Political elites are blind to the coming calamity in Britain
Is there life before death? A new philosophical debate is engaging the minds of Britons who have spent two years in various degrees of lockdown, are still sometimes masked, are already finding it difficult to pay their energy bills and are hit harder every day by inflation. Of course, life in Britain at its least eligible is still far superior to the daily experience of much of the world’s population; but it does not feel that way.
Young people have had their education seriously disrupted by Covid precautions; the excess death rate attributed to lack of healthcare during lockdown for non-Covid patients has averaged 1,000 weekly deaths over the past 15 weeks, according to the Office for National Statistics. Consumer price inflation has reached double figures and the direst forecast so far, from American bank Citi, is of 18.6 per cent by January. There are warnings the Bank of England may have to raise interest rates to 7 per cent if inflation continues to soar.
Most menacing of all is the energy situation. The problem is not only the cost of energy, but its accessibility. The reality is that Britain’s power supply is not secure. The fact we only import about 5 per cent of gas from Russia, which compares favourably with most of Europe, does not mean our supplies are guaranteed. As long ago as 2017, a report commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy found that, in a worst-case scenario – which is another term for the coming winter – 28 per cent of UK demand for gas could be unmet.
Germany, with its reprehensible record on energy, will use its financial clout to outbid Britain and other buyers. Norway is routinely described as a “reliable supplier” of electricity, but low water levels have hit that country’s hydroelectric generating capacity and it may have to prioritise its own consumers over international customers. If there is no risk, why did Kit Malthouse, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, state earlier this month that the government was preparing hospitals for potential fuel shortages?
It is, at least, reassuring that someone in government is doing something – is even showing awareness of mounting crisis. For the truly alarming aspect of the situation is the insouciance of those in power regarding the impending emergency. The Prime Minister divides his time between overseas holidays and Chequers; he is demob happy. That is understandable, in view of how he was treated, a view shared by many Conservative party members; but there is more at stake than that.
The central Tory ethic, famously articulated by the Duke of Wellington, is: “The King’s Government must be carried on.” Boris Johnson should have honoured that maxim: the notion that the man who still holds the nuclear codes has no locus in uniting the country to meet an enlarging crisis is unsustainable. By the same token, the Conservative Party, which piques itself on being the supposed natural party of government, ought to have revised its own rules, in response to the emergency, and shortened the absurd leadership contest.
People apprehensive about October energy bills see the Tory Party absorbed in a narcissistic exercise, oblivious to the problems of the public, with the prospect of a new prime minister on 5 September who will take up office, untutored, in the depths of a crisis. Granted, a lame-duck prime minister lacks the authority to initiate any major policy, but Boris Johnson should have put the national interest first and called Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to a meeting, to thrash out some interim measures that would not cross either candidate’s red lines. The public would then at least have seen some preliminary protection put in place to afford them relief.
The disturbing problem is the disconnection in this country between the rulers and the ruled. Partly it is a matter of disparities of wealth; while the extremes of rich and poor are far less distant than in Communist China, there is a widening gulf. Free marketeers will rightly claim it is not the wealth divide that matters: what matters is that those in the poorest sections of society should have a reasonable standard of living. Provided those at the bottom of the heap are adequately housed, fed and employed, there is no reason to discourage wealth creation by billionaires.
That reasonable principle has always been harder to popularise in Britain than in America. The British Labour movement has a dual tradition: Methodism and diluted Marxism, which has injected the toxin of class war into elements among the Left. This contrasts with America, where the sight of a rich man provokes not envy, but emulation. It is notable that, amid all the riots and upheavals in the United States and the myriad bogus grievances being canvassed, wealth is seldom a target. That may, of course, reflect the fact that the richest people in America are also the most “progressive”.
Globalism spawned a Faustian bargain whereby billionaire individuals and corporations ostentatiously support the most extreme radical positions in the culture wars, in return for retaining their massive wealth. But globalism is in ignominious and irretrievable retreat, its enduring legacy being wrecked supply chains that should never have come into existence. Now, in Britain, large parts of a population that has been accustomed to unprecedented affluence even in the lower echelons of society, is increasingly being confronted by the kind of problems their grandparents faced, such as how to put food on the table and how to heat and light their homes.
For the first time in recent memory, those at the bottom of the heap are not adequately provided for materially. We are facing a situation where those at the top of government will regard even the projected increase in the energy price cap to £6,552 next April as an irritation when they see it on their household accounts, without realising how catastrophic such an imposition is for millions of people. For countless families, not all of whom would be socially categorised as “working class”, energy bills at such a rate are not unaffordable – they are unpayable.
One by one, all the totems that induced deference have fallen. The political class has been despised for the past 13 years, since the MPs’ expenses scandal. The Bank of England has demonstrated incredible complacency and incompetence, fuelling inflation, to the extent that 7 per cent interest rates are now being mooted. The other banks are hated, a loathing that will be aggravated if they pass on the full base rate increases to mortgage holders, but not to depositors. Parliament disgraced itself all over again during the Brexit debacle.
At the same time, the public sees detected illegal immigration now running at 1,300 incomers a day, a situation remorselessly worsening this country’s economic and social problems. Why have we not, as promised, regained control of our borders? Because there is no political will to do so, is the answer. The public knows who is to blame. They see the virtue-signalling MPs and judges talking sententiously about the unthinkability of Britain reneging on the ECHR. The dogs in the street know we need to break away from every constraint on our sovereignty and enact draconian immigration laws, in tandem with a moratorium on legal mass entry, to give us breathing space.
Yet there is no sign of awareness among the elites of the coming storm. Reality has not penetrated the bubble. That kind of deafness, married to severe financial suffering at various levels of society, is likely to provoke civil disobedience, firstly in mass non-payment of energy bills. If the usual sanctions are applied by energy companies and the authorities, though that might prove impracticable after a certain tipping point had been reached, there is every likelihood of civil unrest and rioting. Think Poll Tax.
Who could contain disorder, which is notoriously difficult to suppress once it has gained traction? Our kneeling, dancing rainbow police? LOL, as the Twitterati say. Probably they would no longer consider restoring public order as part of their remit – unless, of course, some authentic victim were to suffer micro-aggression by being addressed by the wrong pronouns. Or would our five-figure-strong army pacify the country?
No Tory government could survive such a scenario. When we enter energy price Armageddon and a nation with the majority of its citizens thrown into fuel poverty sees its effete millionaire leaders mouthing provocative inanities, the enduring memory of Conservative rule will be of Boris Johnson, at the COP26 revivalist meeting for the private jet set, committing this country to trillion-pound extravagance in pursuit of Net Zero, the opium of the elites. This will not end well.