Money, territory, decarbonisation: the looming crisis of British politics

Abstract

From the 2008 crash to the cost-of-living, the UK has seemingly spent the past two decades lurching from one crisis to the next. While the field of British politics has made strong contributions in analysing these developments, this article shows the benefits of a different perspective. To do so, we draw on the under-acknowledged but vital scholarly tradition of British political economy, which provides tools to understand the underlying forces and contradictions that drive British political and economic development over the long term—thereby producing a different conception of crisis to that implied in the frames of reference of the British politics literature. Developing this political economy approach, our thesis is that British politics faces unique challenges compared to other Western liberal democracies due to the peculiarities of its long-term political and economic development. We support this argument by focussing on three central challenges that all states face but that are especially acute for the UK: fiscal capacity, territorial integrity, and decarbonisation. Analysing how these challenges are likely to overlap and compound one another, we conclude the article by sketching out future scenarios for renewed legitimation crises of the British state.