The one thing that's definitely true is the FTSE has never been reflective of the true economy. I think this is the mistake that successive governments and certainly economists make. They believe the financial sector and big business is representative of the larger economy but it really isn't. The real economy is the job industries like manufacturing but that has largely fallen out of line, especially in comparison to huge powerhouses like Germany.
The UK population demographic is not reflective of big business except perhaps at the lower levels of companies like Tesco who employ a lot of people but it's low level so hardly impactful. The biggest UK companies are not manufacturing companies, they're finance and commodity companies like HSBC, BP etc. The share price and performance of these is irrelevant to most except for when it comes to pensions.
It's again part and parcel of why certain demographics are rebelling against the 'establishment'. They don't think that anybody stands for them and certainly not in the north where our cut of the pie is non-existent... The 'establishment' has no answer to that however because of voting power they're now spending time teaching folk to blame immigrants instead.
Brexit was a rejection of that too which is another thing that many fail to understand. Most just do not understand that the so called stupid people who voted for Brexit voted for it because they were poor before Brexit and regardless of what happens to the economy they're still going to be poor now that we're out.