I
know, I said I was off until September but I felt like sharing this essay with
you.
Just as with the cosmos there has been a
socio-economic Goldilocks zone for Britain. This marked a period of peak prosperity
and sort-of-equality when life was good for the majority of the population
rather than for almost none (as in a lot of developing countries) or for just a
tiny minority (as in an increasing number of countries). Britain’s Goldilocks
zone could be pinpointed as starting roughly between the establishment of the
NHS in 1948 and the cessation of post-war rationing in 1954. But it is ending.
Prematurely in my view. Brexit is catapulting us to the outer reaches of the G-zone.
A significant measure of the, previously slower, trajectory would be the
introduction of student tuition fees in 1998. Countries with both wealth and a modicum of equality do not regard education as a pay-for privilege. Rather they see it as a universal benefit to the nation. As an indicator of the proximity of
the end this makes a better marker than, for example, the rampant selling off
of national assets into private hands. That would be causal rather than a
social marker.
The 2003 illegal Iraq invasion is more complex as it
could be causal and a marker. As a cause it plunged Britain into the international
moral dark from which it has never recovered. As a marker, surely, following
the idiot Bush into the disaster of Iraq was a sign of weakness that could only come from a country led by a zealot who
knew his country was fading. The concomitant results of that global disaster
echo today in Middle East insecurity, global migration and the fear,
xenophobia, racism and rise of populism that culminated in the
newer national disaster of Brexit.
As with many crippling events in history – when you
are down it seems Fate will give you another kick just to show that things can
always get worse. After WW1 there was the incorrectly named Spanish Flu (it was
called that only because Spain was the first country to own up to the gravity
of the problem) wiping out more humans than the ‘war to end all wars’. So –
after the mad Bush / Blair adventure in Iraq in 2003 – we got the 2008 economic implosion –
another global disaster that, like the invasion of Iraq and herpes, keeps on
giving.
Brexit has
already pushed the UK further to the cold outer reaches of the
Goldilocks socio-economic zone faster than any other contemporary political
phenomenon and we are still between the referendum and the event itself. Many large corporations acted on their pre-referendum plans to
abandon the UK. Some financial institutions have just moved their headquarters out of the UK but
others like Diageo the Scottish drinks maker, have moved manufacturing. A couple of years ago I ran a creative writing project for employees of Diageo. Those who attended
the project - which was linked to the redevelopment of our local park – were
lovely people, happy in what seemed to be good jobs. I am not in touch with
them but hate to imagine them receiving redundancy notices. Then there
are the mass shop closures affecting people further down the food chain. Some, like ex- employees of BHS - asset stripped by Sir Philip Green (yes still Sir –
they never took his knighthood) - will not even get their pension
entitlement. Others simply find themselves applying for the increasing number
of zero hours contracts that make up our flaky economy.
When the concerns of
Airbus and BMW – both big UK employers – were recently put before the then
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, his response was “Fuck business” and we have. But what Johnson showed with that ejaculation, was that Brexit is nothing at all to do with what is good for Britain. On June 23rd
2016 the self-destruct button was pushed and the lunatics are quite happy about
it.
But the EU referendum result was also a marker. It was the result of
fear, ignorance, xenophobia and a willfulness to believe implausible but
attractive lies. It resulted from a certain mass hysteria that smelt the decay of
under-investment and mismanagement and wanted to hurl itself back to a faux
1950's rather than try and steer a path that could have kept Britain within the
precious zone for an extended time – albeit in the outer reaches.
Those who could see that the path to prosperity lay
clearly in co-operation and being part of something bigger, were drowned out by those wearing the rose-tinted spectacles of
yesteryear. They were out-voted by the soap-opera addled democratic dabblers who rose up to hurl themselves, kamikaze-like at the referendum
voting booths in June 2016.When we needed a leader there wasn’t one. The rise
of the mediocre (another sign of relapse and political prolapse in my opinion)
meant there was no Captain Kirk to guide The UK Enterprise, just a series of
entitled ‘c’ list ditherers taking turns at the helm. I’ll not waste my keyboard hits suggesting there was/is an opposition.
Britain’s assets are stripped either by overt privatisation or the insidious leeching of public money into private hands via government contracts to private firms or public/private 'partnerships'. Thanks, Thatcher and
Blair (Vince Cable only served up the last morsel when the Post
Office was massively under-sold) A few crazy optimists have applauded the return to public ownership of a
couple of failed rail franchises. But, as I said to my teenaged daughter, that’s
like someone stole your bank card, cleared out your account and then returned
the bank card. Would you be happy?
Britain used to be wealthy. That sense of wealth and
well-being is most in evidence when there is a certain level of equality. Fairness
is second only to economic prosperity in underpinning the socio-economic Goldilocks zone. With the partial sharing of wealth, hand in hand with a sense
of better opportunities for all (there have never ever been equal opportunities.) we experienced the possibility of an egalitarian
society where most people were OK. We were in the Goldilocks socio-economic zone. Wiping out that hard won almost-equality bruised and battered Britain
in ways that were never imagined.
The significant part the gutter press have played in all this
would require a separate essay. For decades, much of the mass print media has
kept up a steady anti-EU drum beat accompanied by a discordant guitar
twang vilifying the vulnerable, all overridden by the bad vocals of
xenophobia.
We have creeping privatisation in the health service
where we had rampant joyful privatisation of the public utilities. We have a
degraded education system with rotting over stuffed schools where staff do more monitoring and admin than teaching. We suffered an unnecessary banking crisis
fuelled by greed (which has always been with us) and a lax, indulgent fiscal
system which barely regulated the new financial monsters and then bailed out
the 2008 disaster with money from the very people who had already been ripped
off - the tax payer. The system systematically, socially and financially and
politically disabled British subjects. The speed of decline – the trajectory
and momentum forcing the UK out of the socio-economic Goldilocks zone
ratcheted up / went nuclear (take your pick) so that the UK seemed as if it could plummet no faster without dragging our backbones
through our rib-cages. And then we got Brexit.
‘Brexit is about reclaiming our borders’ went the cry.
Really! Anyone ever heard of the internet? ‘Brexit is about protecting British industries’. Really! Then why, when in
office, did Cameron veto French and German attempts to protect EU countries from
Chinese steel over-production? And so on and so on. Despite the spin, the
referendum, as opposed to Brexit, was about one thing only – Tory infighting. And the noise in the Tower
of Babel which is Tory party HQ, helping to speed us on our way to ruin – is
still about Tory party infighting.
Yes, Farage was there to oil the wheels of the big red Brexit bus of lies and Corbyn was there to ensure that no one barred its
way, beautifully doing absolutely nothing. But it was mainstream politicians
who turned down their thumbs when the Maximus Britanicus lay bleeding from
superficial wounds and the grunt with the heavy rusty spear of dumb-ass
stupidity stood over him. If they’d turned their thumbs up, the crowd would
have booed but after a while they would have gone back to their low-grade
griping from positions of comfort and ease.
And – talking of the Roman Empire (were we?) empires
do always collapse from within. I have, on my blog, alluded to this before and
we are no different. The colonies have all but gone (my own maternal family come
from an ex-British slave nightmare – and before that – somewhere in Africa
obviously). The ability to rock up to any country on the planet and plunder its
wealth and murder its people is vastly reduced. But the jingoism and xenophobia
remain like a virus in the blood. Britain is like a senile old bloke slobbering
and incontinent and toothless who still tries to grab the (Polish) nurse's bottom while she is clearing up his shit –
and thinks she likes it...
We could have been the empire that didn’t do it – self-destruct.
With the horrors of the Second
World War and the equality of mass death fresh in memory, a socio-economic Goldilocks zone
was entered by the people of the British Isles. Even those at the bottom of the
pile began to feel that they could be part of whatever prosperity blessed this
country.
By 1964, the year I was born, it was less unusual for ordinary people
to go to university and leisure time began to be enjoyed by all not just the
idle rich. I was lucky enough to attend higher education not once but twice,
first to get a Ba Hons degree in English Literature & European History and then
again to study Law a decade later, qualifying as a solicitor. I did not grow up
thinking education was a luxury because I was born at the shiny zenith of the
Goldilocks zone era and was a parent before it became obvious that forces were
working to actively eject us.
Now I look around me at the devastation wrought by
greed, privatisation, corruption, unnecessary and illegal war, the rise of
populist politics and the anaesthetic of celebrity culture and the disconnect
of one human being from anther with high function mobile phones and social
media - and I realise we are in the very outer limits. I am not entirely sure when we
got here. It is easier to spot when it began than when it might finish.
There is
still some porridge left but it is just starting to resemble congealed gruel.
If I had to take a stab I’d say Goldilocks got it
in the neck with the dreadful, socially destructive Miners’ strike (class battle) in 1984/5. I
vividly remember the horror of being caught up in a march that got violent
while I was a student (first time around). By the 1990's Goldilocks had started
to bleed out badly. She has been on life-support since the turn of the
century. Then, sometime between 2003 and June 23rd 2016, the
machines keeping her alive malfunctioned.
Now there is barely a pulse.
*
Thank you for reading.
On this blog also check out a very short post 79. Piketty’s Stylish Statement of the Bleedin’
Obvious. And if you would like to read a short, entertaining sci-fi version of ‘where we go
from here’ do check out my novella
Zero One Zero Two paperback or
e-book -