Britain experienced a large inflow of migrants - a legacy of its imperial past.

The British at home had to come to terms with an unforeseen legacy of their imperial past - the large inflow of migrants, mostly from South Asia.

In the 21st century, old imperial links still survive, particularly those based on language and law, which may assume growing importance in a globalised world.

Even the Commonwealth, bruised and battered in the 1960s and 1970s, has retained a surprising utility as a dense global network of informal connections, valued by its numerous small states.

As the experience of the empire recedes more deeply into Britain's own past, it has become the focus of more attention than ever from British historians.

The empress has no clothes or, at least, not the clothes in which so many want to robe her. Despite all the praise, Mrs Thatcher did not arrest British economic decline, launch an economic transformation or save Britain. She did, it is true, re-establish the British state's capacity to govern. But then, although she wanted to trigger a second industrial revolution and a surge of new British producers, she used the newly won state authority to worsen the very weaknesses that had plagued us for decades. The national conversation of the last six days has been based on a fraud. If the Thatcher revolution had been so transformatory, our situation today would not be so acute.

In the 20 years up to 1979, Britain's growth rate averaged 2.75%, although it had been weakening during the ills of the mid-1970s. In the years before the banking crisis, there was a vexed debate about whether the Thatcher reforms, essentially unchallenged by Blair and Brown, had succeeded in restoring the long-run growth rate to earlier levels. Certainly, the gap in per capita incomes between Britain, France and Germany had narrowed, as, apparently, had the productivity gap.

The question is whether any of it was sustainable. Now, there is a growing and dismaying recognition that too much growth in the past 30 years has been built on an unsustainable credit, banking and property bubble and that Britain's true long-run growth rate has fallen to around 2%. The productivity gap is widening. All that heightened inequality, the unbelievable executive remuneration, wholesale privatisation, taking "the shackles off business" and labour market flexibility has achieved nothing durable.

This bitter realisation has been sharpening in non-conservative circles for some months. The pound has fallen by 20% in real terms since 2008, yet the response of our export sector to the most sustained competitive advantage since we came off the gold standard has been disastrously weak. Britain's trade deficit in goods climbed to 6.9% of GDP in 2012 – the highest since 1948 – and February's numbers were cataclysmically bad. Britain simply does not have enough companies creating goods and even services that the rest of the world wants to buy, despite devaluation.

The legion of Mrs Thatcher's apologists argues she can hardly be blamed for what is happening 23 years after leaving office. But economic transformations should be enduring, shouldn't they? Thatcherism did not deliver because dynamic capitalism is achieved through a much more subtle interplay. She never understood that a complex ecosystem of public and private institutions is needed to support risk-taking, the creation of open innovation networks, sustained long-term investment and sophisticated human capital. Believing in the magic of markets and the inevitable destructiveness of the state, she never addressed these core issues. Instead, the demand for high financial returns steadily rose through her period of office, along with executive pay, even while investment and innovation sank. And the trends continued because none of her successors dared challenge what she had started.

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Instead, her targets were trade unionsand state-owned enterprise in the ideological project of brutally asserting the primacy of markets and the private sector, and thus a conservative hegemony, in the name of a fierce patriotism. This was real enough: she really did want to put Britain back on the map economically and politically and the task force sailing for the Falklands embodied the intensity of that impulse. But she did not pull it off, as even she acknowledged, in her more honest moments out of office.

Trade unions certainly needed the Thatcher treatment in terms of both accepting the rule of law and the need for responsibilities alongside their rights. But companies, shareholders, banks and wider finance also needed this treatment. But as "her people" and part of the hegemonic alliance she aimed to create, they would never get the same medicine. Instead, her Big Bang in 1986, allowing banks worldwide to combine investment and commercial banking in London, was a monster sweetheart deal to please her own constituency. Britain became the centre of a global financial boom, but at home this meant an intensification of the financial system's dysfunctionality, helped by little regulation and a self-defeating credit boom, worsening the anti-investment, short-termist that needed to be reformed. This is now obvious to all. But for nearly 30 years, the apparent success of Thatcherism hid the need.

However, in one serious respect, trade unions were a proper target. By the late 1970s, a handful of trade union leaders in effect co-ran the country, the beneficiaries of the failure of successive governments to bring free collective bargaining into a legal framework. This despite the fact that they could not deliver their members to agreed policies, and the third year of an incomes policy had collapsed. On this question, the Labour party was intellectually exhausted and politically bankrupt; the Conservative government under Heath had been defeated too. It had become a first order crisis of governability, even of democracy.

This was her opportunity and she seized it. The early employment acts and the victory over Arthur Scargill's NUM decisively reaffirmed that the fount of political power in the country is Parliament, at the time a crucial intervention. But she wildly overshot. Trade unions within a proper framework are a vital means of expressing employee voice and protecting worker interests. Labour market flexibility – code for deunionisation and removal of worker entitlements – has become another Thatcherite mantra that again hides the complexity of what is needed in the labour market: employee voice and engagement, skills and adaptability. When she left office, 64% of UK workers had no vocational qualifications.

The best thing that can be said about Thatcherism is that it may have been a necessary, if mistaken, staging post on the way to our economic reinvention. She resolved the crisis of governance but then demonstrated that simple anti-statism and pro-market solutions do not work. We need to do more sophisticated things than control inflation, reduce public debt, roll back the state and assert "market forces".

The coalition government is developing new-look industrial strategies, reforming the banking system and reintroducing the state – as a vital partner – into areas such as energy. New thinking is emerging everywhere. For example, in the north-east of England an economic commission chaired by Lord Adonis, of which I was a member, recently recommended the de facto reintroduction of the metropolitan authority in Newcastle, abolished by Mrs Thatcher. It would co-ordinate a pan-north-east redoubling of investment in skills and transport, along with winning more investment. And it wants the local economic partnership to work in the same building as the proposed new combined authority, driving forward an innovation and investment revolution. This complex interaction of private and public the commission is trying to develop is a world away from Thatcher – and widely welcomed.

The empress really has no clothes. Wednesday's funeral is a tribute to the myth and the conservative hegemony she created. If the royal family is concerned, as is reported, that the whole affair will be over the top, they are right. Mrs Thatcher capitalised on a moment of temporary ungovernability that, to her credit, she resolved, then sold her party and country an oversimple and false prospectus. The landslide Mr Blair won in 1997 was to challenge it, but he did not understand at the time, nor understand now, what his mandate meant. The force of events is at last moving us on. But Britain has been weakened, rather than strengthened, by the revolution she wreaked.

Summary and highlights

This report focuses on the theme of 'belonging' in 21st century Britain. The notion of belonging, or social identity, is a central aspect of how we define who we are. We consider ourselves to be individuals but it is our membership of particular groups that is most important in constructing a sense of identity. Social identity is a fundamental aspect of what it is to be human.

In Britain today there is public debate suggesting that we are losing this essential sense of belonging — that globalization, for example, far from bringing people closer together, is actually moving us apart. We hear that our neighbourhoods are becoming evermore impersonal and anonymous and that we no longer have a sense of place. But is this really the case? Are we losing our sense of belonging, or are we simply finding new ways to locate ourselves in a changing society? This report seeks an answer.

On one level, belonging is certainly changing. While in the past a sense of belonging was more rigidly defined in terms of the traditional markers of social identity such as class or religion, people are now far more able to choose the categories to which they belong. We are now able to select from a wide range of groups, communities, brands and lifestyles those with which we wish to align ourselves and which, in turn, shape our social identities. At the same time we may, or may not, remain rooted in our families or in the place in which we were born. The 'landscape' of belonging may have changed — with much greater opportunity these days to opt in and opt out of various groups — but we still want the same things from membership of these groups. We have timeless needs for social bonding, loyalty, security and acceptance. These have been with us since the Stone Age and throughout our history we have created social networks and groupings to serve these ends. So what does this landscape look like today? Is it that much different from that of the past?

To explore this fundamental aspect of human life the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) has employed a number of research methods. First, a detailed literature review provided the background for two in-depth focus groups with 8-10 people in each, representing a broad cross-section of demographic groups. The material from these groups was subsequently used to design national poll questions that were distributed by YouGov to 2,209 nationally representative participants across the country.

Through these methods, SIRC's research has identified six key social identities in which people most frequently anchor their sense of belonging today:

· Family. Despite public debate about the decline of the family in modern society, family remains the most important focus of belonging. Of respondents in the national poll, 88% chose family as the key marker of belonging. The ways in which families are structured has certainly changed in recent decades, but family remains the most important category of human social organisation.

· Friendship. While the close proximity of a large extended family would have provided a structure for social support in the past, this function is now filled, at least in part, by an increasingly diverse and multilayered network of friendships. Increased geographic mobility and interconnectedness through new digital technologies allow us to connect with people in new ways. In the poll, 65% of respondents saw friendships as being an essential part of their sense of belonging.

· Lifestyle choices. In developing friendships and social networks we are also defining the kinds of lifestyle that we want to lead and the types of social capital — the social status, shared values, and cultural practices — that go with it. We make choices about the kinds of activities that we are interested in, the kinds of products that we buy and the associations that these involve. Importantly, we also make lifestyle choices by choosing not to consume certain products or engage in certain types of activity. What we do not do is as important to our sense of belonging as that in which we actively choose to engage. For many participants in the project, thinking about lifestyle choices revealed a far more entrenched sense of brand and group loyalty than they had initially expected or were prepared to admit.

· Nationality. Advocates of cultural globalization point to the fact that national identity is on the decline. As the world becomes more connected it is increasingly common for people to pass through the borders of individual countries, both physically and virtually. While there is certainly a greater awareness of the flexibility of national identities, and the possibility of shedding one in exchange for another, there still remains a strong tie between individuals and the nationalities with which they are born. People may question what exactly it means to be 'British' or 'English' in the 21st century, but this is by no means the same as rejecting the idea of being British altogether. Over a third of all people claim their national identity as a major factor in defining belonging.

· Professional identity. In a society where our social status is to a great extent measured by the work we do and, perhaps more importantly, the money we earn, it is little surprise that professional identity is an important locus of belonging for both men and women. It is, after all, often the first characteristic that people offer up when introducing themselves to others. While occupational mobility has certainly increased for many people, and 're-skilling' is a normal part of modern-day professional life, we remain tied to the social significance of what we do for a living. Our sense of belonging in this context is greater than the affinity we feel with members of our extended families.

· Team spirit and shared interests. For men, the football or other sporting team that they support provides a stronger sense of belonging than religion, social class, ethnic background or political affiliations. The clubs they belong to are also important sources of social identity. Both men and women view the hobbies and interests that they share with others as an important source of identity. For women, this sense of belonging is as strong as that associated with their nationality.

The kinds of social changes that have taken place in recent years are evidenced by the fact that these categories rank higher than other more traditional foci of belonging, such as class, religion, or place of origin. Only 13% of people, for example, feel a sense of belonging to the community in which they were born. The main body of this report looks at where these changes have taken place and explores how we are incorporating both new and more traditional notions of belonging into our patterns of social interaction.

Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997 after a landslide victory over the Conservative Party. Under the title of New Labour, he promised economic and social reform and brought Labour closer to the center of the political spectrum. Early policies of the Blair government included the minimum wage and university tuition fees. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown also gave the Bank of England the power to set the base rate of interest autonomously. The traditional tendency of governments to manipulate interest rates around the time of general elections for political gain is thought to have been deleterious to the UK economy and helped reinforce a cyclical pattern of boom and bust. Brown's decision was popular with the City, which the Labour Party had been courting since the early 1990s. Blair presided over the longest period of economic expansion in Britain since the 19th century and his premiership saw large investment into social aspects, in particular health and education, areas particularly under-invested during the Conservative government of the 1980s and early 1990s. The Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act came into force in 2000. Most hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords in 1999 and the Civil Partnership Act of 2005 allowed homosexual couples the right to register their partnership with the same rights and responsibilities comparable to heterosexual marriage.

The nation was stunned when Princess Diana died in a car accident in Paris on 31 August 1997, even though she had divorced Prince Charles a few years earlier. Numerous conspiracy theories arose about her being intentionally murdered due to her plans to marry an Arab businessman, although nothing was ever proven.

From the beginning, New Labour's record on the economy and unemployment was strong, suggesting that they could break with the trend of Labour governments overseeing an economic decline while in power. They had inherited an unemployment count of 1,700,000 from the Conservatives, and by the following year unemployment was down to 1,300,000 – a level not seen since James Callaghan was in power some 20 years previously. A minimum wage was announced in May 1998, coming into force from April 1999.^[27] Unemployment would remain similarly low for the next 10 years.^[28]

The long-running Northern Ireland peace process was brought to a conclusion in 1998 with the Belfast Agreement which established a devolved Northern Ireland Assembly and de-escalated the violence associated with the Troubles. It was signed in April 1998 by the British and Irish governments and was endorsed by all the main political parties in Northern Ireland with the exception of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party. Voters in Northern Ireland approved the agreement in a referendum in May 1998 and it came into force in December 1999. In August 1998, a car-bomb exploded in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh, killing 29 people and injuring 220. The attack was carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army who opposed the Belfast Agreement. It was reported in 2005, that the IRA had renounced violence and had ditched its entire arsenal.

In foreign policy, following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Blair greatly supported U.S. President George W. Bush's new War on Terror which began with the forced withdrawal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Blair's case for war was based on Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and consequent violation of UN resolutions. He was wary of making direct appeals for regime change, since international law does not recognise this as a ground for war. A memorandum from a July 2002 meeting that was leaked in April 2005 showed that Blair believed that the British public would support regime change in the right political context; the document, however, stated that legal grounds for such action were weak. On 24 September 2002 the Government published a dossier based on the intelligence agencies' assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Among the items in the dossier was a recently received intelligence report that "the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so". A further briefing paper on Iraq's alleged WMDs was issued to journalists in February 2003. This document was discovered to have taken a large part of its text without attribution from a PhD thesis available on the internet. Where the thesis hypothesised about possible WMDs, the Downing Street version presented the ideas as fact. The document subsequently became known as the "Dodgy Dossier".

46,000 British troops, one-third of the total strength of the British Army (land forces), were deployed to assist with the invasion of Iraq. When after the war, no WMDs were found in Iraq, the two dossiers, together with Blair's other pre-war statements, became an issue of considerable controversy. Many Labour Party members, including a number who had supported the war, were among the critics. Successive independent inquiries (including those by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, the senior judge Lord Hutton, and the former senior civil servant Lord Butler of Brockwell) have found that Blair honestly stated what he believed to be true at the time, though Lord Butler's report did imply that the Government's presentation of the intelligence evidence had been subject to some degree of exaggeration. These findings have not prevented frequent accusations that Blair was deliberately deceitful, and, during the 2005 election campaign, Conservative leader Michael Howard made political capital out of the issue. The new threat of international terrorism ultimately led to the 7 July 2005 bomb attacks in London which killed 52 people as well as the four suicide bombers who led the attack.

The Labour government was re-elected with a second successive landslide in the general election of June 2001.^[29] Blair became the first Labour leader to lead the party to three successive election victories when they won the 2005 general election, though this time he had a drastically reduced majority.^[30]

The Conservatives had so far failed to represent a serious challenge to Labour's rule, with John Major's successor William Hague unable to make any real improvement upon the disastrous 1997 general election result at the next election four years later. He stepped down after the 2001 election to be succeeded by Iain Duncan Smith, who did not even hold the leadership long enough to contest a general election – being ousted by his own MP's in October 2003^[31] and being replaced by Michael Howard, who had served asHome Secretary in the government of John Major. Howard failed to win the 2005 general election for the Conservatives but he at least had the satisfaction of narrowing the Labour majority, giving his successor (he announced his resignation shortly after the election) a decent platform to build upon.^[32] However, the Conservatives began to re-emerge as an electable prospect following the election of David Cameron as Howard's successor in December 2005. Within months of Cameron becoming Conservative leader, opinion polls during 2006 were showing a regular Conservative lead for the first time since Black Wednesday 14 years earlier. Despite the economy still being strong and unemployment remaining low, Labour's decline in support was largely blamed upon poor control of immigration and allowing Britain to become what was seen by many as an easy target for terrorists.^[33]

Devolution for Scotland and Wales [edit]

Blair also came into power with a policy of devolution. A pre-legislative referendum was held in Scotland in 1997 with two questions: whether to create a devolved Parliament for Scotland and whether it should have limited tax-varying powers. Following a clear 'yes' vote on both questions, a referendum on the proposal for creating a devolved Assemblywas held two weeks later. This produced a narrow 'yes' vote. Both measures were put into effect and the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly began operating in 1999. Thefirst election to the Scottish parliament saw the creation of a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition with Donald Dewar as First Minister. In Wales, the Labour Party achieved a complete majority with Alun Michael as the Welsh First Minister. In the 2007 Scottish election, the Scottish National Party gained enough seats to form a minority government with its leader Alex Salmond as First Minister.

Devolution also returned to Northern Ireland, leaving England as the only constituent country of the United Kingdom without a devolved administration. Within England, a devolved authority for London was re-established following a 'yes' vote in a London-wide referendum.

On 18 September 2014, a referendum on Scottish independence failed with a 55/44 percentage.

Gordon Brown (2007–2010) [edit]

Gordon Brown

Tony Blair tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to the Queen on 27 June 2007, his successor Gordon Brown assuming office the same afternoon. Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister without having to face either a general election or even a contested election for leadership of the Labour Party.

Brown's style of government differed from that of his predecessor, Tony Blair, who had been seen as presidential. Brown rescinded some of the policies which had either been introduced or were planned by Blair's administration. He remained committed to close ties with the United States and to the Iraq war, although he established an inquiry into the reasons why Britain had participated in the conflict. He proposed a "government of all the talents" which would involve co-opting leading personalities from industry and other professional walks of life into government positions. Brown also appointed Jacqui Smith as the UK's first female Home Secretary, while Brown's old position as Chancellor was taken over by Alistair Darling.

His appointment as prime minister sparked a brief surge in Labour support as the party topped most opinion polls that autumn. There was talk of a "snap" general election, which it was widely believed Labour could win, but Brown decided against calling an election.^[34]

Brown's government introduced a number of fiscal policies to help keep the British economy afloat during the financial crisis which occurred throughout the latter part of the 2000s (decade) and early 2010, although the United Kingdom saw a dramatic increase in its national debt. Unemployment soared through 2008 as the recession set in, and Labour standings in the opinion polls plummeted as the Conservatives became ascendant.^[35]

Several major banks were nationalised after falling into financial difficulties, while large amounts of money were pumped into the economy to encourage spending. Brown was also press ganged into giving Gurkhas settlement rights in Britain by the actress and campaigner Joanna Lumley and attracted criticism for its handling of the release of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, the only person to have been convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Initially, during the first four months of his premiership, Brown enjoyed a solid lead in the polls. His popularity amongst the public may be due to his handling of numerous serious events during his first few weeks as Prime Minister, including two attempted terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow at the end of June. However, between the end of 2007 and September 2008, his popularity had fallen significantly, with two contributing factors believed to be his perceived change of mind over plans to call a snap general election in October 2007, and his handling of the 10p tax rate cut in 2008, which led to allegations of weakness and dithering. His unpopularity led eight labour MPs to call for a leadership contest in September 2008, less than 15 months into his premiership. The threat of a leadership contest receded due to his perceived strong handling of the global financial crisis in October, but his popularity hit an all-time low, and his position became increasingly under threat after the May 2009 expenses scandal and Labour's poor results in the 2009Local and European elections. Brown's cabinet began to rebel with several key resignations in the run up to local elections in June 2009.

In January 2010, it was revealed that Britain's economy had resumed growth after a recession which had seen a record six successive quarters of economic detraction. However, it was a narrow return to growth, and it came after the other major economies had come out of recession.^[36]

The 2010 general election resulted in a hung parliament – Britain's first for 36 years – with the Conservative Party controlling 306 Seats, the Labour Party 258 Seats and the Liberal Democrats 57 Seats. Brown remained as prime minister while the Liberal Democrats negotiated with Labour and the Conservatives to form a coalition government. He announced his intention to resign on 10 May 2010 in order to help broker a Labour-Liberal Democrat deal. However, this became increasingly unlikely, and on 11 May Brown announced his resignation as Prime Minister and as Leader of the Labour Party. This paved the way for the Conservatives to return to power after 13 years.^[37]

His deputy Harriet Harman became Leader of the Opposition until September 2010, when Ed Miliband was elected Leader of the Labour Party.

David Cameron (2010–present) [edit]

David Cameron (Con),
Prime Minister, 2010– present.

Nick Clegg (LibDem),
Deputy Prime Minister 2010–15.

The Conservative Party won the 2010 general election but did not win enough seats to win an outright majority. David Cameron, who has led the party since 2005 became Prime Minister on 11 May 2010 after the Conservatives formed acoalition government with the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and several other Liberal Democrats were given cabinet positions. Cameron promised to reduce Britain's spiralling budget deficit by cutting back on public service spending and by transferring more power to local authorities. He committed his government to Britain's continuing role in Afghanistan and stated that he hopes to remove British troops from the region by 2015. An emergency budget was prepared in June 2010 by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne which stated that VAT will be raised to 20% and there will be a large reduction in public spending. A key Liberal Democrat policy is that of voting reform, to which a referendum took place in May 2011 on whether or not Britain should adopt a system of Alternative Vote to elect MPs to Westminster. However, the proposal was rejected overwhelmingly, with 68% of voters in favour of retaining first-past-the-post. The Liberal Democrat turnabout on tuition policy at the universities alienated their younger supporters, and the continuing weakness of the economy, despite spending cutbacks, alienated the elders.

Prince William married Kate Middleton on 29 April 2011 in a globally televised event much like his parents' wedding 30 years earlier. In July 2013, the royal couple welcomed their first child, Prince George. In May 2015, they welcomed their second child, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana.

In 2012, the Summer Olympics returned to London for the first time since 1948. The United States claimed the largest count of gold medals, with Britain running third place after China.

2015 election [edit]

In 2014 Scotland held a referendum on becoming independent of the United Kingdom. The three major national parties were all strongly opposed, and won a majority defeating the separationists of the Scottish National Party (SNP). However, SNP successfully mobilized after the election, sweeping out the Labour Party which had long dominated Scotland.

After years of austerity, the British economy was on an upswing in 2015, so Prime Minister David Cameron called the United Kingdom general election, 2015 for 7 May 2015. He took credit for the upswing, promising to keep taxes low and reduce the deficit. He promised a referendum on the UK's role in the European Union. The rival Labour party called for a higher minimum wage, and higher taxes on the rich. In Scotland, the SNP attacked the austerity program, opposed nuclear weapons, and demanded more autonomy for Scotland.

Pre-election polls had predicted a close race and a hung parliament, but the surprising result was clear victory by the Conservatives nationwide. The other three main parties were shocked and bitterly disappointed; their leaders resigned the next day. The Conservatives with 37% of the popular vote held a narrow majority with 331 of the 650 seats. The Scottish National Party (SNP) carried 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland, a gain of 50. Labour suffered its worst defeat since 1987, taking only 31% of the votes and 232 seats; they lost 40 of their 41 seats in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats vote plunged by 2/3 and they lost 49 of their 57 seats, as their coalition with the Conservatives had alienated the great majority of their supporters. The new UK Independence Party (UKIP), rallying voters against Europe and against immigration, did well with 13% of the vote count. It came in second in over 115 races but came in first in only one. Women now comprise 29% of the MPs^[38][39]