The End of the Thirty Year Itch

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Archive on 4: The End of the Thirty Year Itch

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, The End of the Thirty Year Itch

Phil Tinline explores whether we are seeing the emergence of a new political orthodoxy.

After the 2017 election, Phil Tinline traced how, after years of flux, British politics was struggling towards a new normal. Now he asks if that process is coming to fruition.

With the Crash of 2008, the free market orthodoxy that had framed British politics for thirty years hit the rocks. As the 'thirty year itch' for new thinking set in, no single leader or big idea seemed capable of shaping a new normal. We were governed by coalitions and minority governments, with four general elections and three referendums inside a decade.

Since 2008, there have been repeated attempts to reshape our politics, based on the idea of taking power away from both the free market and the centralised state, and re-empowering local communities. But these 'post-liberal' projects - the Big Society, Red Toryism and Blue Labour - failed to win the popular enthusiasm and the political leadership needed to establish a new political consensus. 

In the wake of Theresa May's failure to win a majority in the 2017 election, which broke yet another attempt at a new political settlement, BBC Radio documentary-maker Phil Tinline talked to those involved in this long process for an edition of Archive on 4 called The Thirty Year Itch. And he compared their experiences with the last time British politics had been through such a long period of turmoil: the 1970s.

Then suddenly, last December, the general election delivered the first big majority for years. Was this the end of our decade of political flux?  

In The End of the Thirty Year Itch, Phil updates the story, asking whether Boris Johnson’s new government, born in crisis, can really effect a radical redistribution of power to its new northern voters - and how the Covid-19 crisis might speed or slow that process.

Speakers include: Jason Cowley, Maurice Glasman, Mark Harrison, Danny Kruger, Adrian Pabst, Steve Richards, Dominic Sandbrook, David Skelton, Rachel Wolf

Producer: Phil Tinline

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