If you ask someone in Britain over 60 (such as myself) whether attitudes have deteriorated, many will say that people are ruder, politicians are less trustworthy, public standards are lower – and that nobody cueues properly anymore.
The British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey found trust in government and politicians at the lowest level ever recorded. In 2023 45% said they “almost never” trust governments to put the country before party interests, 58% said they “almost never” trust politicians to tell the truth when under pressure and 79% believed Britain’s system of government needs substantial improvement.
At the same time tolerance of antisocial behaviour is also on the up: Shoplifting offences have reached record levels compared with historical records while violence and abuse directed at retail and healthcare workers have risen sharply in recent years.
The Brexit years created divisions that extended beyond politics into identity, geography, class, and age. Although the country is less obsessed with Brexit than it was in 2019, debates around immigration, gender issues, net zero, housing, and national identity often become highly polarised.
Every generation seems convinced that society is going to the dogs. The Romans complained about the youth. The Victorians worried about moral decline. And today, somewhere in Surrey, a retired colonel is sitting behind net curtains muttering darkly about e-scooters, tattoos and people who don’t say thank you to the bus driver.
The question is: Is Britain really becoming less civilised, or are we merely becoming less tolerant and more efficient at complaining about it?
There is certainly plenty of evidence to fuel the grumbling. Trust in politicians is somewhere between “very low” and “has anyone checked whether they’re making this up as they go along?” Successive scandals, broken promises and a revolving door of Prime Ministers have left many people regarding politics as a form of competitive fiction writing.
At the same time, it sometimes feels as though entire sections of society have quietly rewritten the social contract.
Take train travel. Once upon a time, buying a ticket before boarding was considered standard behaviour. Today, judging by some commuter routes, paying appears to have become an optional lifestyle choice. The same can be said for shoplifting. Retailers report soaring levels of theft, while videos regularly appear online showing people brazenly walking out of stores with armfuls of goods. It is difficult to imagine such behaviour being met with anything other than public outrage thirty years ago. Now half the internet seems to merely regard it as content.
Then there is the matter of public courtesy. Britain was once famous for orderly queues. The queue was almost a sacred institution. It was how we distinguished ourselves from barbarism. Now queue-jumping has become such a regular occurrence that people barely react. Perhaps we’ve become too polite to complain. Or perhaps we simply can’t be bothered because someone would probably post it on TikTok and accuse us of queue privilege.
Social media has not helped. Platforms that promised to connect humanity have instead created an environment where complete strangers can spend three hours arguing about whether a sausage roll is a valid dinner. Every issue becomes a tribal battle. Nuance is treated as weakness. Moderation is considered suspicious. If you express a mildly balanced opinion, both sides immediately accuse you of working for the other.
Yet before we conclude that Britain is descending into a Dickensian dystopia populated by fare dodgers and keyboard warriors, there is another side to the story. For all the cynicism directed at institutions, ordinary people still appear remarkably decent.
When flooding hits a town, volunteers arrive. When somebody’s house burns down, neighbours organise collections. Every time there is a local crisis, thousands of people quietly help without demanding applause, media coverage or a government grant. In fact, while trust in politicians may have collapsed, trust in fellow citizens has held up surprisingly well. Most people still believe that most other people are fundamentally honest. This creates an interesting paradox: We increasingly suspect Westminster but still trust the bloke next door to water the plants while we’re on holiday.
Britain has also become significantly more tolerant over the decades. Many views that were mainstream in the 1970s would be regarded as shockingly prejudiced today. Society has become more accepting of different lifestyles, backgrounds and identities. That is genuine progress, even if some newspaper columnists seem determined to relive 1984 every morning before breakfast.
So has Britain’s social attitude deteriorated? Perhaps not. It may simply have shifted. We are more cynical, certainly. Less deferential. Less trusting of authority. We appear increasingly willing to bend small rules while simultaneously complaining that everybody else is doing exactly the same thing. In short, Britain remains recognisably British. We still moan about the weather, distrust politicians and believe the country was run much better at some unspecified point in the past.
The only real difference is that we now share those opinions online with several hundred strangers, all of whom are absolutely convinced – like myself – that they are the only sane person left in the country.
And, to be fair, they might be right. Every single one of them.
