For thirty years, the political centre designed pensions, housing, education, taxation and an era of cheap debt to benefit their generation at the expense of a generation left behind alongside future generations. They have created the unlucky generation.
The state pension costs £155bn a year. Public sector pensions cost a further £105 billion. Unfunded pension liabilities stand at £1.3 trillion and sit off the national balance sheet. Housing costs have risen disproportionally relative to earnings. Student debt is projected to reach £500bn, with potential debt write-downs of more than £200 billion by 2040.
"The question isn't whether the older generation worked hard. The question is whether the system they designed and voted to protect is one that younger people have any realistic chance of inheriting on comparable terms."
The Unlucky Generation is an argument about honesty. The data is public. The ONS, OBR, WGA (2023/24), HMRC and the Student Loans Company provide the data. What is missing is the political will to consolidate it and recognise what it shows and stop spending on the belief that it will generate economic growth.
It is politically neutral and from the view of a generation who are increasingly lost. I have no time for the extremes of politics, with equal contempt for the views of those being labelled far right and far left, and for those doing the labelling. We need politics with honesty and integrity that acts to serve the interests of the people it represents, rather than the self-interest of the political class.
The book argues for the recognition by the lucky generation of what they had, and the need for political change to create a different future for the unlucky generation.
Five themed panels drawing on ONS, OBR, WGA 2023-24, HMRC, HM Treasury, and the Student Loans Company. Select a theme in the sidebar to explore the evidence behind the book's arguments.
A podcast series exploring the arguments of The Unlucky Generation — each episode taking one chapter's thesis and making it accessible, sharp, and unignorable.
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A data-led examination of how pensions, housing, and public debt were systematically redesigned to benefit the lucky generation while assigning the costs to future generations — and what a genuinely honest settlement would look like.
With tables, interactive data companion, and full source citations from ONS, OBR, WGA (2023/24), HMRC, and the Student Loans Company.