Royal Mail is failing Britain. First-Class prices, Second-Class service, and a postal system that seems increasingly incapable of delivering the post. Quite an achievement, really, for an organisation whose principal purpose is, well, delivering things.

A First-Class stamp now costs £1.80, compared with just 41p in 2010. That's an increase of nearly 340%. And what do we get for this rather impressive rise in postage prices? According to the latest annual figures, only 75.7% of First-Class letters actually arrived the next working day. Which means roughly one in four didn't.

Perhaps First Class now refers to the price rather than the service.

In this episode of Mark and Pete, we investigate the extraordinary decline of Royal Mail, Britain's historic postal service, and ask a fairly straightforward question: how can something become so much more expensive whilst becoming so much less reliable?

Royal Mail has been part of British life for over 500 years. From Henry VIII to the Penny Black, from red pillar boxes to the familiar postman trudging through the rain, it's one of those institutions that seems almost inseparable from Britain itself.

Or was.

Because the modern Royal Mail is a very different beast. Delivery delays, missed targets, rising stamp prices, job cuts, privatisation and regulatory fines have turned a once-trusted institution into a national source of irritation.

And the statistics are fairly astonishing.

Only 90.2% of Second-Class mail arrived within three working days in 2025/26. Royal Mail has received more than £37 million in Ofcom fines for previous delivery failures. Now another 2,500 jobs are potentially disappearing as the company attempts to restructure.

Meanwhile, the regulator has actually lowered delivery performance targets. Yes, lowered them. Apparently, when you keep missing the target, the solution is to make the target easier.

One wonders whether this approach might catch on in schools.

But there's another side to this story, and it's worth considering. Letter volumes have collapsed from around 20 billion annually to just 6.5 billion. Emails, WhatsApp and online banking have changed everything. Royal Mail still has to serve millions of addresses, including isolated rural communities, whether delivering to them makes commercial sense or not.

So perhaps the problem isn't quite as simple as incompetent management.

Then again, perhaps it is partly that.

We explore Royal Mail privatisation, its takeover by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, postal workers' struggles, the future of the universal postal service, and whether Britain should consider bringing Royal Mail back into public ownership.

Would nationalisation improve things? Or simply give us an expensive government-run failure instead of an expensive privately owned one?

And what about the postmen and postwomen who still get up early, work in miserable weather and keep the system functioning despite everything?

This isn't merely about late birthday cards. It's about medical appointments, legal documents, elderly people and the basic expectation that a paid-for service should actually work.

Join Mark and Pete for a funny, occasionally furious and distinctly British examination of Royal Mail's decline.

Because when something costs First-Class money, expecting First-Class service really shouldn't be considered unreasonable.