Is There Any Way Back to Sanity for a Collapsing Britain? It’s Not Looking Like It
Jan 15
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Let me tell you a story — a particularly shocking one — that sums up the state of contemporary Britain, and why the world watches baffled, as it implodes. Britain’s Home Secretary — the equivalent, for Americans, of its Secretary of State — recently had a meeting at her home constituency, where people could give her comments and feedback, a minor and everyday affair in any democracy.
There, the Home Secretary heard from a woman. But no ordinary woman. An 83 year old Holocaust survivor. One who’d received an MBE — to the uninitiated, that’s “Member of the Order of the British Empire, a couple of ranks below the one where you get called “Sir” or “Dame” — for her work in educating peopleaboutthe Holocaust.
This brave old ladysaid to the Home Secretary:
I am a child survivor of the Holocaust. In 1943, I was forced to flee my birthplace in Belgium and went across war-torn Europe and dangerous seas until I finally was able to come to the UK in 1947.
When I hear you using words against refugees like ‘swarms’ and an ‘invasion’, I am reminded of the language used to dehumanise and justify the murder of my family and millions of others.
She said this because the Home Secretary hasused language like that— but of course, that’s not really language, it’s precisely what she said: dehumanization, scapegoating. After all, there’s not any “invasion” of Britain happening.Ukrainegot invaded. An invasion is a thing of tanks and guns and armies. Britain faces no such thing, and that was this brave lady’s point. So why the need to dehumanize and scapegoat? Knowing that it’s an indecent thing to do, because, of course, well, history teaches us where it leads? Asked…the Holocaust survivor.
The Home Secretary’s reply? “I won’t apologise for the language that I have used to demonstrate the scale of the problem.”
Pause for a breath, because maybe that left you speechless. Even more shocking? The “answer wasgreetedwith applause from the audience.” Evenmoreshocking? After avideo of all thiswent viral, the government asked that it betaken down.
The brave lady, meanwhile, afterwards, in an interview, made her point even more forcefully.
I feel very strongly that the Holocaust ended in the death camps but it started with words, with othering the Jewish people, blaming them for all the problems in Germany, and I am afraid that the actions and words of our home secretary is very, very similar.
That shouldshockyou. If you’re British, maybe it doesn’t — but it should. It should shockall of us.For a Secretary of State, a Home Secretary, a government’s most senior internal figure, for all intents and purposes its internal head of state…to attack a Holocaust Survivor…for speaking her mind…is something that goes beyond jaw-dropping. It’s grotesque. Obscene. Repellent. And if you think I speak too strongly, then let’s consider.
Imagine that, I don’t know, Joe Biden told off a Holocaust Survivor. Hard to do, right? Imagine that his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken admonished an old lady who was a Holocaust survivor. It’d be national scandal in minutes, and he’d be out of a job inseconds. Imagine that Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, a rough equivalent, told a Holocaust survivor where to get off. She’d be sacked in hours. Imagine that Justin Trudeau did it. Emanuel Macron.Anyone. In a modern democracy.
Hard to do, right?
This is the state of modern Britain. This is where the nation actually is. The government tells off Holocaust survivors, tocheers and applause.If that isn’t chilling, I don’t know what is.
Let me make it even clearer why — though we’re barely just beginning with the tale of how Britain’s lost its mind —whyall that’s so repellent. Nobody should treat a Holocaust survivor as if they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to rising fascism. This episode reeks of anti-Semitism. Of xenophobia. Does Britain’s government really know better than…people who survived history’s greatest genocide? Seriously? Can anybody accept that as logical, sane, or moral? When a Holocaust survivor says, out loud, hey, this is beginning to remind me of what I escaped…is it really correct to…ignore…minimize…gaslight…demonizethem? Isn’t that proof positive that something’s gone incredibly badly wrong in a society?
But this is where Britain is. What it’s become. What Brexitletit become. The kind of nation in which the government reproaches Holocaust survivors, which, if it isn’t a painfully obvious example of xenophobia — you’re not really British, you’re not one of us — and bigotry — that happened to the Jews, who cares — thenwhat is? Yet like I said, that’s just one story in the larger tale, and that tale, well, I’ve hardly begun to tell it yet. So let’s keep going.
While the government’s telling off Holocaust survivors, gaslighting them, attacking them,thisis going on. Sorry,long quote— because, amazingly, this might be evenmoreshocking.
An A&E consultant of 15 years in the north of England has given a harrowing account of the current state of the NHS and invited the Prime Minister to spend a day with them “to witness this massive human tragedy for yourself”. The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Adrian Boyle, has said as many as 500 people could be dying each week because of delays to emergency care.
Let me tell you some that might be in that number,” the consultant said. “The 89-year-old who fell in the bathroom who called an ambulance but couldn’t get one for nine hours, so the sepsis which had caused him to fall killed him. Had I seen him within a couple of hours it could have been avoided. Maybe.
The 54-year-old with three teenage children who has severe asthma came into A&E driven by his 17-year-old because he was so breathless. He collapsed and died outside because he’d waited too long because he knew the system was struggling. Maybe if he’d spoken to his GP things might have been different for him. Maybe if he’d brought himself sooner. Maybe.
The 67-year-old grandmother who died from her chest infection, maybe because there were not enough people to keep an eye on her on the ward. Maybe if the nurses hadn’t been redeployed to open up another area of beds, so there would be more than two nurses to 24 patients. Maybe if the junior doctor had been able to review her sooner. Maybe.
The lady with cerebral palsy who died from her chest infection — maybe if she’d not had to wait outside for six hours and had to wait 10 hours for an ambulance. Maybe if there’d been a bed on the ward. Or she’d been seen sooner, or reviewed more.
Did you get that? Shocked? People are dying — a lot of people, 500 a week, likely more — because they can’t get basic healthcare. Ambulances, beds, medicine, and so on.We’re not talking about Covid.We’re talking about preventable deaths on a Victorian level. Asthma patients. Chest infections. Old people with broken bones. This is happening in the 21st century…in one of the world’s most powerful, wealthiest countries? The mind reels.People are dying of Victorian level problems, ones that are routine to prevent and take care of today, because they can’t get basic levels of modern healthcare.Hundreds a week.
It’s no wonder, then, that, more or less the entire healthcare system is going onstrike. It’s been driven to that, in a despair — overworked, and yet under-resourced to the point that it can’t provide care. It scars and traumatizes healthcare workers, make no mistake, like the doctor above, to see people…hundreds upon hundreds, week after week…die…of problems they could have solved…if only they’d gotten there in time. But nobody can, because, well, the NHS has been shattered with an iron fist of neglect, malice, and sordid vengeance.
Let me take a second, though, to help you decipher the meaning of all that. What do these two stories share in common? They are both examples of people who’ve experienced terrible things telling the government thatit is getting it wrong. And in response? The government attacksthem.When it comes to healthcare, though 500 people a week, probably more, are dying of preventable Victorian level illnesses and issues…the government denies there’s a problem…a crisis…anything wrong muchat all. Incredible, no?
This is where modern Britain is. It haslost its mind.What do I mean when I say, though, that “Britain has officially lost its mind”? Let me now try to make it formally a little clearer.
Here’s a small list — just a small one — of people who are telling the government that it’sgetting it wrong. The business of governance. Of managing a modern society. Not crashing and burning it into ashes. A small list. Nurses. Paramedics. Doctors and surgeons. The British Medical Association. The Royal Colleges of…everything. Scientists. Teachers.Holocaust Survivors.
Even, ironically, Brexit voters, about 30% of whom now think the wholefoolish exercise was a mistake, watching their society implode — but we’ll come back to them.
But let’s keep going with our list. It’s hardly just those groups. There are so, so many more. The entire world’sfinancial community, which has sold the pound off to historic, laughable lows. All of Europe, where approval for the EU is athistoric highs, as Europeans watch what’s happening to Britain with horror. America, whose government flatly refuses to even talk about striking themega trade deal— the one Brexiters said would happen easily, magically — precisely because doing things like saying there’s an invasion when there isn’t…andthentelling off Holocaust survivors for saying all that’s odious…really,reallypisses off the American State Department…who looks at Britain now like a drunk uncle that needs to go to rehab…and won’t touch it with a ten-foot bargepole.
Now.How long does that list have to get? For a society to understand that something has gone really, really badly wrong?That is inflicting a level of historic catastrophe on itself? After all, when everyone from nurses to teachers toHolocaust survivorsto Europe to America is telling you that something is wrong…
How long does that list have to get?
What does it mean to lose a mind? It means that you’ve become, in a sense, incapable of learning, because you’re now “detached from reality.” That phrase, becoming “detached from reality” is now a kind of pop-culture shibbloeth — but it dates back to the days of Freud and Jung, where it was the basis of new disorder, one of the mind, of “psychosis.” When a mind was unable to grasp the basics of the reality which confronted it. Even if it hadmadethat very reality, by, say, alienating its friends and allies, wrecking its finances, and making a laughingstock of itself. The hallmark of this new disorder, psychosis, as it was then called, was that reality itself was met with “defense mechanisms,” through which no form of it could pass.
Remember the Holocaust Survivor? What happened to her? She was met with furious defense mechanisms. Denial — there reallyisan invasion. Gaslighting — so what, your experience doesn’t matter. Othering — you’re not really one of us, a real Brit, and you never will be. Remember the doctors and nurses? When they say, “hey, people are dying. Hundreds upon hundreds of them.” The response comes: “Crisis? Thereisno crisis. Problem? Where?”
Defense mechanisms. Through which no shred of reality passes anymore.
And yet even that barely gets to how grim the truth of Britain’s lack of a future really is.
Some things are conspicuous by their absence. What’s absent in the story of the Holocaust Survivor? Well, the opposition — remember them? — didn’t speak outforher.Britain has — had? — a thing called the Labour Party, which was one of the world’s great center left institutions. But now? After this ugly, grotesque debacle — xenophobic, anti-semitic, bigoted — the Labour Party saidnothing.
Consider that, if not from a moral perspective, just from one ofpolitics. Even if you’re a soulless nitwit, surely, isn’t this a moment tocapitalizeon? And yet the Labour Party saidnothing. It wassilent. Imagine that. Imagine that America’s right wing attacked a Holocaust Survivor…and it’s entire center left institutionssaid nothing. Brits have the wrong idea about America — when, for example, during the Trump years, such things did happen, America’s center left wasfurious. After the Charlottesville March by Nazis, for example. But in Britain?Nothing.
That’s because the Labour Party is basically another conservative party now.Its solution to Britain’s broken NHS? To…lol…attack doctors. The problem, according to its Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, a man who appears to have all the wisdom of a bad tooth, isn’t…underinvestment…it’s not Brexit shrinking the economy…it’sdoctors. They’re not doing their jobs. But wait,that’s exactly what the conservatives say.
Labour is afraid to say what needs to be said. So let me say it instead. Britain has become one of the world’s most xenophobic countries, and so it’s become taboo to point out that without immigration, nothing can be fixed.Nothing. Do you think there are 150,000 Brits available to suddenly fill up all thosevacanciesfor doctors and nurses available in the NHS? LOL. Don’t kid yourself. Like every modern society, Britain needs immigration to grow. The reason the NHS is broken is because there was a huge, hugeexodusof Europeans, who were once its most talented doctors, nurses, surgeons, psychologists, and so forth. They are gone, and they’re not coming back, which has left a gigantic hole in Britain’s NHS, which didn’t have enough to begin with. Combine those two things, and you get hundreds of people a week dying of preventable Victorian level things like asthma and chest infections and broken bones.
Nobody can say that. Nobody will say that. Instead, the government’s out there attacking Holocaust Survivors because they’re not “really” British enough. Oh, they’re justJews. Not really one ofus. The phrase, by the way, “North London elites,” which Britain’s conservatives use…liberally? It’s a veiled slur. Who lives in North London? Jews do. It’s exactly like Trumpists saying “New York liberals.” But Trump isn’t in power anymore. In Britain, though, the fanatics have been in power fortwelvelong years. That’sthree timesas long as Trump.
In that time, they’ve done something remarkable, which history will shudder at, and the world already is. They have made Britain lose its mind.No form of reality is allowed to pierce the defence mechanisms of what has become a failed state — one that’s trapped there, by its own xenophobia, bigotry, nostalgic visions of a lost empire, hyper-nationalism, hostility towards anything and everything and everyone that’s not “really” British, from Europeans to Jews who’ve lived in Britain all their lives, right down to being part of the modern world itself.
No form of reality is allowed to pierce the veil of this lunacy, ignorance, hate, stupidity. Amajority of Brits now think Brexit was a mistake— and yet who represents them? Not the conservatives, who double down every day on alienating the world, modernity, crashing the economy, destroying its once great institutions like the NHS and BBC, plunging people into the worst economic crisis in modern history. But not the centre lefteither. Nobody represents, stands for, is on the side of, reality, sanity, modernity, decency anymore. And in that sense, Britain has lost its mind.
Now, the average person might be coming back to reality a little bit, given those polls on Brexit regret. Or they might not be — look at how peoplecheeredwhen a Holocaust survivor was told off. It doesn’t matter, much, anyways, because power in Britain won’t brook any form of reality anyways. Open a newspaper, and nobody much will say, hey, we are in a serious, historic, shocking crisis, our society is collapsing. We have the worst economic collapse in modern history,GDP off by Great Depression double digit levels, our institutions can’t provide basics like healthcare, people can’t afford to heat their homes and feed their kids, and things are only going to get worse, because, hey, Brexit is forever.
It’s still a taboo to discuss how severe Britain’s collapse really is. Say it, and you’ll get the same treatment that Holocaust survivors, doctors, nurses, paramedics do.The average person might even begin to grudgingly, reluctantly agree, a little bit. But now it doesn’t matter, because they’retrapped. In a failed set of power structures, all of whom agree that the problems Britain faces have only one real solution: more xenophobia, scapegoating, more belt-tightening, more alienating friends and allies, nope, no immigration, no real plan or vision or agenda to resuscitate anything from the economy to the NHS to the BBC to a crashing and burning middle and working class. Both sides now agree that Britain’s future should be…just like like its last five years.
Where does scapegoating end? The scapegoater, at last, becomes the final victim of this cycle of ugliness and folly. And that’s where Britain’s ending up.See the government scapegoating aHolocaust survivor…for trying to teach it something? Now see the way that doctors and nurses are blamed for a failing NHS. How people are told their crushing slide into poverty is their own fault, for not being “productive” enough. That their plunging living standards are their responsibility, just tighten that belt, even if it’s choking you at this point. And yet Brits are the ones who bought the Big Lies, too — that their society, whichwas once a paragonof what it means tobeone, was poisoned, by dirty immigrants, uncouth foreigners, disgusting Europeans, all of whom were to be hated, as was the world. And now the last scapegoat left is…the Brit him or herself.
Britain has lost its mind.You see, at this point in a society’s collapse, something genuinely strange happens, and this is what’s causing the world’s jaw to drop, baffled, as it asks, bewildered, why are Brits letting everything they built collapse and implode into ruins?By this point, scapegoating has gone on so long, that people know no other way.They barely even remember what it means to actually solve problems, not just blame them on hated others, on convenient targets, to try andattack innocent people, instead offix things. And thought that strikes anyone sane as delusional — well, no form of reality pierces the veil of this madness.
This is how it ends, my friends. The virulent malady of nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry, hate.Let it be a lesson to us all. A society doesn’t pull back from the brink, once its infected with this madness. It has to hit rock bottom, writhe in pain in the abyss for a good long while, and then, maybe, just maybe, if it has any strength left, find a way to climb out. For Britain? All that will take decades. And during that time, everything from the economy to living standards to democracy will continue to go right on imploding. The rest of us are watching, shocked and stunned — butlet us dowhat Britain, it seems, can’t anymore.
Learn something.
UmairJanuary 2023
