The cataclysmic decline of Britain is a concocted fantasy |
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The belief that Britain is feeble, falling apart and in a state of semi-permanent political crisis is harped on so frequently that it has almost become conventional wisdom. This conviction will be further fuelled by the potential departure of Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, the fifth to be considered not up to the job and ejected from office since 2016.
Voltaire remarked 250 years ago that the English shot an admiral every so often “to encourage the others”, but these days we have switched to abruptly terminating prime ministers. It is unclear if shooting admirals led to improved performance by their successors, but the record shows that dispatching prime ministers does not mean that the next one along will do any better.
One explanation for their failure might be that Britain is unluckily drawing its leaders from an undiluted pool of duds. A more likely truth, however, is that ever since the financial crisis of 2008, no British prime minister has been able to grapple successfully with the huge problems facing the country.
Admittedly, several recent prime ministers have been charlatans or crackpots, but all were, to a greater or lesser degree, scapegoats for a failure to meet expectations that could never have been satisfied.
Starmer was always surprisingly accident prone for a successful lawyer and former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, a characteristic probably explained by his lack of political experience. This would have been less of a flaw had he not been such a poor judge of the kind of subordinates he needed to counter-balance his own failings. His former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, once lauded as a political genius by pundits, turned out to be more of a disaster-prone Jonah, supposing he was at least partly in charge of Downing Street during avoidable debacles since the general election of 2024.
If Starmer does stay, there is no reason to imagine that his performance will change for the better. Whatever the outcome of the present turmoil, he will have further reinforced his reputation as a serial blunderer and with his authority further diminished. But if he does go, would his successor survive any better when in the grip of the political rip tides that swirl around any occupant of 10 Downing Street? Starmer was roundly criticised for not having a plan or a vision following his landslide general election victory, but critics are circumspect or mute about what this magical plan or vision might have been that would put the country to rights.
The nature of British politics is changing. With five significant parties rather than two, the next general election will be fought between unofficial coalitions of progressives and conservatives. Starmer’s personal unpopularity, inarticulate style and political cack-handedness........