– “It’s not just the UK, this brain dead approach, it’s almost everywhere.”
It’s neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is nearly everywhere; it’s been spreading since the 1980s. “There is no alternative”, “leave it to the market”; there are only vestiges of government left anywhere on Earth.
Can you imagine if World War II had been non-handled like this? The UK economy was transformed to oppose the spread of Nazism. Conscription, rationing, requisitioning, blackout, the Home Guard, barrage balloons, re-purposing of industry, Dig for Victory, re-homing all the city children to the countryside, bomb shelters installed in every back yard…
If there’d been “no alternative” then, the UK would have been overrun by Germany within two years.