Where did it all go wrong for Great Britain?
Comparing and contrasting the mood in Britain at the time of the two hot summers of 2012 and 2022 the words of Bill Gates ring true. Back when he was still the richest person in the world, Microsoft’s founder observed: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”
A decade ago it was all about Team GB and London 2012, and a record haul of medals at an Olympics brilliantly hosted in Britain. The Queen stole the show with a James Bond parachute drop. Below her, two seemingly benign Conservative politicians, Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson presided from the stands. Nobody seemed to mind that the games had been brought to this country by the Labour trio of Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone and the late Tessa Jowell.
Back then 82 per cent of people from Great Britain told pollsters they were proud to be British. There was a coalition government representing 59 per cent of the votes cast at the last election. Rather than a Conservative majority about to install their third prime minister in a row without benefit of the voters’ endorsement, based on just 43.6 per cent of the popular vote. To general acclamation Danny Boyle, previously director of Sunshine, staged a widely acclaimed opening ceremony, celebrating the NHS but also shot through with references to the need for climate change action. In spite of Syria and the Litvinenko killing, David Cameron still thought it was worth hosting Vladimir Putin to watch the judo in the Excel Centre.
The global economy was still trying to recover from the banking crash and there was general acceptance, with the main parties in broad agreement, that a period of austerity was necessary to do it. Chancellor George Osborne was booed ironically when he attended a medal awards ceremony. Mayor Johnson got away with referring to beach volleyball players “glistening like otters” on Horse Guards Parade without woke warriors piling in.
Ten years on these memories belong to different times. The mood of national coherence has evaporated in the heat. Every issue is polarized on Twitter, Facebook and TikTok. The Tories are fighting amongst themselves as usual. And 99.7 per cent of us have no say on who is going to be the next Prime Minister.
At home and looking around the world at Putin, Xi, Modi, Erdogan, Orban and Trump it seems that the bad guys have had the best of the past decade. Younger adults are losing faith in democracy, while, sweltering in the heat, older people sometimes give way resignedly to an apocalyptic, end of days feeling.
Take climate change. Less than a year after the Olympics David Cameron would order his team to “cut all the green crap” out from policy documents as he confronted local elections. His environmental resolve stiffened by his father and new wife, Boris Johnson rightly claims the COP26 commitments as part of his legacy. But the party he has bequeathed is slipping back towards denialism.
This month’s all-time record temperatures above 40 degrees celsius are further confirmation that something is going on. Records have been broken repeatedly in the past decade at an unprecedented rate. At the beginning of last week the tone of the legacy press, so important in the Conservative leadership race, was to play it all down. “Sunny Day Snowflake Britain had a Meltdown,” the Daily Mail gloated on its front page, noting that Prince Charles kept his jacket and tie on and a tourist fed ice cream to a guard in a bearskin. The Sun celebrated “Hotter Than The Sahara… beaches full… UK will be one of the world’s warmest spots”. Days later, after the worst day since the Second World War for the London Fire Brigade, including the destruction of a score of homes in Wennington, the headlines had changed to “Nightmare of the Wildfires” in the Mail and “Hellfire” in the Sun.
The constant on the Mail front pages were stories doing down Penny Mordaunt. In the final rounds of MP voting, she matched the other contestants in promising to cut green taxes. The candidates still claim to support the Net Zero target but want to move the date forward from 2020, or to achieve it, illogically, without the electorate feeling any costs.
Meanwhile, with public services creaking, Liz Truss is setting the pace amongst the Tory electorate with the promise of tax cuts and explicit rejection of the past twelve years of economic policy implemented by a Conservative government of which she was a prominent member. It may be a clincher for Truss but it is a cynical ploy considering that the top spot she seeks was not caused by policy differences but by the disgrace of an individual. The Conservative MPs who had sacked Johnson still gave him a standing ovation after his last PMQs — except for Mrs May.
What other reasons not to be cheerful? NHS waiting lists are at record levels and rising, while Covid and, now, Monkeypox stalk the land. A critical incident has been declared at the Port of Dover, blaming the consequences of Brexit. Air flights are being cancelled. There is a general shortage of staff, not least in hospitality and catering, as the people of Britain yearn to get away after two years of lockdowns. The water supply is running low as water companies dump raw sewage into the river system. The criminal justice system has ground to a halt, it takes years to come to trial, and barristers are on strike. The government’s response is to create new categories of criminal offences and to call for longer sentences. Thanks to “Levelling Up”, “London” is denigrated today not celebrated.
Acting on the hints he gave in 2014 when he annexed Crimea and attacked some of the Donbas, President Putin has now launched all-out war — short of nuclear — against Ukraine. So appalling is the unprovoked bloodshed of peaceful civilians, that a distinguished British friend of mine can no longer bear to watch or listen to the news. The US and UK are giving Ukraine what military assistance they can — short of being drawn into the conflict. Some EU member states are stauncher than others in the face of a possible cut-off of Russian gas this winter that would cripple their economies.
Thanks to the high prices of energy, the cost of living crisis and next-to-no growth have already arrived in Britain. Strikes on the railways and elsewhere are already scheduled this summer as pay awards will not keep pace with inflation pushing past 9 per cent.
The Tory leadership contest is a distraction in the face of these problems. There is not much hope from the opposition. “Only Labour can blow it now”, one veteran activist tweeted to his friends this week, “And we have form on that.”
At least it is still possible to look back fondly. Tessa Jowell is the person credited by Tony Blair with bringing the 2012 Olympics to London. She died of brain cancer in 2018. Next Wednesday is the 10th anniversary of the opening, and her daughter Jess has organised fundraising events for the foundation which now supports 17 NHS Tessa Jowell Centres of Excellence across Britain. A recut of Danny Boyles’ opening ceremony will be screened in cinemas across the country and at the Olympic Park. Details can be found here.
Bill Gates ended his words of wisdom with, “Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”