Land Where Nothing Works - How Britain Lost the Plot

Tracing the origins of Britain’s current malaise to the abandonment of social democracy

What has happened to Britain? As drivers on its roads can attest, it is the pothole capital of Europe. Once-beautiful towns now feature peeling paint, weeds, and broken railings. Public services are no longer fit for purpose. A malaise seems to infect every aspect of British life: its economy, polity, social order, sense of well-being, domestic regional relationships, and place in the world. In The Land Where Nothing Works, the distinguished historian A. G. Hopkins offers an explanation, tracing Britain’s current problems to decisions made in the 1980s that abandoned its postwar experiment in social democracy and mimicked policies of deregulation and privatisation promoted by the United States.

In 1945, the new Labour government’s development programme aimed at creating a social democracy that would benefit all members of society. The counterrevolution launched by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1979, which remains in force today, promoted individualism and deregulation. The transition from one programme to another was a response to the growth of finance and services centred on the City of London, and to decolonisation, which redirected trade to Europe. The expansion of credit led to the financial crisis of 2008 and the years of austerity that followed, and fuelled the populist movement that culminated in Brexit. Hopkins argues that, instead of following the free-market policies of its mentor, the United States, Britain should draw on its own history of social democracy and borrow from its neighbours in Europe, where communitarian principles continue to be upheld.

About the author

A. G. Hopkins is the Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge, an emeritus fellow of Pembroke College, and a fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of American Empire: A Global History, Capitalism in the Colonies: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851–1931, (both Princeton), An Economic History of West Africa, and (with P. J. Cain) British Imperialism, 1688–2015.

Product details

• Authors: A. G. Hopkins, Hopkins A. G.
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 14.04.2026
• EAN: 9780691283630
• ISBN: 978-0-691-28363-0
• No. of pages: 288
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Contemporary history (1945 to 1989); Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, HISTORY / Modern / 21st Century, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century, 21st Century, 21st century history: from c 2000 -, Economic history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Social and cultural history, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Free Enterprise & Capitalism, Early 21st century c 2000 to c 2050, c 1945 to c 2000 (Post-war period)