Something in the United Kingdom is fraying. It’s hard to pin down, but in the years following the pandemic, there has been a perception across the country that ‘things’ are persistently getting worse, and slowly, but surely, a muted retreat is taking place. The decline is not dramatic, nor is it grabbing any headlines. It’s quiet, domestic, deeply human—and perhaps in its own way, therefore uniquely British. Fewer people are having children, fewer people are purchasing their first home. Slowly, there has been a fade from our cultural life.
In the Britain of 2025, fewer people are getting married, and fewer are starting families. We are not just facing an economic downturn, we are looking on as a nation unravels.
Only one in every two adults now owns their own home, with ownership amongst the younger generation falling to around 35%. There is a great national debate about how to reverse this trend, but the statistics underscore a greater national challenge—if people are not buying their stake in society, fewer and fewer people feel as though they have a place in it. A population of renters lacks permanency, a pseudo-nomadic population of the young breeds a resentment toward the ‘haves’ (those with property) and a feeling of detachment from a society they feel is rigged against them.
A rising affordability gap has driven the trend, with only 9% of local authority areas having homes priced below five times the area’s average earnings. How can young couples settle down when the cost of doing so remains prohibitively high? A nation that cannot house its young is not preparing for the future, it is setting itself up to fail.
At the same time, the country’s population is, to be blunt, not replacing itself. Our birth rate has dropped to a record low, with only 1.44 children per woman in the country. And we are now a nation with more deaths recorded than births, a demographic inversion not seen since the 1970s. Millennials and Gen Z are often maligned for this statistic, slammed for ‘refusing to have children’. But who can blame them? Are they really refusing out of selfishness and cynicism, or simply because they cannot afford to do it? It isn’t that my generation doesn’t value family; it is that a family life is no longer economically viable.
Engagement in culture is fading too. Fewer people go to the theatre, attend concerts, or visit museums. Visiting historical sites across the country is increasingly a pursuit for the elderly. This isn’t simply because of digital distractions, shortening attention spans, or the pressures brought about by the cost of living. A big part of it is that culture just doesn’t feel as shared or meaningful as it once did. Culture used to be rooted in local institutions and helped tell a shared national story. Now it’s either managed by distant officials or left to wither. While Westminster argues over funding, communities are losing the places that once gave them identity and connection—more than just names on a map.
At the heart of all these challenges is the slow erosion of the building block of society: the family unit. Incomes continue to stagnate. Families now need nearly £90,000 a year to support young children and keep up mortgage payments. For all the talk we hear of family values, little is being done to support marriage and the raising of children. Efforts to enable people to ‘work from home’ are met with derision and political backlash—policies such as this, that could actually encourage family growth, are pushed to the side.
The result? For the first time, fewer than half of adults are married, and fewer have families of their own. The institution that once anchored British life has become optional, even discouraged, by design.
As a country, we need to do more than talk and debate the issue. We fundamentally need to reverse course. Not with slogans, and certainly not with an increase in central planning, but by unleashing the principles of freedom, tradition, and civic renewal.
We need to build. That means reforming the planning system (or tearing it up entirely and starting over), freeing up land for development, and enabling communities to shape their own growth and take charge. Ultimately, we need to make it easier for people to own their own homes and get out of the rent trap, not make it harder.
Society must move toward supporting families—in whatever form they take. This should not be achieved through handouts, but by recognising marriage in the tax system, expanding the Marriage Allowance. And yes, perhaps we should be open to widening the definition—any two adults raising a child together should be able to qualify for such tax benefits. We must move to a place where, once again, it can be economically rational to start and support a family.
And we need to revive our cultural life, not through more state spending but by empowering civil society. Cut the red tape that stifles wide local initiatives. Make charitable giving to the arts easier and more attractive. Let communities take the lead and champion what makes them great.
Our country is not beyond saving. But it will not save itself without communities being allowed to take charge. The longer we wait, the deeper the rot grows. Yet decline does not have to be destiny. A revival is not automatic. If we want to build a country worth passing on, we’ll need to make serious changes—based on the belief that most people still want to put down roots, raise a family, and be part of something bigger, if they’re given the freedom and support to do so.