> As the financial crisis of 2008 unfolded, unemployment increased, wages fell, and millions were pushed into poverty. Meanwhile, those whose greed and recklessness lay behind the crisis were insulated from [...]

Not to speak well of "neoliberalist" economic policies, but Britain was pretty well broken by the events of 1912-1946, and its own poor responses to those. Start of that period, Britain was the obvious global superpower - her Royal Navy dominating the seas, London the world's financial capital, the sun never setting on her Empire, etc., etc. Vs. end of that period, Britain was a crumbling has-been - avoiding full national bankruptcy only because the US Treasury gave her a huge bail-out loan.

(If you look at British history 1946-1992 - it's obvious that the greed, recklessness, stupidity, and lack of consequences for the guilty, which the article notes in 2008, was long-established practice. If you read some older history...yeah. Those vices predate neoliberalism by thousands of years.)

And that Britain looked fairly good - by some macroeconomic metrics - during the 1992-2008 financial boom is not a sign of "going well". It's a sign that the economy was heavily financialized. A petrostate looks great when the price of oil is spiking...but that's no sign of actual economic health.