Zoe Williams: Brexit has created chaos in Britain – nobody voted for this // Aeron Davis: Is the British establishment finally finished?
The slash-and-burn gaiety of the coalition government has evolved into something more Kafkaesque: a system that doesn’t work for anybody, on any terms, which is more costly but also more painful, and in which all reasonable objection is met with the blank inaction of a frozen polity.
The sense that a Conservative government might be callous is not an unfamiliar one: the contention that actual deaths have resulted from discernible policies is one that only slick-looking men on magazine-format current affairs programmes put any gusto into denying. Yet there is a creeping suspicion that the government has completely ground to a halt. Crises don’t erupt, because there is nobody to deal with them. New policies can’t be announced, because there is nobody to make them.
The sense that a Conservative government might be callous is not an unfamiliar one: the contention that actual deaths have resulted from discernible policies is one that only slick-looking men on magazine-format current affairs programmes put any gusto into denying. Yet there is a creeping suspicion that the government has completely ground to a halt. Crises don’t erupt, because there is nobody to deal with them. New policies can’t be announced, because there is nobody to make them.
The regular business of the state, to maintain its institutions,
react to challenge, find solutions, learn from mistakes and - at its very
simplest - make sure its citizens survive, has been suspended. Brexit has
been consuming all its oxygen since the referendum was announced. It is
astonishing that such an amorphous, deadlocked project could have so much
impact: but it has suffocated the government’s ability to respond to anything
else. The crisis in the prison service is perhaps the starkest example.
No modern state would undertake to lock people up if it couldn’t assure
sanitary conditions and basic safety. Yet violence in prisons, both
attacks and self-harm, is at its highest levels since records began.
Liverpool prison, the inspection of which last year yielded medieval tales
of rats and cockroaches, this month saw its third suicide since
September. An urgent notification from the prisons inspectorate found that
conditions in Nottingham jail had declined to the point where prisoners
were in danger of death… read more:
Aeron Davis: Is the British establishment finally finished?
After the vote for
Brexit, David Cameron and George Osborne were suddenly cast adrift, while the
Bank of England and captains of industry found themselves wondering who to
support. The Conservative party – their political party, the only one they had
ever supported – was following a course of action they thought would wreck the
economy. Sterling and the FTSE 100 index plummeted. Shareholders began
revolting and bankers relocating.
A year later, the
establishment seemed to be recovering once again. And then came the snap June
2017 election. The Conservatives, with all their resources and an initial
20-point poll lead, lost their majority. Theresa May was outperformed by a
badly dressed, pacifist republican with no money, no media support and a shadow
cabinet that could fit in a phone box. The Tory party was left negotiating a Brexit
deal with a dead duck leader, a hung parliament, and no idea of what outcomes
the establishment wanted.
All of which suggests
that it might be time to question whether the British establishment still
functions as it once did. Yes, some members of the elite have become very rich.
They are still united in their fear and loathing of leftwing ideas and ordinary
people. They are still highly skilled when it comes to pursuing their
self-interest. Their decisions still have powerful consequences that are widely
felt. But they seem to be less able to exert control or predict what those
consequences will be..
read more...
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/27/is-the-british-establishment-finally-finished
