Britain has been avoiding its biggest problems for decades. Now we’re paying the price
“Almost nothing seems to be working in Britain,” says the Economist. The Financial Times reckons the country is “creaking”; one Daily Telegraph columnist, with characteristic restraint, foretells “the coming collapse of basketcase Britain”.
Whatever conclusions follow, the basic observation is much the same: what with skyrocketing bills, crisis-plagued railways, a drought worsened by our decaying water infrastructure and an NHS once again on the brink of collapse, the United Kingdom is being confronted with huge problems it can no longer wish away. Up to now, it has been easy to pin the blame for our malaise on whatever crisis was then afflicting us. But there suddenly seems to be a dawning understanding that the era of Covid-19, Brexit, the war in Ukraine and the overarching climate emergency have exposed fundamental failures that have been festering for decades.
Mounting predictions of a national meltdown only highlight a story that ought to be very familiar by now: the deep and enduring problem of British underinvestment, and a national mindset innately averse to thinking about the future. From time to time, some or other grand project – London’s new Elizabeth line is a good example – suggests that the right people can just about get their act together. But for the most part, we have an economic model that excels at ephemeral stuff, but fails when it comes to the things that everyday life – let alone a healthy, future-proofed economy – actually depend on.
In that sense, the quintessential modern British experience is that of being stranded in the kind of mainline railway station where the consumerist wonderment extends into the distance – able to buy the latest in coffee, sushi and so-called Cornish pasties – but being
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