The creation of the welfare state represents one of the most radical changes that have taken place in recent UK society. As we documented in the first three chapters of this book, it took enormous pressures and seismic shifts in politics, ideology, economics and international relations for it to happen. If the aim is to return to a similar commitment to improving people’s well-being, then a massive process of change will again be needed. This time, there aren’t the same spurs for action. There has been no successful ending of a global conflict, even if economic uncertainty and division are increasing.

Calls for reform, proposals for change, tend to be weakest when it comes to spelling out how they are to be achieved. Often this issue is left unstated and unexplored as though the mere strength of the argument and the evidence offered will create its own force for change. Sadly such hopes almost invariably seem to be disappointed. The sense that ‘something must be done’ about horrors reported, injustices highlighted and appalling policy identified, ignores the real world of power, politics and policy. We know from the world of international ‘realpolitik’ that the most terrible conflicts tend to continue until one side wins or resources are exhausted. Yet when it comes to domestic policy, a sense lingers that somehow morality or ethics will triumph. Sadly, as the coiner of the term, ‘realpolitik’, himself said, more often it seems that ‘the law of power governs the world of states just as the law of gravity governs the physical world’ (von Rochau. 1853). Again sadly, it seems that texts highlighting the evils of inequality or the cruelty of austerity, ultimately are likely to make little difference (for example, Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009; Dorling, 2014; Atkinson, 2015).

Social policy as both activity and discipline has its own unhelpful history here as regards change.