Britain's first post-Brexit election will be July 4ExBulletin

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

The United Kingdom holds its election on July 4. Is that a little unfair? I mean, doesn't the United States have their own claim on that day? In any case, July 4 is the date for the UK after 14 years of Conservative Party rule, which included Brexit and Boris Johnson and the shortest tenure of any prime minister, which experts say is comparable to the lifespan of a head of lettuce.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Liz Truss – there we have it. It seems that the lettuce resisted the prime minister.

INSKEEP: Polls now predict a swing to the UK's centre-left Labor Party. The next prime minister will inherit a country that many Britons say feels broken to them. NPR's Lauren Frayer reports from London.

LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: So here we are in the cereal aisle. What is your children's favorite?

FAITH ANGWET: They love their Frosties, but they don't always realize it because it's sugar.

FRAYER: Faith Angwet stands in the cereal aisle of the supermarket doing math.

ANGWET: Let's say Kellogg's. Before, it was under 4 kilograms.

FRAYER: Four seventy-five.

ANGWET: Now it's 4.75. You have to shop smart and…

FRAYER: Are you looking for those…

ANGWET: They.

FRAYER: …Bright orange special?

ANGWET: Yes.

FRAYER: Yes.

ANGWET: But…

FRAYER: And you haven't had to do that before?

ANGWET: No, you shouldn't.

FRAYER: She's a single parent on a low income, going through the UK's worst cost of living crisis since the Second World War.

ANGWET: Literally, I'd probably get, like, an A in economics now (laughter) than before, 'cause I didn't understand inflation, but now I understand it more.

FRAYER: An economist says Britain is experiencing its biggest wage squeeze since the Napoleonic Wars. A greater proportion of British children now live in poverty, according to the United Nations, than in almost any other developed country. Excluding London, Britain is poorer than Mississippi.

NESRINE MALIK: It's kind of a shock drop.

FRAYER: Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik says the UK was hit harder than most by the financial crisis of 2008. Like Greece and elsewhere, the government here imposed austerity, but under the Tories, it wasn't a short-term thing. It has been more of a governing philosophy.

MALIK: Which one did you privatize; you centralize; you mess up; and then things will trickle down to the poorest. This has not worked.

FRAYER: Or rather, it's worked for the haves, she says, but the gap between the have-nots has widened. The anger over this led some people to vote for Brexit. Then COVID-19 hit. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and energy prices went through the roof. With public debt at a record high, the UK government has had to make some tough decisions.

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PRIME MINISTER RISHI SUNAK: I am canceling the rest of the HS-2 project.

FRAYER: Last year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak abandoned an over-budget and unscheduled project that would have belatedly connected parts of England with the kind of high-speed rail service that has long been the norm in continental Europe. This is the country that invented the locomotive and the post-war welfare state.

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CLEMENT ATTLEE: Tomorrow the most comprehensive social security system ever introduced in any country will come into operation.

FRAYER: This is British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in 1948, inaugurating the National Health Service, or NHS, which guarantees free health care for everyone. It was a model for public health systems elsewhere.

EMMA RUNSWICK: This is a public service that just in 2011 the Commonwealth Fund said was the best in the world.

FRAYER: For Dr. Emma Runswick, from Manchester, working for the NHS reflects what she says is her deep personal and political commitment to socialized medicine, but her pay has not kept pace with inflation. Public investment in the health service has generally not kept pace with a growing and aging UK population, and Dr. Runswick says care has deteriorated.

RUNSWICK: Now we regularly place people along the corridors. Hospitals have put sticky hooks on the walls so we can hang drops.

FRAYER: That's literally beds in the hallway.

RUNSWICK: Absolutely, it lacks their dignity. You can't undress someone and examine someone in the hallway, so we're used to substandard care.

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RUNSWICK: Seventy thousand junior doctors are on strike this week.

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FRAYER: This is Dr. Runswick on a megaphone in one of dozens of recent strikes that have forced the cancellation of millions of doctors' appointments and surgeries and left the health service virtually understaffed.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: It's nine minutes past seven. Today, tomorrow, Thursday and Friday are all days when you should think very carefully about whether you or someone close to you needs a doctor anywhere in England.

FRAYER: The Conservatives in power have allowed and encouraged the NHS to transfer some tasks to private hospitals, but critics see this as creeping privatisation, like what has happened to other public enterprises. In the case of UK water companies, privatization has enriched shareholders and left rivers and lakes notoriously polluted with runoff and sewage.

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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Singing) Two, three, four – we don't want this poo anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Swimmers, canoeists and paddlers, expressing their anger at the regular discharges of sewage on this stretch of the Trent River.

FRAYER: All of this has fueled a sense that Britain's past glory is being destroyed – in some cases, literally.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Just days before the start of the semester, a hundred schools in England have been told to close concrete buildings at risk of collapse.

FRAYER: The back-to-school season this year was marred by falling ceilings in schools that had been renovated with cheaper, flimsier materials.

DAVID WILLETTS: Obviously there were a number of blows.

FRAYER: David Willetts worked under then prime minister Margaret Thatcher – better known as the Iron Lady – who privatized the railways, among other things, in the 1980s. He now runs a think tank and has a seat in the House of Lords.

WILLETTS: I think my title is officially Lord Willetts. I don't know how that works in America. I'll let you judge.

FRAYER: He says the next prime minister – and polls suggest it's likely to be Keir Starmer, of the centre-left Labor Party – will have to manage expectations because things won't get better overnight, he says…

WILLETTS: When your economy is growing as modestly as the British economy, and productivity is growing modestly, and you have to save more, it's very difficult to see big increases in living standards in the coming years.

FRAYER: On the one hand, Starmer is projected to win with a large majority, a large mandate. In turn, he is inheriting empty coffers. Here's what he recently said on local television.

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KEIR STARMER: We have to be very clear that we will not go back to austerity. I know what austerity feels like, but at the end of the day, there is no magic wand that we can wave one day after the election and fix all the country's problems – and no one would believe us if we said there was.

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FRAYER: Do you want to sit here, and I'll sit across from you?

So for Faith Angwet, buying cheap cereal for her kids and getting on the bus in South London…

ANGWET: It's getting a lot harder for me to budget for transportation. I always run out…

FRAYER: Even though the country is on the brink of major political change, she fully expects to do the math, trying to make ends meet for some time to come.

ANGWET: You gotta do what you gotta do, yeah.

FRAYER: Lauren Frayer, NPR News, in Peckham, South London.

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