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The decline of industry has left large parts of urban Britain as wasteland. Photograph: The Guardian

As the economic historian Robert Skidelsky acknowledges in his account of the last 115 years inthe UK, ithas often been argued that something went terribly wrong during that period. Britain may have avoided fascism, communism and widespread civil strife, but it abdicated world leadership in industry, fell back in technological advancement and its culture became parochial. The critique has come from both the Marxist left (in the form of Perry Anderson and Tom Nairns thesisof an incomplete bourgeois revolution) and the Thatcherite right (Correlli Barnett or Martin Wieners attacks on an effete, anti-industrial British elite). Skidelskys book recognises much of the truth of these arguments, but maintains that it doesnt really matter, because most people within the UK are vastly richer, healthier and better educated than they were in 1900. By the end of thebook, it sounds like the most depressing of victories.

This is an unashamedly mandarin history history from above, because history is mainly made from above, from a perspective where the British people are the (somewhat rebellious) beneficiaries and victims of the actions and behaviour of the governing class. This hammer and anvil view of history is qualified by the argument that the wars, the depression, the welfare state, and a neoliberal settlement that was both democratic inspirit and resulted in a collapse ofdemocratic participation, were supported, at least passively, by either the majority or a large minority of British subjects. Communism, fascism, or even an efficient, egalitarian, hi-technorth-European social democracy didnt arrive here because most peopledidnt particularly want them,and were able to express this rejection electorally. Skidelsky doesnt flatter British moderation too much, however,and a certain distance from British prejudices and obsessions in the China-born professors work is toits benefit.

The first part of the book sets the intellectual, economic and cultural scene, and is more interesting than thesecond halfs slightly pedestrian narrative of political history from 1900to 2014. The scene is mainly suburbia, in a century where towns expanded outwards, not upwards. True as this may be, it needs updating, as does his assertion that London fell from its peak of 8.3 million in 1951 tojust over 7 million in 2001 in 2015that peak was surpassed. The return ofthe inner city, at least in the capital, is glancingly noted. He claims, accurately, that regeneration was most successful when the middle class did it, if successful is measured in monetary terms. The urban landscape of industry was dismantled with a speed and recklessness that have left large parts of urban Britain as wastelands in sharp contrast to continental countries like Germany, which maintained their manufacturing base.

Although Skidelsky is broadly approving of multiculturalism (particularly in helping improve the countrys disgusting food), and a stillextant kind and tolerant ethos, he believes that distinctive proletarian and bourgeois cultures have been destroyed. The upper and middle classes have abdicated from serious culture in terror at being seen as elitist. He notes that Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and RH Tawney shared a respect for working-class culture, for its stress on solidarity, its stubbornness, its earthiness, its passion for education, and hoped thatthis could help form the basis of a common democratic ethic. Skidelsky sees this prospect being eroded first by postwar affluence once working-class life was more enjoyable, why aspire to rise out of it? and, later, by the intellectually stunting effects of massculture.

This is the weakest part of the analysis. One chapter has as its epigraph Morrissey claiming that IggyPop, Lou Reed and Patti Smith were his generations Goethe, Gide and Gertrude Stein. This statement doesnt quite say what Skidelsky thinks it does, given that the cited singers are not necessarily inferior to (at least two of) the authors mentioned. In fact theywere very frequently a bridge forworking-class youth from music toliterature or the avant garde, which complicates his eventual dismissal of pop culture (bar, partly, punk) as mereentertainment. Buried in the bibliography is a citation of Salford dock clerk turned rock singerMark E Smiths ghostwritten autobiography, but if Skidelsky wanted to know what had happened to the working-class tradition of self-education in the second half of the century, hed have been far better off citing the lyric sheetto Smiths band the Falls Hex Enduction Hour, where he would find an aggressively modernist sensibility closer to the caustic grotesqueries of Wyndham Lewis than the warm fireside scenes ofRichard Hoggart.

British democracy is charted from the granting of equal suffrage in the inter-war years to its current collapse: In the 19th century democracy arose as a check on oligarchy. Today it may well be giving way to plutocracy, where politicians offer different brands of the same consumer good. By 2014, the rich openly ruled. This change is largely down to the huge success of neoliberalism between 1979 and 2008 (which he optimistically believes marks its quietus). Skidelsky takes the view that Thatcherism was cruel, obnoxious andfundamentally necessary, painting the familiar pictureof the 1970s as adecade of terminal crisis.

It is a shame that the more recent, revisionist work on the era, such as Andy Becketts When the Lights Went Out, is not allowed to complicate this blanket dismissal of social democratic prospects. Similarly, comparisons withother countries are kept to a bare minimum, as Skidelsky rejects the ideaat the outset that success should be measured by example, though his strictures on trade unions would be interesting read alongside theGerman experience, those on non-means-tested benefits alongside the welfare philosophy of Sweden.

In the end, the refusal to compare makes his account of success all the more devastating, as Britains cultural and political life is read entirely on itsown suffocating terms. The book ends with an account, which Skidelsky gamely tries to make sound important, of the astonishingly trivial rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and, more significantly, the latters role in saving world capitalism by insisting on nationalisation atthe height of the financial crisis. Perhaps this is the mostsignificant thing a British politician has done sinceThatcher; that it was done by a former socialist firebrand is remarkably apt. At the end of this success story, Skidelsky predicts a lonely, introverted future.

Owen Hatherleys Landscapes of Communism (Allen Lane) will be published in June. To order Britain Since 1900 ASuccess Story? for 8.79 (RRP 10.99), go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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Britain Since 1900 A Success Story by Robert Skidelsky review the economic history of the past century