When will Britain just grow up? We tail along behind the Americans in the pretence that we can control the Red Sea as we seek to get entangled in yet another war.
Oh, when will Britain just grow up? We have no money, yet we spend billions on arming Ukraine in a dubious war in which we have no national interest. We cannot control the beaches on our southern shores, on which strangers land almost daily, but we tail along behind the Americans in the pretence that we can control the Red Sea as we seek (as far as I can grasp) to get entangled in yet another war in the Middle East. Haven’t we had enough of these stupid brawls?
We spend decades failing to do justice to wronged postmasters. We cannot keep order in our pothole-peppered streets. Our children can’t read or write. Our universities, when they are not imposing mad speech codes on students and teachers, sell themselves to the highest bidder to ensure they can pay their vice-chancellors’ enormous salaries.
We have created a society in which working hard is probably the worst possible route to riches. If you want to be comfortably off (and perhaps get a decoration or a peerage too), go and strip some assets, or sell dodgy PPE to the NHS, or some such.
Look, we are astonishingly fortunate. We have a birthright of immense value, an uninvaded, beautiful territory handed down to us by our parents and grandparents in what was, all things considered, pretty good condition.
We have all the resources and skills needed to prosper. We have priceless possessions – the rule of law, freedom of speech and thought, general mutual trust, an inheritance of buildings and transport systems which, lovingly looked after, will serve us for centuries to come.
The US and UK, supported by allies, have launched strikes against the Houthi movement in Yemen that has been targeting international shipping moving through the Red Sea.
Haven’t we had enough of these stupid brawls? We spend decades failing to do justice to wronged postmasters. We cannot keep order in our pothole-peppered streets.
If we wanted to fix our major problems, it would not actually be that hard. The difficulty is that nobody does want to fix them.
I’ve written and spoken about them for years, from the destruction of the family and the schools to the trashing of our culture, morals and history, and a few kind people have listened – but in general I might as well have stayed in bed.
A big reason for this is that we cannot tear ourselves away from the delusion that we are a Great Power, swaying the destinies of nations all over the world. We are not.
How anyone can think this who has visited (say) Blackpool in recent years, or wandered down one of scores of gap-toothed high streets, or endured our public transport system, or tried to find an NHS dentist, I do not know.
How can we be giving money and weapons away to others, when so much of our heavy taxation goes to pay interest on our nation’s huge debts? How are we embroiled in an Eastern European shambles which 99 per cent of the population do not even understand, when our Navy is shrinking visibly, from neglect of its ships and from the growing unwillingness of anyone to serve in it? I can’t bring myself to mention the state of the Army, so embarrassing has it become.
There should be, in this country, a great wave of outrage and frustration, big enough to sweep the existing political parties off the map and start again. But the only passions which engage anyone are futile ones, especially the dreadful cult of Net Zero. And, of course, the great political standby, another bloody foreign war.
