The UK has the worst death rate from coronavirus in the Group of 7. It has the second worst case rate (Worldometers 2020). And it is undergoing the worst recession of these advanced economies, projected to be the only member not reaching pre-crisis GDP levels until 2022 (IMF 2021). In attempting to figure out why the UK have dealt so badly with the crisis, I’m proposing that a key factor is its wholesale commitment to the neoliberal capitalist model in a world that increasingly cannot cope with it. Economist Grace Blakeley discusses this in The Corona Crisis, writing that, in most recent times of crisis, ‘Central bankers and politicians have staged unprecedented economic interventions, not to help the most vulnerable through this crisis, but to save capitalism from itself.’ (Blakeley 2020: 12) Whilst America is capitalism’s golden state, it and Canada have levels of federalisation that make complete commitment to neoliberalism more difficult than the UK and means their crisis response is more devolved and area-specific. Germany, France, Italy & Japan, meanwhile, combine further commitments to worker’s rights with strong state institutions, ensuring safeguards for crisis periods. The UK, however, has a centralised system with weak state institutions, meaning that they needed to undertake mass actions – such as backseating worker’s compensation in order to save businesses exclusively - to maintain the neoliberal model that got them into this mess in the first place. Such actions are emblematic of ‘capitalist realism’, an idea defined by social theorist Mark Fisher as, ‘It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’ (Fisher 2009). In light of this, I wanted to research what the UK government was sacrificing to save capitalism once again. I decided to look into the policy responses to rising levels of unemployment, and deteriorating mental health issues. These are two areas that are particularly relevant to my own experience during this past year-and-counting of crisis, but they are also two areas which summate how the coronavirus-induced crisis in the UK is more specifically a crisis of neoliberal capitalism.
To start, I want to underpin the social consequences of the crisis by looking at the economic ones. The UK-wide unemployment rate currently sits at 5.1%, it’s highest since August 2016. This figure is dragged up by the 16-24 age bracket, as a government research paper shows the unemployment rate for this group to be a staggering 14.2% (for reference, 50-64 sits at 3.9%, 35-49 at 3.1%, 25-34 at 4.3%) (Commons Library 2021). This reflects analysis by The Resolution Foundation, who figure that ‘while recessions naturally drive up unemployment across the population, the effects are more severe for those who have only recently left full-time education.’ (Henehan 2020) In the economic ramifications of this pandemic, it is young people who stand alone in the darkness. Analysis from previous recessions found that, ‘three years after having left education, the likelihood of a graduate recession leaver being in employment is estimated to be 13 per cent lower’ than a non-recession leaver. This almost triples for those without degrees at all (Henehan 2020). Using modelling to factor in the specifics of this COVID-induced recession (undetermined crisis period, multiple lockdowns), it is expected that the employment rate for people who graduated in 2020 to be 17% lower than those who graduated into a non-crisis economy (Henehan 2020). You don’t need me to spell out that these are uninspiring statistics for the current crop of young graduates. To address this, the UK Government announced the ‘Kickstart Scheme’, ‘a £2 billion fund to create hundreds of thousands of high quality 6-month work placements aimed at those aged 16-24 who are on Universal Credit and are deemed to be at risk of long-term unemployment.’ (HM Treasury 2020) By February 2021, the Government reported that the scheme has produced over 120,000 new jobs (DWP 2020). With nearly one million young people currently unemployed, the idea behind the scheme is clear as the problem stems from a lack of legitimate employment opportunities for 16-24 year olds. However, if that problem stems from how crisis-prone your economic system is – more specifically, how precarious financialisation is (the shift from industry being the biggest generator of national income to financial services being that generator, which is key to the neoliberal project), which Blakeley suggests ‘is what underlay both the financial crisis and the stagnation witnessed since’ (Blakeley 2020: 17) - then a scheme to create 6-month work placements seems to be like putting a plaster on a shotgun blast to the face. If this is to happen every ten years, as it has for the past half-century, then you face a generation in every two whose sense of self is warped as they have entered the job market in total insecurity. But maybe that’s the aim.
If neoliberal capitalism necessitates that you have a job to maintain or improve your standard of living, it then follows that a rise in unemployment – and well-meaning but slow and fruitless policy responses – would coincide with a fall in the wellbeing of the UK’s citizens. Mental health conditions are being affected by this prolonged crisis, being how the wide-reaching pejorative factors – uncertainty around lockdowns, being unable to leave the house/socialise, lack of future prospects, to name a few – are manifesting in people. Unfortunately, the weakness of UK institutions means that education and action surrounding mental health is being, in part, reduced to young people sharing their experiences online. The Centre for Mental Health predicts that, in England, ‘up to 10 million people will need either new or additional mental health support as a direct consequence of the crisis’, with 1.5 million of those being children or young people (O’Shea 2020). Subsequently, those in a social minority are even more at risk. I would doubt the government have even thought about how the experiences of marginalised social groups accentuates mental illness prevalence, let alone how their lived experiences interact with capitalist stress. The statistics on mental health cases for people facing ‘minority stress’ are, quite frankly, abhorrent. A review from LGBT Health concluded that ‘LGBQ+ people are twice as likely to report symptoms of poor mental health than heterosexual adults’ and ‘have around 1.5 times higher prevalence of depression and anxiety’ (LGBT Health 2018). For transgender people, a report into nearly 900 trans people across the UK concluded that ‘88% showed symptoms of depression compared to 20% of the UK’ (McNeil, et. al. 2012).
Looking into racial statistics provided a similar outcome. There are multiple studies that link the experience of suffering racial abuse to poor mental health (Williams 2018), whilst the rates of severe mental health diagnosis (psychosis, schizophrenia) are three-to-five times higher in black people in the UK (Nkansa-Dwamena, et. al. 2014). Furthermore, detention rates under the Mental Health Act are around 4 times higher for black people than the average for other ethnic groups (Nkansa-Dwamena, et. al. 2014). In regards to COVID, a report by Mind highlights how 30% of non-white participants in a study said their mental health had deteriorated due to housing issues, compared to only 23% of white people. Just from the simple outset of these stats, there are clear links between being a minority social group and suffering from disproportionate rates of mental illness (Mind 2020).
‘Minority stress’ coupled with capitalistic stress – and the ways these interact with each other in regards to employment, affordable housing etc… - is demonstrable of a pandemic of its own. If one is linking capitalist stress to mental illness, suggesting that a reformation of neoliberal capitalism is the way to deal with the root cause of highly-prevalent mental health problems, then one also has to commit to liberating social minorities from prejudice too. Without capitalist stress, minority stress can still exist. Without minority stress, capitalist stress can still exist. To deal with a national mental health crisis accentuated by an economic crisis, both capitalist reform and anti-prejudice has to be focused on. If those who face relatively little material problems are suffering from disproportionate rates of mental health problems, whilst those with material problems have their issues accentuated, it suggests the superstructure we all live under is a root cause. If we are to alleviate issues around precarious financial situations and diminishing relaxation time, then capitalism’s relentlessness needs to be dealt with directly - with worker’s rights and conditions taking precedence over profit. You may not be surprised to hear that the UK government’s policy response doesn’t centre this.
The government’s policy response to rising mental illness has been to commission ‘the most significant reform of the Mental Health Act since 2007’ (I put this in quotation marks as this is a government phrase, not mine). This reform is focusing on four key areas: ‘choice and autonomy’, ‘least restriction’, ‘therapeutic benefit’, and ‘the person as an individual’ (DHSC 2020). If those four key areas seem like standard bureaucratic jargon to you, that’s because they are. When I read the paper, it became clear to me that these reforms would be enacted on a very technical level. ‘Least Restriction’ focuses on changes to what happens to a person after they get sectioned – ensuring that ‘the purpose of care and treatment is to bring about a therapeutic benefit’ (DHSC 2020). ‘The Person as an Individual’ is, amongst similar things, introducing new ‘advance choice documents’ which ‘mean that decision makers are legally required to consider the advance wishes of the patient, meaning that the patient's voice will play a far greater role in informing treatment’ (DHSC 2020). Promising reforms, sure, but basically new bureaucratic processes that give the illusion of the government actually attempting to improve things. The most important part of the paper, for me, is the preface to the government’s responses to the recommendations of the Independent Review of the MHA. It reads:
‘Taking forward the commitments to reform, as set out in the White Paper and in the response below, is subject to consultation and affordability. The transformational proposals set out in this White Paper will therefore be subject to future funding decisions, including at Spending Review 2021.’ (DHSC 2020).
There’s no attempt to hide the fact that, after a decade of on-and-off cuts to mental health funding in real terms, that their new proposals will only be enacted if they choose to afford it. Lowering the rate of mental health problems in the first place appears to not be of interest to this government, because it would mean having to address their unwavering commitment to neoliberal capitalism also.
The way this pandemic quickly became more than just a health problem has highlighted just how rickety the capitalist superstructure has become. When Blakeley wrote that, ‘The problem was clear: capitalism had lost all momentum’ (Blakeley 2020: 12), it demonstrated to me just how much a commitment to maintaining capitalism is entrenched within all power structures of UK society. The UK government is enacting policies to set capitalism on its way again, and anything else is simply to stem the blood flow in the country’s wounds. But why treat the wounds if you know you’re just going to get shot again next week? I don’t want to labour the point, but the awful unemployment rate, the diminishing mental health of young people and the G7’s worst economic response all point back to the neoliberal capitalist model. Alleviating this would require a move away from neoliberal financialisation, and a centring of worker’s rights and life satisfaction within the economic system. For young people, the Coronavirus crisis has exposed certain realities about our future, particularly how precarious our livelihoods will be and how bleak the outlook will undoubtedly get at certain times. There’s a looming sense of worthlessness in our generation, currently. If the UK government were serious about this country’s future, they would take a deep look into how the country was so quick to be broken to ensure future crises don’t hit us as badly as this one has. Seeing as they are the architects of this crumbling system, however, I wouldn’t bet highly on it.
BIOGRAPHY
Blakeley, Grace. 2020. The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism. Verso Books.
Department of Health & Social Care. 2021. Reforming the Mental Health Act. Open Consultation. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/reforming-the-mental-health-act/reforming-the-mental-health-act#part-1-proposals-for-reform-of-the-mental-health-act
Department of Work and Pensions. 2021. Kickstart moves up a gear with over 120,000 jobs created so far and government making it even simpler for employers to join. Press Release. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/kickstart-moves-up-a-gear-with-over-120-000-jobs-created-so-far-and-government-making-it-even-simpler-for-employers-to-join
Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. Zero Books.
Frances-Devine, Brigid. 2021. Youth Unemployment Statistics. Briefing Paper Number 5871. House of Commons Library. Available from: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05871/
Henehan, Kathleen. 2020. Class of 2020: Education Leavers in the Current Crisis. The Resolution Foundation. Available from: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/class-of-2020/
HM Treasury. 2020. A Plan for Jobs 2020. Policy Paper. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-plan-for-jobs-documents/a-plan-for-jobs-2020#policy-decisions
International Monetary Fund. 2021. World Economic Outlook Update. Available from: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2021/01/26/2021-world-economic-outlook-update
LGBT Health. 2018. LGBTI Populations and Mental Health Inequality. Available from: https://www.lgbthealth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/LGBTI-Populations-and-Mental-Health-Inequality-May-2018.pdf
Nkansa-Dwamena, Dr. Ohemaa. Fitzpatrick, Rob. Kumar, Dr. Sarabajaya. Thorne, Laura. 2014. Ethnic Inequalities in Mental Health: Promoting Lasting Positive Change. LankellyChase Foundation. Available from: https://lankellychase.org.uk/resources/publications/ethnic-inequalities-in-mental-health/
O’Shea, Nick. 2020. COVID-19 and the Nation’s Mental Health: October 2020. Centre for Mental Health. Available from: https://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/publications/covid-19-and-nations-mental-health-october-2020
McNeil, Jay. Bailey, Louis. Ellis, Sonja. Morton, James. Regan, Maeve. 2012. Trans Mental Health Study 2012. Scottish Transgender Alliance. Available from: https://www.lgbthealth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/LGBTI-Populations-and-Mental-Health-Inequality-May-2018.pdf
Mind. 2020. The Mental Health Emergency: How Has the Coronavirus Pandemic Impacted Our Mental Health?. Available from: https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/existing-inequalities-have-made-mental-health-of-bame-groups-worse-during-pandemic-says-mind/
Williams, D.R.. 2018. Stress and the Mental Health of Populations of Color: Advancing Our Understanding of Race-related Stressors. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, Issue 59, Volume 4, 466-485. [Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30484715/]
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