While Britons increasingly value life outside the daily grind, the government is pursuing a class-based approach to kicking people back to work
Last Thursday marked three years since the start of the first British lockdown – and by implication, the third anniversary of the start of a conversation about life and work that is still going on, in the UK and all over the world.
As people were confined to their homes, it soon became clear that many of them were thinking deeply about their jobs, and the sacrifices they often required. Suddenly, people had time to consider more fundamental thoughts about family life, caring, free time, and the horrors of the daily commute. By the autumn of 2020, the result was a huge amount of media noise about rising conflicts between people’s “core values” and their everyday lives, the choices they were starting to make, and the newly fashionable prospect of somehow exiting the rat race. And it has never died down.
