Our Problems

The UK faces three crises at once:

1. A Social crisis.
2. An Economic crisis.
3. An Environmental crisis.

Each of these alone would be a significant challenge for any society, but together they present an obstacle that will only be tackled with wholesale change: proper change.

The Social Crisis

Caused by the natural development of better healthcare and more sophisticated societies, the UK faces a social crisis with three parts:

1. An ageing population: one-in-six of the UK population is currently aged 65 and over, by 2050 one in-four will be. The number of people 85+ years old has doubled since 1984 and will double again to 3.5 million by 2034.
2. A wasted population, especially the young, who are prevented from finding productive work (20%+ youth unemployment) by a broken economic system.
3. A divided population caused by growing inequality of wealth and opportunity.

These problems pit the young against the old, the haves against the have-nots, and the invested against the disenfranchised. The cohesion that any human society needs to be able to face threats, challenges and changes is weakened at precisely the time that it needs to be strengthened.

The Economic Crisis

The failure of our current economic system to provide a working framework for advanced human society is obvious: no developed country is operating without a budget deficit. The UK is borrowing £50+ billion a year to finance the state, that’s £5,000,000 every hour of every day in extra debt.
Growth is not available in the way that it was; we have run out of easily exploitable natural and human resources to support consumption-based, debt-fuelled and fossil-burning growth. All of the current economic models, from every established political party, are based on the assumption that consumption-based, debt-fuelled growth with return and continue.

The UK economy has become dangerously dependent on financial and other services that are dependent on imbalances in the international economy. Low wages, special tax-haven laws and debt-fuelled consumption are not sound footings for a future economy. The UK must rebalance our economy both in terms of trade and debt.

The Environmental Crisis

The UK needs desperately to become more sustainable and resilient to the inevitable climate instability heading our way. We need to invest in new energy sources and infrastructure, we need to improve our transport efficiency and we urgently need to both improve and increase our housing stock.
To improve our chances of withstanding climate change, and to reduce our contribution to further instability, we need a massive program of investment – but we cannot invest while our economic system is already strained by its other weaknesses, and our social systems are creaking under their load.
Progress on the environmental crisis will come about because we tackle the economic and social crises first. This is a reality of human nature, and we need to face it.

The other parties have lost the plot

All of the existing political parties are failing to propose policies that will actually tackle these problems, or put us on a path to a brighter future. They are tinkering around the edges of the existing system when what we need is proper reform, proper change.

LIFE has a clear vision of the way forward, and we have the policies to make that vision a reality.

Find out about LIFE solutions to these problems…