Flatlining wages, soaring house prices and high childcare costs have broken the social contract: the unspoken understanding that if you worked hard and did the right thing, Britain would reward you, say Simon Clarke and Phoebe Arslanagic-Little

Last week, the OBR set out the sheer, mind-blowing extent of Britain’s fiscal risks. Foremost among them is the coming crunch around our pension commitments. The triple lock is (ironically) costing triple what was envisaged just 13 years ago. But in many ways, the challenge for government isn’t that we have lots of elderly people: it’s that we will have so few young ones to pay for them.

Get a good education. Work hard. Buy a home. Start a family. Play by the rules and you can build yourself a bright future. For much of the last century, this was sound advice to young British people. Advice that could put them on a clear path to security, dignity and the chance to do better than the generation before.

This was a key part of Britain’s postwar social contract, an unspoken........

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