A large worldwide poll has found Britons to be one of the most dissatisfied nations with 50 years of ‘progress’, with a majority saying they believe people were happier and safer last century, and a plurality even saying they wish they’d been born long ago.
Most Britons think the country was happier 50 years ago, pollster Ipsos finds, with only a fleeting minority thinking things are better now. Some 63 per cent in the UK said they agreed with the statement “All things considered, how would you describe things in your country today, compared with 50 years ago, in 1975?”, five times more than the 12 per cent who say people are happier in 2025.
The UK was well ahead of the global average of 55 per cent who felt their nations were happier in the last century, and only a handful of countries exhibited signs of their inhabitants being more dissatisfied. The nation most likely to say things were happier in the 1970s was France, at 70 per cent to just five per cent opposed.
Happiness isn’t the only metric where Britons see back-tracking over the past half century. 60 per cent said the country was safer in 1975, found Ipsos, with just 17 per cent saying they thought things had got safer now. Most thought it would have been better to be born in the 1970s than the 2020s, and even among the least convinced generation, Gen Z, it was a knife-edge finish with only fractionally more convinced it would be better to be born now.
While it may be tempting to blame nostalgia of a dimly-remembered childhood for these notions rather than a clear-eyed appreciation of decline, Ipsos noted in its review that the vast majority of people in Britain weren’t even born in 1975. The pollster said through a spokesman that the results reflects a “widespread dissatisfaction with the current direction of our country”. Nevertheless, the pollster made no remark in their statistical release about the potential impact of recency bias.
This dissatisfaction extends to more than domestic issues, the research found. Amid the Ukraine war, conflict in the Middle East, and a looming potential war in the Asia-Pacific, respondents worldwide feel there is more fear of “war or conflict” today than in 1975, during the Cold War. This sentiment was even more pronounced in the UK, where a clear 44 per cent think there was less risk of war 50 years ago, compared to just 16 per cent who think 2025 is safer.
The Ipsos research is just the latest in a veritable avalanche of polls in recent weeks pointing to a very deep sense of unease and dissatisfaction among Britons. As previously reported, a study by a London University found a clear majority of Britons believe the country is “divided”, with a massive 86 per cent saying there is tension between “immigrants and people born in the UK”. Half of voters say they think the country is changing too fast, and more said than not that the country should be put back to “the way it used to be”.
Much discontent appears to revolve around the migration issue. Another poll found most Britons agreed that “We risk losing our national identity if we are too open to people from all over the world”, that “It is bad for society if white people decline as a share of the population”, and that “society is weakened by being made up of many different races, ethnicities, and religions”.
Earlier this week, even more research said Britons were overwhelmingly in favour of what would amount to mass deportations. Brexit leader Nigel Farage observed of the findings that “the centre is moving very rapidly” and said “all of this indicates the public have just had enough”.
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