East of Here: Welcome to Londonland!

By Isabel Archer
London Correspondent

LONDON – The former capital of the British Empire looks great.  The streets are filled with smartly-dressed smart-looking people, a few of whom are speaking English.  The West End is lit up with great British shows like Jersey Boys and Wicked.  Entire dreary neighborhoods like Southwark and St. Pancras have been replaced by bustling modern buildings and restaurants serving food that's actually, wait for it,  good.

But the reality of modern post-Brexit Britain is not nearly as brilliant.  It is the only large industrial nation in the world expected to fall into recession this year.  The rising prices of heat and mortgages are reducing millions into a cold, miserable existence.  Workers' real wages have stagnated for 12 years, and unions are no longer willing accept the real income cuts demanded by the unpopular Tory government.

At the same time, economic growth is being strangled by a shrinking labor force and the inability to fill vital positions in health care, public services, and agriculture, among others.

The result is that Britain's standard of living is no higher than Slovenia's, a country that most Brits couldn't find on a map, and by 2030 will be no better than Poland's.

Which brings us to the catastrophe that caused so much of this suffering: the idiotic decision, rammed through by Tory extremists and yahoo media magnates like Rupert Murdoch, to leave the European Union.  Just as Brexit's opponents predicted, the results have been all bad:

Brexit's proponents claimed falsely that the money saved from not paying into the EU budget would be used to fix the chronically underfunded National Health Service.

How'd that work out?

In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.

Senior NHS doctors have confirmed the harsh truth of this tale.  The loss of free movement of medical professionals from across the EU has made everything even worse. The supposed new investments in health care are nothing but Tory bloviation.  And there is no relief in sight, as Tory ministers try to plug funding holes in ambulance services by robbing other NHS budget accounts, rather than provide the desperately-needed new funding.

And it's not just the NHS that's suffering from Brexit; Britain's great universities have been hit as well, according to The Guardian:

 

The ruling Tories, who under the British system can cling to power despite the resignations in disgrace of their last two Prime Ministers, have nothing to offer except their usual bracing mix of bluster and condescension.

Fed up with declines in their standard of living, teachers, nurses, and train drivers (OK, engineers) have all gone on strike.  In response the Prime Minister, an insanely rich former investment banker named Rishi Sunak, has told them they have to suffer if inflation is to be beaten.

The Brits need Lara now

The good news for Sunak is that his wife, the billionaire (depending on exchange rates) daughter of the owner of a huge Indian software consulting firm, who avoided UK taxes for years by claiming she was “non-domiciled” in the UK despite being married to a senior Tory politician, will not have to suffer to beat inflation.

And the Conservatives still refuse to close the “non-dom”tax loophole that has enriched their billionaire funders for decades, preferring instead to introduce laws outlawing public-sector strikes.

All of this naked pandering to the plutocratic few has made the ruling party massively unpopular in Britain (too bad the same can't be said on this side of the pond), but until 2025, they will be able to do their worst as the people of Britain suffer.

Even as (or perhaps because) their economy rots and their standard of living declines, Brits have embraced bigotry and meanness with an avidity that can only be described as “Republican.”  In response to a few thousand of desperate refugees crossing the Channel to seek asylum, Sunak through his Nikki Haley-like minion, Suella Braverman, wants to kick them out (or perhaps to Rwanda) without a fair consideration of their claims, in violation of the UK's international legal obligations.

Meanwhile the plutocratic press is full of pro-austerity propaganda, including ridiculous pieces claiming that it's fun to work forever for kindly Uncle Rupert Murdoch, rather than retire at 78 on a livable pension.

Instead of focusing on real suffering, the chattering classes seem to be preoccupied with the supposed threat of trans persons, although what they are threatening remains obscure. Sadly, in UK this drivel is spread not by yobs from Rummidge-in-the-Muck but by well-educated and filthy rich writers and pundits who ought to know better.

If that were not enough, the future of the United Kingdom itself seems increasingly doubtful.  Scotland, removed from the EU against its will, is ready to secede if given the chance to vote now being withheld from them by the colonial authorities in Whitehall.  Northern Ireland, now with a majority-Catholic population and caught on the wrong side of the EU-UK border to avoid another sanguinary division of Ireland, may soon follow.

The Tory loudmouths in London can bellow all they want that England can well do without these appendices, but if they really thought that, why are they fighting so hard against democratic referenda on independence?

The shrinking of the UK to England and Wales is but a synecdoche of Britain's rapidly shrinking role in and relevance to the world, a trend that began after World War II but paused in the era of EU membership.

Over 60 years ago, the great automotive journalist Brock Yates reported on the then-dismal state of the British car industry.  Its inability to compete with German and Japanese manufacturers led Yates to wonder if Britain's industrial base would wither away, leaving the country with no economic activity other than as a sort of global theme park:

Speaking of British car production, it's not going so good since Brexit (which fatally interrupted the complex supply chains that undergird modern manufacturing):

 A 66-year low?

The London theme park of culture, shopping, arts, fashion, dining, and other activities enjoyed by global tourists is more fun and exciting than ever.  Outside the gates, the once-great United Kingdom is slipping into decline and darkness, if not dissolution, and its insufferable governing class doesn't seem to notice, or, more likely, care.