Brits feel just as poor and miserable as they did last year. When will things get better?

“Things can only get better.” Chances are, you sang that in your head. 

This refrain – from D:Ream’s iconic song of the same name – is indelibly associated with Labour. It became an anthem for the party at the 1997 general election, and last year rang out through Downing Street during then-PM Rishi Sunak’s speech calling a general election.

But eight months into the new government, it’s unclear whether the iconic song’s forecast rings true. According to sobering new Office for National Statistics figures released on Tuesday (11 February), Britain’s welfare has stagnated over the past year.

The ONS’ latest annual survey – analysing the UK’s attitudes towards personal finance, community integration and democracy – shows almost no short-term improvements for the average person.

In other words: we all feel just as poor, isolated and disenfranchised as we did a year ago. 

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This flatlining presents an “urgent dilemma” for the government, said Adam Lang, director of policy at think tank Carnegie UK. 

“These are really important statistics. They give us an insight into some of the measures that matter most to people’s lives,” he told Big Issue. “And what they reveal are acute social and economic challenges.”

But it’s not all bad news: despite these trends, two-thirds of adults say they feel hopeful about their future. So how can politicians deliver on this hope to genuinely improve people’s lives? Let’s dive into the details. 

Why do Brits feel poor?

About one in four adults (22.9%) in Great Britain found it fairly or very difficult to get by financially in the past month. This figure has not changed in the short term, according to the ONS.

It’s hardly surprising. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) estimates that, had wages grown at trends prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the average worker would be more than £14,000 a year better off than they currently are. 

Labour’s ‘Plan for Change’ includes a pledge to “raise living standards in every region of the country”. The exact metric the government will use to measure this is yet unclear, but it will involve raising disposable income. 

But they’re pinning a lot of their hopes on ‘growth’ at all costs. Even if glum forecasts improve, this single-minded approach is insufficient, said Lang. 

“One of the challenges in the political agenda around growth is the need to ask: Growth to what end?” he said. “Growth is important, but growth figures don’t tell you everything about people’s day-to-day lives. Even if their growth numbers do exceed expectations. Is it fair growth? Who is it benefiting? Is it benefitting the most vulnerable?”

“People are still really struggling with the cost of living. Inflation might be going down, but on every front, households are facing significant strain on their budgets.”

Solving the living standards crisis will require a multi-pronged approach. Building more affordable housing, for example, will be key: Rising rental costs alone risk leaving households in the bottom 40% of incomes around £450 worse off in 2029 than they are right now. 

Improved benefits and financial support could be funded by a windfall tax on excess profits, Megan Davies from the Stop the Squeeze campaign suggested.

“The government needs to take action to ensure that essentials like food and energy are affordable now and remain so in the future,” she told Big Issue. “That means fixing broken energy and housing markets, cracking down on excess profits, increasing investment in public services and infrastructure, and reforming the social security system so it provides the support people need.”

Why are British communities fragmented?

A little more than half (54.5%) of adults in Great Britain say that people from different backgrounds get on well together in their local area. This figure has stayed the same in the short term, according to the ONS.

It’s good that a majority agree with this statement. But 45.5% disagreeing is “of course concerning”, said Lang.

Britain is increasingly fragmented – and those on the right of politics are stoking these divisions. 

In 2023, former home secretary Suella Braverman described multiculturalism as a “misguided dogma” that had allowed people to “live parallel lives”. This year, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and its explicitly anti-immigrant agenda has surged in the polls.

In the aftermath of violent, racist riots that rocked the country last summer, Joe Mulhall – director of anti-fascist organisation Hope not Hate – told the Big Issue that “division doesn’t emerge from a vacuum”. 

“The far-right isn’t like a tumour that sits outside our politics, you know, that you can lop off and then you’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s an infection within our politics… and inequality drives it.”

More than half of those charged with offences in last year’s riots came from the country’s most deprived 20% of neighbourhoods. 

Today’s ONS data revealed that approximately one in five adults in Great Britain feel very or somewhat unfairly treated by society. “Scapegoating” thrives in broken communities, Mulhall said last year. 

To stem the spread of division, the government needs to come up with a genuine social cohesion strategy for the UK.

“It needs to be really far reaching. It’s not just about making sure people of different faiths and backgrounds are sitting down for cups of tea, as nice as that is. It needs to be about addressing the kind of the scarcity which leads to scapegoating. Housing, decent jobs, schools and hospitals.”

The divisions have serious consequences for some of the most vulnerable people in society, says Sam Pordale. Pordale – who spent six months in an asylum hotel after arriving in the UK on a small boat – was named one of Big Issue’s Changemakers in 2024 for his work with Student Action for Refugees (STAR) at the University of Warwick. 

“Asylum seekers can feel really alone here,” he said. “They worry about how they will be treated.”

Reacting to the new ONS data, Sam told Big Issue that he sees people “of different backgrounds” working together everyday. Exposure is often the solution to fear or prejudice. 

“That’s how we do it in Warwick. It works, it changes the asylum seeker’s fear of how they will be treated and who they are interacting with. And it changes the minds of people who do not understand asylum seekers.”

Why have Brits stopped believing in democracy?

Just less than seven in 10 adults (68.5%) in Great Britain said they do not have any say in what the government does. This figure has not changed in the short term, according to the ONS.

It’s unsurprising, says Tom Brake from Unlock Democracy, given how our electoral system works. 

“If you look at the last general election, turnout was 60%, so six out of 10 people voted,” he said. “And that means that basically, one person out of five actually voted for the present government. So in other words, 80% of people didn’t vote for the present government.”

Reforming the first-past-the-post electoral system is one answer – the Electoral Reform Society has described this parliament as the “most disproportional in history”.

But whatever the model, “meaningful democracy can’t just be about voting once every four or five years,” Lang said.

Citizens’ assemblies – where randomly selected individuals can deliberate on key issues and provide policy recommendations – could help fix this democratic deficit. Online platforms can facilitate this, Brake said. 

“They have some form of this in Ireland, for instance, where they had citizen assemblies looking at both the question of abortion and also equal marriage. “Our government must create opportunities for people to be involved in key decisions at times other than just the general election.”

Devolution is a “good start”, added Lang, because “the further away the government is, the less trust there is”. 

But it’s a pressing issue. If people don’t believe in democracy, it’s very hard to bring them along on difficult issues, Lang said. 

“Whether it is pressures on our health service, our care service, whether it’s the type of work people do and the disruption and opportunities of technology or any number of other issues your net zero transitions, whatever it might be… all of these are going to require difficult decisions, decisions that require policy trade offs,” he said. 

“We need to be able to take people with us, and people need to feel connected. So if we can’t repair trust, and if we can’t repair this idea of connection with democracy, we’re really setting ourselves up for a fall.”

So why be hopeful? 

It’s not all doom and gloom. There are a few positive statistics in the ONS data. 

Just one in 20 UK adults reported low satisfaction with their lives, and a mere one in 25 reported low levels of feeling the things they do in life are worthwhile.

Some six in seven of us are fairly or very satisfied with our social relationships, and nine in 10 feel we have people in their lives to rely on if we have a serious problem.

Perhaps with these strong social relationships in mind, two-thirds of us are optimistic about the future.

“The hope is an important point,” Lang said. “People are hopeful about the future. We can harness that to fix democracy and our other problems.” 

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