Britain needs a serious kick up the arse
There are times in every nation’s life when things turn bad, then get steadily worse. France in the 1930s; Germany (rather obviously) during the Nazi era; Russia pre-Glasnost; Italy and Greece for much of the present century; France, in a more hum-drum fashion, since the death of Mitterrand. And now the UK.
If you could put Britain on the psychiatrist’s couch, you might eventually get some inkling of what has gone wrong, and why now. There has to be something, either a virus or, more likely, a mental condition, that has affected not only the body politic, but the entire country, so that everything that can go wrong is going wrong, from the Tory Government, to warships that don’t work, rising knife crime, an NHS that has lost its way and companies in charge of pubic works that have no idea how to do their job. I could go on and on.
Five years ago, Britain looked to be on top of the world. We had overcome the 2008 financial crash and built one of the fastest-growing western economies; the coalition government, under David Cameron, was widely respected; employment was hitting record levels; the pound was strong; the City of London had finally displaced Wall Street as the world’s banker. For goodness sake, England was on course to win the Ashes in Australia.
Then it all changed. What had appeared permanent was revealed for what it was, an economy running out of steam. Look at us today. How could anyone feel proud of Britain in 2018? Yes, exports are up – but only because the pound is on the floor so that overseas buyers now regard us as a bargain basement in which every day of the week is Black Friday. Though we have nearly full employment, far too many jobs are entry-level with nowhere else to go. industry and commerce cannot fill one third of vacancies requiring technical skills because a majority of school-leavers barely know how to spell their own names and consider technical proficiency to be the ability to walk and work their iPhones at the same time.
At the top, the Tories have proved themselves the most useless governing party in living memory. What a shower! And who is standing in the waiting room but Jeremy Corbyn, an entirely risible figure from Labour’s antique past, champing at the bit to take us back to the Seventies. But there is also a full supporting cast. Let us not forget the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the DUP and Sinn-bloody-Fein.
Dear God Almighty!
If we are not very, very careful, we won’t just be on the skids, we will be lost down a deep hole. This country needs a serious kick up the arse, and it’s not just the politicians whose rears should be in the target zone. Exports may be up, but from a manufacturing base more suitable for a country one third our size. If it wasn’t for the finance sector, Britain would be screwed. But now the City itself is about to lose ground as a result of Brexit. We are turning back into a nation of shopkeepers, but with the shops increasingly owned and run by immigrants or the children of immigrants, who are the only ones willing to get up in the morning. The native British – the English in particular – are, as Texans like to say, all hat and no cattle.
(This is probably the point at which I should acknowledge the many exceptions to my Foecal Creek thesis. Of course there are many brilliant and innovative Britons, not least from the working class. But not enough, not nearly enough. Just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, so one high-achiever out of a class of 28 in Coventry or Portsmouth doesn’t mean that Silicon Valley will be shaking in its shoes.)
You may have noticed that I have only once so far used the “B” word. This is not because I don’t regard our impending departure from the EU with the utmost seriousness. I believe it to be a mistake of historic proportions. But I also see Brexit as the primary symptom, not the cause of our present malaise.
If I were to choose two issues that most urgently require our attention beyond the exigencies of Brexit, they would be Education and Entitlement.
Britain in the 21st century has become not one, or two, nations, but four – and I’m not talking about Devolution and the re-emergence of the Celtic fringe. The first is overwhelmingly made up of those who, having been born into comfortable circumstances, were privately educated and attended the better universities. These are the people who run the country, not only politics and administration, but the law, big business, banking, the media and high culture.
Nation number two comprises the super-rich and their subordinates, the merely wealthy. Most super-rich Britons are foreign-born. Richard Branson and James Dyson are rare birds. The most cursory glance at any list of Britain’s richest residents confirms that Russians, Gulf Arabs and Asians, plus a growing group of Africans, fill most of the top slots, as well as a majority of the middle ranks. Such individuals may harbour some sentimental attachment to an idea of Britain – or at least of West London – but they care little or nothing for the everyday welfare of its inhabitants. Viewing themselves as citizens not of the UK, but of the world, they pay as little tax as possible. The life-style and the freedom that their money can buy is what attracts them. At best, if we are lucky, the rest of us are collateral beneficiaries of their accidental largesse.
The third and fourth nations overlap. The white working class and lower middle class is gradually becoming indistinguishable from its ethnic minority equivalents. While racism is far from being eradicated, it is becoming less and less a feature of everyday life on the streets. The fact is that we are slowly blending into a new species: the ethnic Brit. We deserve credit for this. We have come further faster than America, France or Australia. The ghettos of our inner cities are defined less by race than by class, so that it is not uncommon for anti-government protests to feature residents of every skin colour and religious faith.
So things are not all bad.
The problem is, Britain’s poor and, worse, its underclass, can only look forward to a continued occupation of the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Their enormous potential is tapped into only occasionally and largely by chance. Because the economy has expanded for most of the last 20 years, ordinary citizens have benefited, filling all sort of jobs, mainly in the services sector, that have lifted them out of poverty without ever quite bequeathing them either security or prosperity.
This is where education comes into the picture. Some state schools are superb, including not only grammar schools, academies and so-called free schools, but the best comprehensives. Sadly, the great majority of working-class children don’t attend any of these. They go to schools whose teachers are, to a depressing extent, uninspired, uninspiring, underpaid and lacking in ambition. If that sounds harsh, it isn’t meant to be. It is just a statement of fact. If the bulk of Britain’s secondary schools were as good as they ought to be, they wouldn’t be churning out generations of pupils who know little about anything and lack the skills necessary to sustain a modern mixed economy.
Talk about the crisis in the NHS is justified, Something, clearly, must be done. But the ongoing crisis in state education never quite makes it to the top of the national agenda. Ministers are surrounded by bright civil servants, most of them products of public schools and Oxbridge, and they think, where’s the problem? Just add a few more beacon schools and the future will take care of itself. Turning to the City, filled with ruthless and highly competent go-getters, they say to themselves, our chaps have still got what it takes. They look at the top end of industry – BP, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems – and it doesn’t occur to them that most of “our” large corporations are owned and run by foreigners and that an increasing proportion of the skilled workforce is made up of immigrants. If anything, it is their proudest boast.
Which brings me to entitlement. The British, the English especially, still find it hard to consider themselves as no better than the rest. This affects all classes, not just those at the top. They may admire the Germans and fear the Chinese and resent the Americans, but deep down they know that Britain will somehow always be at or near the top of the heap. Why knock ourselves out to improve our situation when what we have, and what we can continue to expect, derives from an inheritance unprecedented in history? Why, you only have to look at the map to see that Britain is at the centre of the world.
Well, bollocks to that. Just as it is not enough to assert “rights,” which have to be won and consolidated down the generations, so it is not enough for Britain to believe that it will continue forever to be one of the world’s great nations. It has to work at it, and this means a massive reform of education, including the re-establishment of meaningful apprenticeships in every corner of the country. If that is a simplistic analysis, it is also the simple truth.
Michel Barnier likes to remind us that the clock is ticking. In fact, the alarm first went off more than a hundred years ago, since when we have repeatedly pressed the “snooze” button. We can’t smell the coffee until we wake up and make it. The Tories would have us believe that they are the only ones who can make Britain great again. They should remember that One-Nation Conservatism starts with the premise that we are all on the same side.