But ahead of the election, 75% of Britons have a negative view of politics in Britain.  And Labour and the Conservatives are set to record their lowest combined share of the vote in a century.  Instead, smaller parties such as Reform, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens have all made advances.

This result is a consequence of the disastrous decline in the British economy and living standards for most Britons alongside a decimation of public services and welfare.  British capital is broken.

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In his recent book, Vassal State – how America runs Britain, Angus Hanton shows the dominant role that US companies and finance play in owning and controlling large sections of what remains of British industries.  This US takeover was accepted and even encouraged by successive British governments from Tory Thatcher to Labour’s Blair. 

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From the 1980s, Britain has increasingly become what we could call a ‘rentier economy’, ending most of its manufacturing base and relying mostly on the City of London financial sector and accompanying business services, providing a conduit for the redistribution of capital from the Middle East oil sheikhs, Russian oligarchs, Indian entrepreneurs and American techs.

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The rentier nature of British capital is revealed by this IPPR report: “Corporate investment has fallen below the rate of depreciation – meaning that our capital stock is falling – and investment in research and development (R&D) is lower than in our major competitors. Among the causes are a banking system that is not sufficiently focused on lending for business growth, and the increasing short-termism of our financial and corporate sector. Under pressure from equity markets increasingly focused on short-term returns, businesses are distributing an increasing proportion of their earnings to their shareholders rather than investing them for the future.”