Opinion | Crime, Poverty, Fear: Great Britain Is Not So Great Anymore

Last week, I visited my favourite cafe in South London, known for its Illy coffee beans that I relish. As I savoured my coffee, a young man, wearing a sleeveless hoodie and shorts, casually walked in. He was carrying a hold-all bag, and I thought he had just come from the gym. But he had other plans. In the blink of an eye, he swept every last sandwich into his bag from a stocked shelf. As he walked past me, our eyes met. I thought about confronting him but instead took another sip of my coffee and pretended to be engrossed in my smartphone. The lone waiter and the manager behind the counter seemed helpless or perhaps paralysed with fear. The boy walked out as if he had come in for his daily grocery shopping.

I turned to the manager, still tucked safely behind his counter, and asked whether he would report the incident to the police. Still shaken, he gave me a weary smile and said there was no point calling the police. He explained that shoplifting under £200 was not worth reporting. In fact, a 2014 law had categorised shoplifting as a "low-value" crime, inviting minimal or no punishment.

London is a paradise for shoplifters. But it's not the only one. Shoplifting cases are spiralling out of control across the UK. According to the Office for National Statistics, last year was the worst on record for shoplifting, with police recording 4,30,000 offences. The retailers' body, the British Retail Consortium, says these figures are a fraction of the actual incidents, many of which are not reported for fear of violence. The body believes the cases crossed 8 million last year, with retailers losing over £1.8 billion.

A Broken Britain

Far-right politicians claim, without much evidence, that shoplifting is a pastime of 'illegal' immigrants. That they exist outside the system and therefore escape scrutiny. These politicians lament the fact that the country's resources are being overwhelmed as huge amounts of money are being spent on housing and feeding immigrants.

However, human rights activists and community workers believe the alarming rise in shoplifting is linked to a grave cost of living crisis. Brexit and then the Covid-19 pandemic led to an upswing in unemployment and pushed scores of communities below the poverty line. There are numerous reports that claim that much of Britain's woes are due to its breaking free from the European Union and its inability to deal with the devastating pandemic.

"We Haven't Got Food Tonight. Can You Help?"

Poverty has affected many deprived communities and pushed them into a situation where they have become dependent on food charities. A recent report by Bristol University cited a pupil's letter to his school, saying, "We haven't got any food tonight. Please can you help?" The university research, focusing on food charity in schools, revealed that there are over 4,000 school-based food banks in primary and secondary schools across England. This is in addition to various charities - including some run by Indian Sikhs - that run food banks both in schools and at other places.

Great Britain is manifestly becoming poorer. Even for a casual visitor to the country, it's hard to miss its bloated underbelly. Many years ago, a White colleague visiting Mumbai from London was shocked to see scores of homeless people sleeping under flyovers and on footpaths. She told me she was genuinely moved by the squalor. London's homeless may be fewer in number than India's, but they are ubiquitous. 

A Deeply Unequal Society

The decline is visible everywhere. Wherever you go in London - or even other big cities in Britain - you cannot miss homeless people along the high streets and open public spaces. They sleep or rest in beds made of cardboard and tattered blankets. They take refuge under railway bridges and public parks, where benches serve as their beds. They look fatigued and lost.

Despite its wealth, London has pockets of severe poverty and deprivation. Child poverty rates are higher in London than in any other English region. London's crime rates are higher than any other major European cities, with rising concerns about knife attacks, gang violence and terrorism.

Beneath London's gleaming surface lies social inequalities, economic woes, and extreme poverty that form the city's dark netherworld. The wealth gap between the rich and the poor is staggering, with the top 10% of earners holding 30% of the city's income.

Historical perspective

Though it wasn't always like this, London, and much of England, has been through a cycle of decay and regeneration. A very impressionable young Trinidadian writer, CLR James, visited England in 1932. His portrayal of London in the 1930s in Letter from London could be true of today's time as well. "I saw London with new eyes; I saw the vast multitudes toiling to make a few wealthy; I saw the rich with their money, their resources, their million servants, exploiting the great, blind, unconscious masses of the poor," he observed in one of his essays. In another place, he captured his uneasy feeling thus, "I feel both a stranger and a prisoner, trapped in a society that is indifferent to the suffering of the majority and obsessed with its own decline."

Today, too, much like in the 1930s, many here have started complaining that Britain is broken. Its economy is stagnating, its politics is divisive, and its society is in disarray. Actually, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been saying for a long time that the UK's "economy is broken, the health service is broken, and public service is broken". His Labour Party was voted to power in the July election on its promise of fixing a "broken Britain".

India Is Marching Ahead

It's true that the British economy has been stagnating for years. But the country was far ahead of India in 2014, which was the world's 10th biggest economy at the time. Over the years, however, India grew steadily. In 2021, it left the UK behind and became the fifth-largest economy in the world. The Indian government's economic policies stand in sharp contrast to the lacklustre vision of successive British governments over 15 years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government ensured that India had political and economic stability and continuity. Britain was not that lucky, seeing six different governments led by six different prime ministers in the same period.

After being voted to power, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had "a lot of mess to fix", blaming the outgoing Tory government that had been in power from 2010 to 2024 for leading the country here. As historian Niall Ferguson notes, "The UK's decline is a long-term process, driven by a combination of factors, including economic mismanagement, social inequality, and political polarisation".

As a first step towards "fixing the mess", Starmer has proposed to raise taxes. But that is likely to be seen as a betrayal because the party had promised not to increase taxation. The Prime Minister has even warned that the forthcoming budget is "going to be painful". It will get worse, he said, before it gets better.

While the debate rages on in the media, Starmer quietly set out on an official trip to Germany and France to "reset" Britain's relations with Europe. If all goes well, this reset might help Britain steady the post-Brexit ship.

(Syed Zubair Ahmed is a London-based senior Indian journalist with three decades of experience with the Western media)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author