Reflections #3
The farce that is Tory Britain in 2023
I have spent most of the last two months researching and writing a number of articles on both Britain’s economy and on mass immigration. Quite honestly, I am mentally exhausted and need a rest, I have read countless articles and watched no less than a dozen videos on the UK’s gradual decline into what basically amounts to a failed state. Even after countless articles and videos, I still cannot fathom what a mess this country has become.
Everything is broken, nothing works and no one knows what is going on. What is more, increasingly as time goes on no one even seems to care; people have stopped caring and have just accepted the decline around them. The UK is beset by low growth, low productivity, record high inflation and the worst cost of living crisis in half a century. We have a near-permanent housing crisis, failing schools, our infrastructure is crumbling and the NHS is beyond repair. We can’t borrow our way out of this crisis because borrowing is too expensive, we cannot tax our way out of it either because we are already taxed to death and most of our assets have already been sold off to foreigners. The UK is broke, the country is on its knees and the only response from the Tories is… to bring back one of the guys who got us into this mess in the beginning – David Cameron.
Cameron was all but a total disaster as Prime Minister. Our decline started with Cameron’s ruinous austerity policies, he legalised gay marriage, consented to Britain’s participation in the bombing of Libya (creating yet another failed state in that region) and cut taxes for the highest earners. Meanwhile, immigration crossed the 300,000 mark under Cameron and “call me Dave” was implicated in the MPs expenses scandal, having claimed a total of £82,450 on his second home allowance for five years.[1] After leaving office, his time at Greensill Capital is also riddled with question marks; amidst allegations of corruption and sleaze at the company, Cameron sold his stake in the Greensill Capital before it collapsed and went under. Oh, how I long for the good old days of “piggate” and “pastygate”.
This harebrained Rwanda immigration scheme also deserves a mention. Or does it? Like so many government policies it sounds ridiculous, makes no sense, costs a fortune and delivers nothing. The plan, and the media circus around it, has made a laughing stock of not only the government but the country itself. Regardless of the Rwanda plan, the migrants keep coming and numbers keep on rising. The point is the Rwanda plan has achieved nothing, the Tories do nothing but manage the decline.
When I first started taking an interest in politics back in the 2010s, it was commonplace for people to quote the Private Eye or The Onion for humour, only now the reality of modern-day politics in Britain is actually more ridiculous and farcical than anything political satire can drum up.
The only person in front-line British politics that has made any sense of the UK’s predicament in the past decade and a half, Nigel Farage, was recently in the jungle in Australia eating kangaroo’s testicles – even Private Eye would struggle to beat that. Meanwhile the only person in government that says what people think and feel, Suella Braverman, was ostracised, then roundly mocked before being ousted altogether. Anyway you choose to look at Britain in 2023, it is a mess.
Joking aside, the future looks bleak. Higher prices, higher taxes and poorer services with a lower standard of living and an inferior quality of life (compared with what we are traditionally used to) is probably the best-case scenario at this stage. At least we will have the clown show of modern-day party politics to distract us from our ongoing decline. And that’s about all we have to be grateful for; so, thanks Tories, thanks a bunch!