The Cracks at the Surface

More and more, the gap between the ruling class and the population is yawning wider in Britain, and the signs of the decrepit English state reveal the inane contradictions at the heart of the nation. 

Take, for instance, the end of hereditary peers in the House of Lords, a 700-year-old tradition in England. Which, although being an arguably justified decision, begs the question: Why continue to have a constitutional monarchy at all? If we are abolishing the right for the landed gentry to pass down hereditary titles and thus preventing their ability to influence legislation, then it seems fatuous to continue to permit a non-elected head of state. 

Unfortunately, the anachronisms and remnants of a Britain of yesteryear are clinging on to what they still can, attempting to justify their role within the UK’s political system. So many millions, perhaps even billions, could be saved, what with William’s jetting off to Climate Events in private jets; Charles’ pleas to the US Congress for continued war support. This is without mentioning the sheer day-to-day expenses of maintaining the Royal Family, eschewing their quasi-trifling role in modern politics. 

Or, the seemingly impossible task of being the British Prime Minister, now with Keir Starmer set to be the latest defenestrated leader of His Majesty’s government. And is it any wonder? The resignations of Wes Streeting as Health Secretary and Jess Philips as Minister of Safeguarding (yes, the issue of “safeguarding” requires a publicly funded department) have precipitated an imminent leadership election, with Streeting announcing his candidacy. 

Political manoeuvring aside, the scope and size of the government of the United Kingdom necessitate any British prime minister to occupy the role of a kind of Soviet Union leader: countless bloated governmental departments, spiralling deficit spending and unending programmes and schemes to keep abreast of. For any bureaucrat, however, the expansion of the government is in his or her best interest, with guarantees to pay increases for increased regulation on the environment, housing, and indefinite employment. For the PM, though, trying to “run” the country requires over half a million employees and endless civil regulatory agencies. 

To make the point, the British Empire at its apogee had around 40,000 employees to run 25% of the world’s surface area. Just over 1,000 people ran the Indian Sub-continent, which governed roughly 300 million people. Today, the UK civil service employs the same number of people as the population of Manchester. These are signs of a decrepit and fundamentally backward state.

Christoper Snowdon wrote a compelling case for this, and the prognosis of the sclerotic British state:

Not since the early 1980s has the government had such a stranglehold over economic life in Britain. It is well known that taxes are at a record high and that the state is spending a larger share of GDP than at any time since the Second World War, but these statistics do not do justice to the full extent of the government’s interference in the economy. The price of gas, electricity, water, bus tickets, train tickets and, in Scotland and Wales, alcohol is controlled by the state. So too is the price of labour — since 2010, the minimum wage has risen from half of the average wage to two-thirds. Listed companies are ordered to “comply or explain” why 40 per cent of their board members are not women. Captains of industry are summoned to Downing Street to receive bollockings over non-existent “price gouging”. Businesses are given targets to sell more of one product and less of another. 

These are not the hallmarks of a liberal economic system, but of one with an increasingly authoritarian bent. 

I can be wont to decry the “Conservative” party as a misnomer, but considering they conserved (and in many cases, increased) all of the regulatory and economic restrictions of Blair and Co., perhaps they deserve a reappraisal. Cameron’s so-called “austerity” measures managed to increase the UK’s national debt by roughly £1 trillion. May increased environmental regulation, built on Ed Miliband’s inflationary 2008 Climate Change Act, while Johnson locked down the British public, causing irrevocable damage to the economy and its soul. 

In a functioning democracy, in which genuine differences of policy are available during and between elections, the rot of any state can be largely attributed to those who elected the wrongdoers into office. But when has the public had the opportunity to vote against any of the aforementioned, nonsensical policies over the past three decades?

Ultimately, every country gets what it deserves, but it is roiling when mainstream reporters and columnists continue to misdiagnose the malfeasance of the ruling class. For example, here’s the editor of the New Statesman, in the New York Times:

There are many theories as to why Britain has entered this accelerating spiral of disorder, which threatens to completely remake the political map by destroying the two-party system that has dominated British politics since 1945.

Some point to the pandemic and its aftermath: the inflation that cost incumbent governments elections across the world and tanked the popularity of those that followed…

A second explanation is that Britain continues to elect prime ministers who are utterly unsuited to the job. Theresa May, who became leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister soon after the Brexit referendum, was a serious politician who lacked the dexterity, nous and charisma to lead the country in the direction she believed was right. These deficiencies cost her the general election of 2017. Her successor, Boris Johnson, had the dexterity, nous and charisma but not the seriousness. Things only deteriorated from there. Liz Truss — who served just under 50 days — proved herself catastrophically ill-suited to power, sending markets spiraling in her first act as prime minister when she promised tax cuts Britain could not afford. 

That left her successor, the capable Rishi Sunak, with the almost impossible task of restoring the Conservative Party’s fortunes.

Interestingly, McTague discerns the following only in Starmer, and none of such qualities in Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, etc.:

As he told me in interviews for the New Statesman a little less than a year ago, he did not believe the country was in need of overhaul; the basics of the British state and its economy were broadly sound, he said. Britain just needed serious people committed to making serious decisions in the long-term national interest.

That same ethos was followed by all of Britain’s 21st-century PMs. Not a single one of them overhauled an evidently failing system that showed cracks even by the early 2000s. Yet all seemingly butressed the notion of “serious people committed to making serious decisions in the long-term national interest.” Problems were exacerbated thanks to “serious people”, leaving the rest of us to service increasingly large piles of debt and cough up larger tax bills. 

In No Country For Old Men, one of my favourite films, the evil and methodical Antoine Chigurh, before eliminating another soon-to-be victim of his pursuit, offers a quote which often comes back to me: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” before quickly dispatching with him. The rule that Britain has followed evidently has no use anymore. At the very least, differences in policy need to be offered. If, after that, people still opt for continued adherence to the rule, well...that's on them. 

Oh, wait:

©Tom Large 2026