The closure of 127 public libraries did not get much attention amid the turmoil of 2018, but that does not make it a small story. The loss was felt by users of the culled services and those who worked in them. According to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, local authority spending on libraries fell by £30m to £741m over the past year.
That is a tiny fraction of public spending. The NHS budget for England last year was £124.7bn and, while libraries matter, it is hard to argue that they matter more than life-saving operations. Yet they also matter in ways that are harder to measure, and their loss tells a more profound story of national malaise. Partly it is a story of austerity, but it does not start there. The loss of facilities behind the frontline of public service is part of a protracted hollowing out of the public realm that increasingly makes itself felt in the decay of nationwide political solidarity. [...]
Research by the Centre for Towns (CfT), a thinktank, finds people in small towns more likely than city dwellers to feel that their area is less well off than others and more neglected by politics. Small towns also suffer from population imbalances. Between 1981 and 2011, UK towns and villages studied by the CfT lost over a million people under the age of 25, and gained 2 million over-65s. By contrast, major cities gained over 300,000 under-25s and lost around 200,000 over-65s. That shift has economic and political consequences. The 2017 general election was marked by a national swing from Conservative to Labour, but many small towns, places such as Wigan and Mansfield, defied the trend.
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