How Did Britain Come to This?A century of systemic failures of governance.

Cover of How Did Britain Come to This? — the black door of 10 Downing Street ajar on a yellow field

LSE Press, 23 October 2023 · 326 pages · open access (CC BY-NC 4.0), peer reviewed

Read it free at LSE Press — online, or as PDF, EPUB or MOBI.

Buy the paperback: Waterstones, Amazon UK.

Launch event recording, LSE Player, November 2023.

“If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, what is wrong with the design of the systems that govern Britain?”

The book tells a century of British governance through the making and breaking of two settlements: Attlee’s planned state, which remedied the prewar minimal state, and Thatcher’s marketised state, which remedied Attlee’s and has since become a financialised one. It ends by arguing for a new settlement, built around an enabling state.

Praise

“A coruscating analysis of the failings of British governance and public policy that led to the catastrophe of the Covid pandemic and its aftermath.”

Patrick Diamond, Professor in Public Policy, Queen Mary University of London

“…what society really needs is many more ‘knights’, that is, intrinsically motivated politicians and public servants… I’m absolutely certain that he’s right.”

Sandy Pepper, Professor of Management Practice, LSE

“A chilling catalogue of systemic failure – and the consequences – at the heart of Britain’s most important institutions.”

Stewart Lansley, author of The Richer, The Poorer

“Few academic commentators could do better than Gwyn Bevan in explaining how Britain managed to muddle its way through to the condition it finds itself in right now. Politicians contemplating power after the forthcoming general election should read it.”

Tony Travers, Associate Dean, LSE School of Public Policy

“It should be read by every concerned citizen.”

Sir Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government, King’s College

Contents

Every chapter is free to read — each title links to its PDF at LSE Press.

  1. Why governance matters – analysing systemic failures in the NHS
  2. Economic and geographical fault lines
  3. The interwar period and the Attlee settlement
  4. The Attlee settlement’s failures: stagflation, slums in the sky and educational geography
  5. Neoliberalism and the new Thatcher settlement
  6. The ‘make or buy’ decision: the UK’s ‘parastate’ after privatisation and outsourcing
  7. Marketisation in education
  8. Healthcare: to marketise or not to marketise?
  9. Playing the opening and middle games against Covid-19
  10. Afterword: re-engaging with public governance

Forthcoming

Fixing Britain’s Failing Political Economy: Developing federal government, fixing zombie markets, and tackling inequalities

Edited by Gwyn Bevan. Pre-publication version and summary to follow.

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