How Broken is Britain? Part 1

With (eventually) some lessons for those who want Ireland to adopt radicalism

Chris Johns

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Broken Britain

A friend recently asked me about living in Canada. It’s something I know a little about. I was born there, my siblings live there. I have visited over 100 times. I’ve spent two months there this year alone. Ethnically, I am 1/4 Welsh, 1/4 Irish and 1/2 English and have lived most of life more-or-less evenly divided between Britain (Wales and England) and Ireland. So, contrasting life on these islands with one large part of North America is something I can take a stab at. It was the motivation for my friend’s question that interested me:

Britain is going downhill so fast that I wonder whether I should move somewhere better, somewhere nicer.

Where does this observation come from? Objectively, my friend is in the top 1% of the income (not wealth, yet) distribution. If typical, the views expressed suggest something is very wrong indeed. In this, the first of a series of posts, I will take a look at how widespread these beliefs area and ask what they mean. In subsequent posts I will examine if they have any basis in empirical fact and take a look at what, if anything, can be done about it.

Anyone with half an eye on the media, mainstream and social, will recognise the words ‘Broken Britain’. The phrase has become a meme. It pops up all over the place, often accompanied by the question ‘why doesn’t Britain work any more?’.

Without a hint of irony, Nigel Farage recently joined the chorus with a blunt assertion: “Britain is broken”. How could anyone not immediately ask Farage the obvious follow-up question: who broke it?

Nigel Farage @Nigel_Farage

Britain is broken.

There is no doubt that something is wrong. That belief cuts across political divides; it is one of the few things that seems to unite Britons these days. People who are normally enraged by anything Farage says find themselves nodding in agreement with that Tweet. Farage from the right is joined by Monbiot on the left.