Why Post-Brexit Britain Doesn’t Have a Future
Length: • 2 mins
Annotated by John Philpin
The Society that Gave Up on Being Part of the Modern World — And Believes Its Own Big Lies
Right about now, the world is looking on aghast, bewildered, and stunned. It’s asking the same question that many Brits are: does Britain have a future? The answer to that question, and I won’t mince words, goes like this. As things stand? Nope. Britain has no future whatsoever.
Perhaps that sounds harsh. If it does, a little bit of context. Britain is a society that’s now in a state of collapse that’s so far off the charts there are no comparisons, really, in the contemporary history of developed nations. GDP’s on course to be 11% smaller than if Brexit had never happened — double digit decline that is on the level of Great Depression, heart-attack-scale contractions. This is entirely unprecedented outside true social collapses like Latin American style currency crises. Even the Great Recession of ‘08 didn’t come close. Russia’s economy is going to shrink less this year than Britain’s has contracted thanks to Brexit.
Meanwhile, 500? 1000? people a week are dying because the NHS has collapsed, and Brits can’t get healthcare. Adjusted for population, that’s a 9/11 every couple of weeks. This is calamity on the scale of a war. But Britain’s not at war with anybody...but itself.
These social indicators are jaw-dropping. They’re breathtaking. They stagger the world, which is precisely why Europeans, seeing the wages of turning this far right, have rallied behind the European project, learning a lesson from Britain’s folly. They’re why America’s government barely bothers speaking to Britain, except to remonstrate it, which, Britain’s government, astonishingly enough, picks a fight with the US over. The very US it’s desperately looking for a trade deal with, LOL. But I get ahead of myself — we’ll come back to all that.
It’s not hyperbole or exaggeration or what Brits call “scaremongering” to ask if Britain has a future anymore. It’s a necessary question, because what Britain’s done to itself is unique and unparalleled in the history of the contemporary world. It is the first developed nation to have turned itself into a failed state, replete with the kinds of breathtaking indicators of collapse we have...