1 2 July 2017
T
HIS MAGAZINE took a surprisingly
benign stance on the mediocre legacy
of Enda Kenny, despite the facts that he
embraced neither the substantive
equality nor the sustainability that ani-
mate this magazine.
The main reason for this was that it is clear that
our times have thrown up much worse. In Donald
Trump and the Brexiteers the two most influential
Anglophone countries let themselves down and
opened their hearts to dangerous fools at the
centres of their mature body politics. Our politi-
cians have not yielded to intolerant populism.
In the US, Donald Trump’s Presidency will, on
the basis that character is destiny, end in a morass
of shaftings, leaks, groundless policies and deci-
sions, corruption, impeachment, and disgrace.
The UK is more tragic.
While Trump’s ascendancy symbolised an
enormous and intolerant malaise, the UK’s
muddle is more fragile, less personal, more
endemic and not so easily solved. It’s about the
British predicament.
England has for centuries been riven by a class
system, sustained by those at the top as it pro-
vided fodder for their estates and their Empire,
and now prolonged because… well who knows
why. Latterly it has denigrated education and
aggrandised a boorish press, reaping a whirlwind
in moronism and intolerance.
Britain has struggled with its post-colonialis
-
ing identity. Particularly in England many people
are convinced of their country’s specialness, by
which they may mean superiority. This is not
something which has yielded much to the objec-
tive analyst. Few can doubt that it is now
manifesting as a fullblown identity crisis.
The UK’s external relations are now
egregiously compromised. The reclaiming of
coastal waters for the national fishing fleet is
merely symbolic of the divisiveness of unilateral
exit. Too many failed to register either the historic
or the economic significance of the EU. Cynical
propagandists in the press and Tory party created
a myth of over-zealous regulation emanating from
Johnny foreigner in Brussels, when as the tragic
Grenfell fire only underlines, regulations are
easily denigrated as fodder for bonfires, until you
see what they prevent.
Last year the UK voted to leave the EU. Village
still predicts it will relent.
But it still has a great deal of pain to go through.
It will be humiliating to be outmanoeuvred at
the start of the negotiation process by a bloc that
has the upper hand, simply by dint of the nature
of international trade and international-trade
agreements which depend on complex long nego-
tiations and which deliver benefits from
mutuality, and disbenefits to those who cede.
It will be humiliating to ask for a reversal of the
Article 50 process which allows countries to leave
the Union.
The UK will decline economically though politi-
cally this is disastrous as the country is reeling
from years of austerity, post-industrial decline
and social discrimination.
It will continue to experience loss of interna-
tional investment as the markets indulge their
fears of uncertainty, of the adversity generated
by less trade and less favourable trade, and less
immigration with the economic dynamism it gen-
erates; but worse of the reality of Brexit, of a
hobbled financial sector centred in London, of a
declining industrial base, separated from its nat-
ural trading partners. It seems unlikely these
pervasive sectors with outlets in the principal
The UK is flouting the
obvious lessons and
diktats of history
and economics
by Michael Smith
England has for
centuries been riven
by a class system.
Latterly it has
denigrated education
and aggrandised
a boorish press,
reaping a whirlwind
Uncool Britannia
Uncool Britannia
NEWS
Dangerously deficient
July 2017 1 3
political parties will not regis-
ter their discontent in ways
that will resonate.
The country is also imper-
illed by fissiparous
demography. Over-65s were
more than twice as likely as
under-25s to have voted to
Leave (71% as against 29%).
Disenfranchised young
people already suffer relative
to their parents in terms of
jobs. The proportion of work-
ing 16- to 20-year-olds in low
pay rose from 58% in 1990 to
77% in 2015. Their opportuni
-
ties to obtain quality housing
are inferior. Half of the people
living in homeless supported
accommodation are aged
16-24. And young people
cannot look forward to the
retirement and pension terms their parents were privi-
leged with. The State pension which was payable from
65 (60 for women) is rising to 67. Disenfranchising their
views on the economy and international place of their
country will inevitably engender civil fracture.
More humdrumly, Britain’s politicians are dangerously
deficient. Theresa May is stiff, petty and unimaginative,
and played a cynical card for one who initially was pro-
Remain. Her Tory successors, Boris Johnson and David
Davis are unrealistic and buffoonish. Jeremy Corbyn is
latterly being feted noisily by an anaesthetised elector
-
ate but he lacks a clear, positive and modern vision, most
of all about the EU.
None of these people will unite their country. Their
personalities, backgrounds and policies clearly prefig-
ure divisiveness. But in any event even if they were
skilful, and they are not, the situation is irredeemable:
the country doesn’t know if it wants Brexit (it voted it
52:48% and though constitutional foibles mean they are
reluctant to revisit a referendum, they seem fast to have
changed their minds after they’d googled to see what it
would involve. Moreover if it wants Brexit it’s not clear if
it wants a Hard Brexit defined as embracing extraction
from the single market and the customs union or a Soft
Brexit.
There is also a systemic constitutional difficulty. The
UK will struggle to provide a solution to Northern Ireland.
Despite ample opportunity nobody has outlined a satis-
factory border arrangement between it and this Republic.
Moreover, the pressures exercised by the DUP, appar-
ently the Tories’ chosen partners in government, may
breach the Good Friday Agreement, an international
treaty, which requires the impartiality of the British Gov-
ernment in its dealings between nationalists and
unionists.
Perhaps the UK will leave but if it does it will soon
come back. Economics dictates. Economically everybody
benefits from trade.
In the end it is to be hoped a chastened but wiser UK
takes a more comfortable place in world affairs, with its
sense of its specialness diminished and its concomitant
sense of superiority sundered. For without it, the UK is
a great country, with a history of rare genius and a post-
war tradition of magnanimous tolerance. To have Britain
functioning dynamically and progressively will be a
relief, particularly to its closest neighbours.
It is to be hoped a chastened UK
takes a more comfortable place
in world affairs, with its sense
of its specialness diminished
and its concomitant sense of
superiority sundered
Too stiff to share in everyone else’s identity crisis

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