How did Britain come to this? Why systems of governance work and fail.

Gwyn’s book takes England as a case study of governance that has failed. It runs from the minimal state before the second world war, through Attlee’s planned state, to the marketised state Thatcher built and the financialised one it became. It traces those failures through the NHS, schools, privatisation and outsourcing, and the government’s handling of Covid-19. The book closes by arguing for a new settlement, built around an enabling state.