The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain

Product Information

Class is a much more simple and honest thing in France : it's the small élite versus the rest, just as it was before the Revolution. He painted a wonderful picture of what life could be like for everyone, it’s a pity we can’t have someone with this kind of vision as Prime Minister, he would definitely get my vote. The only other option, McGarvey insists, is to stick with a system of power and privilege whose cruelties are so extreme that we now endlessly lurch from one social crisis to another, in defiance of an elemental fact: that as a certain kind of posh politician used to say, we really are all in this together. When it comes to the central state, moreover, decision-making turns even more cold and cruel, largely because in Westminster and Whitehall, the domination of political and administrative matters by privileged cliques is at its worst.

Even with the current cabinet under Liz Truss, 68% of ministers are privately educated and yet only 6% of all children in Britain are private-school educated.

If you think you're not judgmental at all, read it and maybe you'll realise you are a little bit like myself and if you think you're better than most then definitely read it and let reality hit you. McGarvey divides it into three “acts” and begins with 11 chapters that cover homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, the treatment of immigrants, land ownership, the benefits system and much more. The city, he muses, may well be Scotland’s most beautiful metropolis, where “beams reflect off the granite, rendering even the most ordinary building prestigious and majestic”. In truth, I was really there for two functions – first as a conflict resolver and secondly as an interpreter. As with Poverty Safari, the book that won him one of 2018’s Orwell prizes, the quality of McGarvey’s reporting and storytelling is first-rate.

All this came about (in Garvey's telling – and I have to agree to a large extent) because social mixing across class lines has collapsed, leaving groups in echo chambers that exclude views that might challenge their established beliefs. The second half of the book was more interesting and it was strongest when debating the ideas of class in British society. The more I thought about it, the more I started wondering what those long-dead ghosts of the past would make of us if they could see us now, and I felt ashamed. Perhaps if the labour party truly cared for women, they would have been better defended Sure Start and tax credits.A troubling tale of disaffection between classes in Britain – it's resolute in its class-based analysis, despite how out of fashion that is, and after reading this book it's difficult to disagree.

There is a wealth of material about the “over-policing” of deprived people and places and its overlooked consequences for the ways that lots of people – young men, mostly – understand power and their relation to it. This book lays bare the facts that confirm Britain is a country divided, one that is still in the grasp of class warfare. This book seems to have two different titles: 'Hostile Environments' and 'The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain'.The world is in turmoil and this is just a glimpse into the political and social landscape in the UK, that has led to us leaving the EU, and to so many becoming disillusioned with the politicians that have let us down time and again.

He spun tales of a long-vanished working class community, which stood tall and proud because it knew it was the backbone of the country. The pandemic exposed and intensified the deep-rooted problems gripping the nation – from poverty to precarity to underfunded public services. But social distance has been at the heart of our biggest challenges since long before Covid-19 struck: in particular, the distance that those in power often keep from the issues they are in charge of solving. Although the post code irony is that depending on your luck that it can be very different if you lived in Pollok or Crookston.

I've sat on cold pavements with beggars, asking them why they would rather wander the streets than live in supported accommodation.