UK

Britain is great no more.

I dreamed the other night that I was wanted by the British police. And in the dream I wasn’t even in Britain. I was in New York, where I’d attracted the attention of British authorities by putting up a political poster, or something like that. But even though I was outside of their jurisdiction, the British police were after me. They were going to arrest me, put me on trial, and have me jailed for my opinions. I was apparently facing two to three years in the hoosegow. Such, in my dream, was the reach of British “justice.”

It was a nice dream to wake up from.

Patriotism is considered provincial

Should we get there, it’s strange to imagine Gen Z in our twilight years. Will our women, scraggly stick-and-poke tattoos blooming over wrinkled arms, still call each other “diva” in their knitting circles? Will the men, swapping gurning to EDM for glacial aquarobics sessions in the local leisure centre, still have their mullets? Will everyone die from vaping at 50?

And, most unknowably, will we import our globalised, post-MeToo, post-BLM politics into the 2070s and beyond? I suspect not. The newest crop of pensioners, who came of age in the late Seventies and early Eighties, was as ever far more likely to vote Conservative than their younger compatriots in last year’s general election. Though each successive wave of bus-pass-holders is likely to be more tolerant — or less baffled, at least — on social issues, the inevitable slide Right is a product of shifting priorities, towards pensions, winter-fuel payments and the ability to secure a doctor’s appointment. Gen Z will not be an exception: a cynical view is that the politics of self-interest always supersede voguish causes, such as quibbling over the definitions of identity, as one heads towards the Stannah stairlift.

The British Empire is now experiencing a drastic decline as they prioritize a soft power that banks on promoting a culture no one wants to emulate.

It was during a Tory rally on July 20, 1957, organized to commemorate 25 years of public service by Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton as MP for the constituency of bucolic Mid Bedfordshire, that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan uttered his famous pronouncement that Britons had “never had it so good.” Having ridden into office on a wave of popular discontent with the “doctrinaire nightmare” of Labourite socialism, Macmillan could proudly direct his compatriots to “go around the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime — nor indeed in the history of this country.”

Go around that same country today, to mouldering industrial towns like Bradford and Luton, and you will search in vain for the state of contented prosperity described by Macmillan, though you will find, on the litter-bestrewn high streets, plenty of pound shops and vape shops, Dawah centers and remittance services, and Palestinian flags as far as the eye can see. As for the farms Macmillan praised so highly, they are dwindling in number and size with farmers being crushed by lower output prices, reduced yields, and skyrocketing costs, and subjected to a Labour dekulakization campaign redolent of Maoism or Stalinism. The cost-of-living crisis is in full swing. The NHS is in shambles. Schools are crumbling, literally and figuratively, before their pupils’ and instructors’ eyes. Violent crime and public disorder incidents are on the rise. The Victorian-era sewer network has finally reached a breaking point, leaking untreated sewage into lakes, rivers, and seas at an alarming rate. Climate change policies are close to achieving something unprecedented: a “zero-industrial society.” The British Armed Forces are suffering from a recruitment crisis, stockpile shortages, and a total lack of combat preparedness. The Chelsea Partridges have shut down (arguably the most unkindest cut of all). The official portrait of King Charles III, appropriately enough, looks like an insane fever dream.

Rangoon is a symbol of how far we have fallen

You can’t get a Pegu in Rangoon any more. That may not sound like a disaster for the ages – nothing, say, compared to the ongoing chancellorship of Rachel Reeves, MP for Blankstare-upon-Derr – but it is quite telling, once you know the background. To explain, the Pegu is a cocktail. Here’s the recipe, if you fancy making one…

More than half believe the UK should be a dictatorship and there’s a stark gender divide over equality, research for Channel 4 shows

Most young people are in favour of turning the UK into a dictatorship, according to a “deeply worrying” study, which has revealed an acceptance of authoritarianism and radicalism among Generation Z.

Fifty-two per cent of Gen Z — people aged between 13 and 27 — said they thought “the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”.

Thirty-three per cent suggested the UK would be better off “if the army was in charge”.