model, the NHS either needs to move to a totally independent funding body and management.
Do you think there’s a risk at all that if people become reliant on private healthcare they’ll be less willing to fund the NHS?
Michal: No, not at all. I think British people are proud of the NHS.
Catherine: You already have a large portion of people spending on private education. That doesn’t mean that people complain about taxes to fund state schools, right? There’s still an element of public common good.
Charlie: A lot of these discussions are happening with a background of pensions, but also Brexit. If we’re being honest, Britain just would be better off back inside the Common Market.
Does everyone agree with that?
Michal: Leaving the European Union has been a detrimental failure of the British government.
Yassin: Brexit. Yeah. There’s a lot of things. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is, I remember watching Nigel Farage with his little van, like the picture of the Syrian refugees saying they’re coming here. Remember that? You had before Brexit, 200,000 mainly European Union nationals coming in. Now you have 500,000 people vastly from non-white countries. So like, I guess I say this to Nigel, you know, it didn’t really work out in the end.
Across the country, there’s a lot of things that need fixing, right? How do we pay for this?
Michal: I think the British government needs to rethink what they spend money on and how. We’ve mentioned several things during the time of this discussion. We’ve mentioned the NHS, we’ve mentioned the triple lock system, we mentioned the military and a lot of these things do have private solutions. I’m not saying we should throw the private sector at all of our problems, but there definitely is a conversation to be had about how we can integrate the British private sector in funding the public sector.
Charlie: I would definitely agree that we need to rethink how we’re spending money. Pensions is a big one we’ve talked about and who exactly is getting state benefits, how we’re redistributing wealth to which parts of the population. And this may be unpopular, but looking at taxes I think people need to seriously consider that compared to how it was in previous decades, a much higher proportion of our tax incomes come from lower income groups than higher income groups. This needs to be addressed whether that’s in the form of inheritance tax, or like a one-off wealth tax, we do need to rethink our taxes.
What do others think about a wealth tax?
Charlie: I know there are logistical problems but a 1% wealth tax rate could raise billions. Whilst it wouldn’t be exactly popular if we’re looking for a solution to not having enough money it’s certainly an option.
Michal: Just to address some of the logistical problems and administrative problems that you mentioned with the wealth tax, we have to remember that wealth is in one spot. It can’t go away. People say, ‘Oh, well, we’ll get a load of capital flight. We’ll lose all this money. All these billionaires will start leaving.’ Sure, but it’s not like they’re going to sell £5 billion worth of real estate in London because we tax them 1%. That’s not going to happen.
Yassin: I disagree with both of you on this one. Norway is a good example. Do you know the biggest category of net migrant flow out of Norway? Billionaires. So tax revenue actually went down because yeah, you can tax my house that’s still in Oslo, fair enough, but my income can’t be taxed if I’m not a resident. I think the best way to achieve growth is not wealth taxes. It’s really very simple. Get to the European Union. It makes sense to boost our economic growth with existing tax rates. Because of high economic growth, we get more revenue. More importantly, we’ll get the skilled labor that we need from the European Union that right now is cut out. And more importantly it gives businesses confidence to invest. Why would I invest in the car industry in Sunderland? It’s not because people in Sunderland are big Toyota fans, it’ll be because Britain can sell to all of Europe. I think that’s a much more sustainable solution than a wealth tax.
Just to finish off the discussion, if you could introduce one economic policy tomorrow what would it be?
Charlie: Rejoin the EU.
Yassin: Get rid of the 1947 town Planning Act, centralise it, and build some goddamn houses.
Michal: Make legal commitments for business-affecting policies. Business doesn’t believe in the UK, because we have poor governance, we have poor planning structure, and we are one of the least productive countries in the G20 this needs to be addressed. And having a little bit of stability for businesses to rely on is something that I think would benefit the economy greatly.
Stanley Smith also contributed reporting
