David Cameron: The UK's most useless Prime Minister

It's hard to imagine to what further depths David Cameron's premiership can descend to. I wrote earlier in the year about how Cameron's government have been a disaster unparalleled in modern British history. Gordon Brown's premiership was seen as incompetent half the time, and psychologically unstable for much of the rest of it. Brown may have had bouts of mental instability, but at least he had a plan to rule the country and the economy. Cameron, on the other hand, seems to not have any ideas at all how to rule his own party, let alone the country.

Cameron's delusional personality and deficient intelligence is what is causing the most damage to the title of Prime Minister of the country, as well as the future of the country itself. While he gives the appearance of consummate self-confidence when giving speeches, and being unruffled in a crisis, the reality behind that facade is that he has no idea what he's doing.

He doesn't have the first clue about how to be a leader. This is now glaringly obvious, even to his dwindling circle of supporters. His style of leadership is to be stubbornly-resistant on issues that are irrelevant to the future of the UK (such as gay marriage), while being "intensely relaxed" about matters of utmost gravity (such as Britain's membership of the EU, or even keeping the basic discipline over his own ministers).
In other words, he has no rational sense of perspective. This adds further weight to the perception that he and his advisors are "out of touch": or, to put it another way, living on a different mental plane that the rest of the country.

With Cameron, there is no sense of leadership of the party or government, more a sense of vacuum from the centre. The recent fiasco over the EU referendum is a key example. He has been indecisive, altering his position so much that his own ministers cannot keep up with the "official" line. He allows other ministers to make policy without his involvement; worse, he allows other ministers to promote their own vision and careers at his expense, by allowing them to give speeches on issues outside their brief.
This has been encouraged by the previous point; Cameron's own flip-flopping has encouraged ministers to say what they want on any issue, because Number Ten is incapable of giving an answer that is consistent for any length of time, especially on Europe.

More typically, he leads from the rear; a follower rather than a leader, constantly battling to keep up with events orchestrated by his supposed underlings.
As a leader of men, Cameron lacks the mental strength normally considered essential to keep control. Indiscipline goes unpunished. Conservative MPs rebel when they feel like it, because Cameron is too scared of them. There is no other rational explanation. Giving the impression of being "relaxed" about indiscipline gives others the impression that Cameron believes in the "David Brent" style of management: that if you are chilled-out about work and chummy enough with your colleagues, the company will run itself.

Even when he has tried to make a ham-fisted attempt at leading from the front, for example with his much anticipated Europe speech in January, he had made a problem worse rather than better. Because he has flip-flopped so much, no-one believes anything he says anymore on Europe. This explains why his attempt at "shooting the Ukip fox" instead resulted in letting the fox loose inside the chicken coop. His earlier attempt at European politicking late in 2011(as explained here) fatally damaged his reputation in Europe, showing poor statesmanship, for only a brief bit of short-term popularity at home. Again, in the end, the only winner from these pitiful attempts at leadership have been his enemies.

He has repeatedly shown appalling judgement. Ministerial incompetence is rewarded (as we saw with Jeremy Hunt); ministers are only sacked after weeks of indecision (as we saw with the Mitchell affair). As though imagining being a Prime Minister to being a feudal baron, he values loyalty above competence: George Osborne remains in place, in spite of being almost universally loathed. He promotes personal friends as his advisors (even Boris' brother), and will go to almost irrational lengths to protect them from harm (as we are now seeing with the "Swivelgate" fiasco).

Cameron as a person is not hard-wired for making tough decisions, let alone lead a country in the middle of an economic crisis. Cameron gives the impression of being self-confident when making speeches, but when it comes to the crunch, he doesn't have a clue how to do things. Cameron is the "good-time Prime Minister", doing his job best when he is able to cheer people up, making them feel good about themselves and the country. The "relaxed" attitude Cameron exudes comes from his carefree and upper-class background; the cheerful toff in Number Ten. Like the former US President, "Dubya", he gets on well with almost everyone, but has never had to make a difficult decision in his life.

Worse, he doesn't listen. Rather than listen to his critics, his first instinct is to attack them; making snide and infantile comments to MPS from the dispatch box during PMQs; worst of all, Cameron attacks his own natural supporters (former Conservatives, now Ukip supporters) as "fruit cakes and loonies". This is not just appalling leadership, it is political insanity. 

And to cap it all off, he doesn't care. I don't mean he's heartless; I mean he gives the continual impression of not taking his job seriously. If the Prime Minister is "relaxed" about the potential exit of Britain from the EU, to give just one example, it tells you that the man doesn't have a worry in his head, because for him, being or not being in the EU makes no difference to him personally. He devolves so much responsibility to his ministers probably because he has no ideas himself. He would rather someone else do something, rather than him do nothing.
This is government by trial-and-error, as the incredibly high number of U-turns on policies glaringly tells you. Which means the Prime Minister does precious little hard thinking before letting his ministers put into action whatever idea they have that week: the blind being led by the clueless. Cameron has no particular ideas about the country; he simply wanted to be PM because he thought he'd be rather good at it, to paraphrase the man himself.

This explains how the UK's government became an ongoing farce, with the direction of the country being hijacked by a political party that isn't even in parliament, let alone government. Ukip, the party of "fruit-cakes and loonies", is the tail wagging the Conservative dog, because Cameron is incapable of leadership.

The most serious consequence of Cameron's utter lack of leadership is the appalling damage being done the Conservative party, and the political system as a whole. Cameron became Conservative leader as a "post-Blairite" Conservative: a hoodie-hugging, gay-friendly metropolitan Conservative who thought, like Blair, he could modernise his party and appeal to the centre without damaging its traditional voters.
Ukip is the result of that complacency. Because Cameron is a natural moderate and coalitionist manager, it didn't take him long to accept a formal Coalition with the LibDems. Cameron no doubt thought this would isolate the traditionalist wing of his party further to the political edges. Instead, three years on from that, we see the "Cameroon" brand of Conservatism being squeezed into an ever-narrower band - with Ukip taking up the political reins of the former "Thatcherites" on the right, and the remaining Europhile Tories despairing of Cameron's protracted fence-sitting, while Labour and the LibDems fight amongst the crowded orthodoxy of the middle ground.

Nigel Farage is in many ways more of a disciple of Thatcher than Cameron ever could be. David Cameron's political identity was moulded by Tony Blair's long reign as New Labour; Farage left the party after Maastricht, mirroring Thatcher's Eurosceptic zeal and fondness of economic Libertarianism. Farage is therefore taking advantage of the identity crisis in Cameron's Conservative Party, using his own brand of neo-Thatcherism as a way to suck up disaffected traditional Tories from the shires, as well as the upper-working class ("aspiring classes") from the towns and cities. This is what Thatcher was most effective at as a political leader; Farage is using a similar strategy, and it shows all the signs of working.

It is David Cameron who has destroyed the traditional Conservative Party, leaving Nigel farage to pick up the pieces and carve out a new political reality in England - a four-party system. Because Cameron never really knew what he believed in, had no strong beliefs on any serious issue (except marginal ones, like gay marriage), when it came to the crunch, he had no intellectual basis to his arguments. By the time we get to a 2015 general election, it is difficult to assess what state the Conservative Party will be in - possibly just a hollowed-out shell of MPs who no longer have any real voters left, because the Cameroons will have left the party is such a schizophrenic state, no-one will know what the party represents any more.

When the party's own leader has no real idea what he believes in, and lets his party be hijacked from week to week by whichever MP has an axe to grind, such a party's days in power are truly numbered. It is only desperation at the alternative that keeps other Conservatives from voting for another leader.

And even that "desperation at the alternative" may soon start to look less dangerous than the reality - a three-way-split of the British political right, as described here.

Britain's establishment, public schools, Oxbridge and incompetence

It has been said that Britain has one of the most hierarchical and entrenched societies in the world, masquerading as its most open and democratic. While its elite is far from being the worst in the world, this is something that has been learned through hard lessons over the past four centuries, so that now the average British person is so familiar with his lot that it is hard for him to think of changing the status quo at the top.

I wrote an article previously about the different ways how Britain's elite maintains its position in British society. One of the most important ways that the British establishment is able to maintain its status and power is through its hold on education; namely the public school system and Oxbridge.

The important thing to ask about the public school system is: "why does it exist?".

The public school system was established before the Industrial Revolution as a way to ensure an educated, governing class. Once the British Empire existed in earnest, it was clear that a larger number of civil servants would be needed. This same system, by and large, exists almost unchanged today; the only difference is that the pre-pubescent children attending public school these days are there through the social ambition created by the parents (both foreign and domestic), and fed by the establishment to provide a constant supply of blood.
The British Empire no longer exists; therefore, it was necessary for the "establishment" to adapt to the times, and make a "public school education" as the best way to ensure a secure future for the children of ambitious parents with money to spare.
Parents who can afford to take their children in private education, do so for the sake of ensuring their children get the best education possible. These parents also say that they have the freedom to choose the best education for their children, and that it is wrong to begrudge them the opportunity if they have it. Any other person would do the same thing given the chance, they fairly imply. Lastly, they say they only use the private system because the state system cannot guarantee the same kind of quality that gives their children a lift up to the highest levels of society.

The public school system is therefore a leftover of the British Empire, updated to modern times by appealing to the vanity of people with means. Foreigners (as much as middle class parents) put their children into this system because it effectively buys their children an advantage impossible in their own country. This much is clear and undeniable.
In other words, private education is a form of bribe. By paying the fees to the private school, the parents are (as much as realistically possible) ensuring an advantage for their children unavailable to those of lesser means. Pay money to the school, and the children will go to "Oxbridge": this is the clear thought of the parents, and the implied suggestion of the school in question.
It is a form of corruption, and therefore immoral in a civilised society. This system is what maintains the British establishment, and ensures that the top ten per cent of society will always lead a life separate and unattainable to the vast majority of the rest of society.
Saying that this form of education is a "freedom of choice" matter misses the point: because only those people with the means to afford it have the choice. It is hardly as though poor people would choose state education if they knew that private education is better. To state the blindingly obvious, private education is better simply because of the fees that keep the school funded. It is the same for "Oxbridge". It is only money that maintains the quality of this system. There in nothing innate that makes private education better. Private schools may as well all have a sign above their entrance that says: "We are good because you pay us".
It is also this reason also why private school fees have a habit of increasing over time. In a reverse of free market logic, as private schools become more competitive, they have to improve their facilities to maintain their advantage, which means higher fees, making it more and more exclusive over time. This makes the private school system even more dysfunctional compared to the state sector.

But if it is "only money" that makes the private school system better, then in theory all these schools could become incorporated into a national government-ran system, if the government had the money through taxation. Alternatively, the rich philanthropic elite could be easily convinced to annually contribute to such high-quality educational establishments to ensure their continued "free-status" (and thus avoid anyone having to pay fees). That way, these "top quality" schools would be available to people on merit alone rather than the size of the parents' wallet, if the government had the money (i.e. will) to make such patronage unnecessary. And the same for "Oxbridge". There are many other methods of financing higher education than the status quo..
Of course, such humane logic assumes that those in the top ten percent actually care about genuine meritocracy. For many, the thought terrifies them.

So parents' argument in favour of "freedom of choice" and "wanting the best for their children" are distractions, and are symptom of the failings that the private system entrench in society. The logic becomes self-fulfilling, perpetuating the class system for eternity. Meanwhile, parents with the means shrug their shoulders at the status quo, pay up and "pay in" to the system.
But does "the system" they pay into really work for Britain?

There is another, more pertinent, question that the British establishment and the public school system should answer, apart from the moral questions. It is the question that few people seem to think about, or ask.
If the "public school" system is designed to create a well-educated governing class, then why are the people it produces so useless as it?
The current cabinet of the government is largely a product of this public school and "Oxbridge" system. And yet, the current crop of ministers are perhaps the most incompetent collection of individuals to have run Britain in living memory. The same point can be made for those people responsible for the financial industry, that has been the driving force behind the British economy for thirty years, and responsible for creating the greatest financial disaster for a hundred years.

So the most revealing thing about the British establishment is not so much the question of morality as incompetence. The education system is not only immoral; far more devastating, it is not fit for purpose. It is an extremely inefficient way of financing success in Britain as a whole, and completely unsuitable to the modern needs of Britain.
The problem is that it is fundamentally based on a system that is at least fifty years out-of-date. The British Empire no longer exists, therefore Britain no longer needs a "governing class", an "establishment". This form of education system is designed to sustain an elite that has lost touch with reality.
For an education system to work efficiently, it has to adapt to changes, as well as predict them, and create a syllabus accordingly. But the public school system, by definition, is designed to perpetuate the status quo; it is  far less flexible in being able to reflect changes in society. The public school system is designed for educating those who have money to get more money and greater status; it is not designed to improve Britain. But because those who are at the top of society are educated in the most expensive schools in the country, they naturally assume this means they're the best qualified and best-educated. This explains why the likes of Cameron and Osborne are so sure of their views, but have so little idea about how to run the country and the economy. The same is true for the financial industry.

It is a truism that corruption breeds incompetence. The evidence suggests the same is true for Britain's "public school" system. Getting a career in the top echelons of society is mostly about having the right "markers" (such as an Eton and "Oxbridge" education) and connections, not brains. It's natural that in a system designed for those with money, those with most money are thought to be the smartest. Once you are in the higher echelons, surrounded by like-minded complacency, no-one is likely to challenge you intellectually. Cameron and Osborne, the two leaders of the country, are living proof of that. Private education is designed at getting those "markers" and high salary career, but there is little evidence that it offers value of money in terms of "real" education and developing analytical intelligence.
There is far more anecdotal evidence to suggest that state education offers a far better "value for money" in terms of preparing children for life and how to make a career on their own initiative, as well as giving you some first-hand experience in the social diversity of British society.

However, if you want your child to be a rich, well-connected, amoral, misanthropic psychopath, then put them into a public school. The choice is yours; if you have the money.

How Britain's Elite Stays In Power

The average foreigner thinks of Britain as symbolizing the equal, yet contradictory, ideals of democracy and tradition. Foreign tourists love the UK for its symbols: The Royal Family, The Houses Of Parliament, and so on. Modern Britain is seen by foreigners and Brits alike as a synthesis, brought about through continual compromises.

The UK itself is a bizarre creation, that confuses foreigners endlessly. Modern British society is a post-imperial creation, a melting pot of populations that have been arriving to "the homeland" since the end of the Second World War. But Britain's institutions have faced repeated scandals ever since the financial crisis, such to the extent that it's hard for people to know who to look up to as moral icons, or which of its cherished institutions can be trusted or believed any more.
 It started with the scandals that have engulfed the banking sector, followed by the expenses scandal, followed by the Murdoch Press scandal that has implicated MPs as well as the police. Then there is the tax avoidance scandal, the crisis of confidence that has hit the BBC due to the Jimmy Savile scandal, many scandals involving how badly our public institutions are ran (such as the NHS, the immigration service etc.), and the corrupt relationship between politicians and government contractors. Britain in the early 21st century faces a series of systematic structural failings that bode badly for Britain's future, with governing politicians unable to deal with them or make a viable plan for the future. Britain is almost literally falling apart at the seams because of government failure. The routine incompetence and impunity of the governing elite is just another symptom of the dysfunctional state of those in power.

The institutions that wield power in the UK have root in the political convulsions of the 17th century. The constitutional monarchy as we know it, the Bank Of England, and the functions of the Houses Of Parliament all came about through compromises made in the 17th century.
That century began with Britain having its first all-conquering monarch, James I, who ruled the entire island of Britain. James' legacy lives with us today in the form of the King James Bible, and The Union Jack ("Jack" being a shortened version of the Latin for James), not to mention Guy Fawkes, the famous would-be assassin and terrorist. For all the things that James in responsible for that we take for granted today, there were many more that people wanted him quickly forgotten for. For James was also an inveterate schemer who ruled the United Kingdom (parliament refused to allow him the title of King Of Great Britain) through divide and rule; an approach that would be more associated today with the likes of Richard Nixon. Although not a war-like ruler, this was mostly (also like Nixon) through an act of amoral expediency. As much as only Nixon could have gone to China, only a schemer like James was the man to make peace with Spain.
He also passed on to his eldest son, Charles, the arrogance of power, but not his father's carefully-honed political antennae. The Civil War, Charles' execution, and the Commonwealth, were a result of Charles' stubbornness and double-dealing, that would have been prevented if Charles had been more flexible.
As it was, even after the Restoration of the monarchy, both of Charles' sons (Charles II and James II) still created conflict with parliament, finally resulting the the "Glorious Revolution" of 1689 that deposed the openly-Catholic James II and installed his daughter (Mary) and Dutch nephew (William) jointly in his stead.
The "Glorious Revolution" was the real birth of the constitutional monarchy as we know it today, for it made the monarchy effectively the property of parliament and (symbolically, at least) the people. This was put to the test very quickly when parliament stated that the monarch had to be an Anglican. After Queen Anne died in 1714, the title of king passed to a distant Protestant German relative who barely spoke English, rather than Anne's closest relative, James Francis, her brother from her father James II's second marriage, who was a Catholic. Thus the "Jacobite" cause was founded, which rumbled on for the next half century.

The British establishment from that point onwards has learned how to do what is necessary to stay in power. While every other major European power has experienced revolution to bring about social and political change, Britain has stood alone in being able to withstand the "reactionary forces", pursuing a consistent policy of incremental change. British people, compared to their European counterparts, don't "do" revolution. The closest comparison is perhaps Spain, but even they went through many decades of Republican government before the constitutional monarchy was restored.
But the British establishment is more than just the monarchy. The "establishment" really includes all those that have a vested interest in maintaining the current hierarchy, which means the aristocracy, the banking sector, "public schools", and so on. 
The real legacy of the "Glorious Revolution" was a gradual melding together of the monarchy and the parliament (which had a large aristocratic element in any case). The two needed each other for legitimacy and continuity, rather like how the corporate elite maintain the political elite nowadays in the USA. This is one of the things that the UK and the USA have in common about their respective "establishments": they both have decades (even centuries) of experience in how to occasionally surrender powers to the populace in return for a greater hold on their positions.

The "establishment" therefore breeds unswerving loyalty and sheep-like servility in the electorate through maintaining an illusion of democratic power, while making sure their own positions are inviolate.

There are a number of ways it can do this.

First is the idea of a "narrative". America has its own narrative that everyone, from the lowliest person upwards to the "aspiring classes" buys into: the American Dream. The reality, of course, is very different. As is the same in the UK, where the"establishment" continues to give out the message of an "island nation", somehow different from the rest of Europe, and thus where "European ideas" should be treated with suspicion. This is another reason why much of the "establishment" is anti-European: it presents the wider populace with other, dangerous, ideas. The "establishment" is only pro-European when it thinks it can get something out of it for itself. The idea of a unified Europe terrifies it, as it would lose much of its power and privilege.

Second is the idea of the UK being a "civilised country", where people are good and caring towards each other, and where everyone is looked after. Much of this is simply talk. Under this is the "establishment" meaning of a "civilised country": where people shut up and don't complain, follow the rules, are respectful to one's superiors and "keep calm and carry on". This is another reason why British people don't "do" revolution: the "establishment" tells us its "un-British".

Third is the idea of Britain holding the "mother of parliaments". The Houses Of Parliament are two parliaments, one of them (The House Of Lords) entirely unelected, and mostly appointees by governments past and present. In other words, it is utterly corrupt in any objective meaning of the word. Until the end of the 20th century, many of them were there through "noble birth". Since the former Labour government "reformed" it, many of these nobles were replaced by government appointees, easily subject to influence and machinations.
The Houses Of Parliament are populated by people who are generally either there through (in the case of Conservatives) being from the right family or having the right connections, or (in the case of the other parties) there through connections or being involved in the political classes from young adulthood. In other words, the majority of these MPs have little grasp of "real life", and even if they do, are subject to influence from the "establishment" in any case. Labour's last tenure in office is a case in point: their politicians made some cosmetic improvements to society, but also vastly indulged the banking sector (leading to the current financial crisis), allowed the private sector to increase its influence in education, and made university more inaccessible to the poor by introducing tuition fees. Once the more "establishment-friendly" Conservatives were in power, these changes were accelerated, and government funding to the public sector dried up. Any attempt at reform of the democratic system beyond a cosmetic one (such as the "AV" referendum) is rubbished as being pointless and unsuitable to Britain.
In other words, the "mother of parliaments" is a sham, for it does not hold the "establishment" to account for its actions, but instead perpetuates its existence, while feeding a false narrative to the electorate about necessity of its existence.

Fourth is the idea that Britain has the best education system in the world. The USA also makes this claim, and in the same way, both Britain and America are right. The UK and USA have the best education systems for rich people in the world. "Oxbridge" and the "Ivy League" are what keeps the Anglophone "establishments" on both sides of the Atlantic alive and well. These are the foundations that keep things standing (and the "establishment" far above their respective populations). Its hardly surprising that so many up-and-coming "nouveau riche" from China and elsewhere are keen to study in the UK and USA, when both countries have the best education that money can afford.
The "establishment" maintains the fiction that these educational institutions can only be maintained through charges that exclude all but the richest from attending, and the the country needs these institutions to protect the future of the country for everyone else. There is an alternative answer to this, and it exists in the educational experience of the Soviet Union. While I am no Communist or fan of Communism in itself, it is undeniable that the Soviet Union had one of the most advanced and progressive educational systems (relative to its cost to the population) in the world at the time. The Russian education system did not collapse after the Bolshevik Revolution, as its "establishment" guessed. On the contrary, over time, it thrived as never before. Cuba's education and health system tells us a similar story.
"Oxbridge", so the "establishment" tells us, exists for the benefit of the whole country, even though it is only the children from the "establishment" who can really afford to go there. The Russian experience tells us that there is a possible alternative to the status quo.

Fifth, and last, is the popular romanticism and trivialisation of the class system in the media and collective mindset. The media (with a few honorable exceptions) is also part of the "establishment", and maintains its status, consciously or not. Britain has one of the most entrenched class systems in the world, with the lowest levels of social mobility in Europe. This is a fact. And yet the media and popular opinion often make light of this. Although the country has made reforms to open up society on the surface, social mobility has decreased in recent decades, to unprecedented low levels comparable with our GDP. This is because the money has simply been sucked up to the top, undoing any progression that was made in the decades following the Second World War.
The public's bovine respect for the monarchy and other British "institutions" is another symptom of the popular trivialisation of the class system. More seriously, the "establishment" finds it easy to distract criticism of the class system by highlighting the fact that many people now consider themselves to be "middle class". This is not a fact on the ground, merely a point of perception, and a complete illusion.
What is "middle class"? Thinking you are "middle class" is simply a sign that you have bought into the idea that you think you are socially better than someone else, and makes it all the easier for the "establishment" to sit back and smile at these simple people's delusions. As far as the "establishment" is concerned, a commoner can call himself the King Of England if it makes him happy and docile. In reality, the so-called "middle class" are now worse-off than they have been for decades. If being "middle class" is about lifestyle opportunities and real income, then the real "middle class" family these days should have a combined income of at least £70,000 per annum. Anything less is just self-delusion. And it is this mass delusion by people who think they are "middle class" that keeps the "establishment" happy.

It is these five strands of thought that keep the "establishment" in power in the UK. It is only by openly challenging these ideas that real change can come to the UK.

Jimmy Savile's psychopathy and the British psyche

The psychopathy of Jimmy Savile is now well-known and documented, and is a stark example of what happens when a psychopath attains a position of power.

The fact that he was a predatory paedophile has masked over the fact that he was also Britain's most prolific sex offender, regardless of the age and gender of the victims. The majority were underage girls, but his paedophilic tendency is merely a detail to the overall horrific nature of his personality.

His personality fits all the characteristics and behaviour of a psychopath. The gross narcissism was there, with the love of himself, and his self-made opulent lifestyle. The sense of entitlement, that he could do whatever he liked whenever he liked, was constant. All psychopaths are obsessive about control and psychological power, as well as utterly amoral. This explains why another key indicator of psychopathy is shameless sexual promiscuity and sadistic perversion.While Savile was not a serial killer like another infamous British psychopath, Ian Brady (more about him here), his psychopathy was instead displayed through his shameless and shockingly prolific sexual behaviour.
 He called his mother "The Duchess", and preserved her clothing carefully decades after her death in the early seventies. Did he do this out of "love", or was it another form of Secondary Narcissism (love through association)? If his mother was "The Duchess", then that would make him "The Duke" upon her death.
Like a typical psychopath, Savile was outwardly charming, but this was merely his psychopathic "mask" that hid the cold and calculating monster beneath. The "monster" beneath the "mask" was best revealed in Louis Theroux's TV profile of him: Savile, while outwardly charming, became hostile and intimidating at a moment's notice if he thought his outward persona was under threat.

Some of the most successful psychopaths (i.e. those which hide it most effectively) are philanthropists. Savile is perhaps one of the best-known examples of this to date in Britain, at least that we know of. The philanthropy is a shield, another extension of the "mask" - and a very effective one, as had shown with Savile in the end. This made him feel (rightly, as it turned out) almost untouchable, thus justifying his own God-like self-image. As long as he was publicly seen to be charitable and caring, the real sexually-depraved, narcissistic and sadistic monster beneath was free to do as he liked. He was given free-rein in hospitals and prisons. His cunning was such that he preyed on sexual opportunism. His preference for victims from children's homes, the psychologically disturbed and the vulnerable was another indication that he chose victims who were even less likely to be believed.
One of the most bizarre incidents involved his long-term friendship with another infamous serial-killer and misogynist, Peter Sutcliffe: he duped the boxer Frank Bruno to shake Sutcliffe's hand in prison, not realising he was the infamous serial killer. This is just one small example of the psychological power-play constant in Savile's personality. His annual festive dinner with Margaret Thatcher is another, as was his continual peddling for influence within the royal family.

Savile successfully groomed his self-image for his entire professional life as an entertainer, especially in the circles of the establishment. In that sense, there was something of the "court jester" about Savile, albeit a depraved one that was also a "dirty old man". For the entire second half of his life, Savile became part and parcel of the establishment; a sinister and freakish psychopath that hid his true nature "in plain sight" as he hob-nobbed with the rich and famous.
But I also believe that some aspects of British cultural psyche played into his hands, for depraved psychopaths like him truly thrive when there is the right "human environment": a collective culture that is callous towards sexual responsibility and indulgent of deviancy.

 "Uncle Jimmy", as he called himself, was also one of Britain's most famous "eccentrics".
There was his odd fashion sense - the track-suit - that marked him as being unique. This was another extension of his narcissism, attention-seeking to make him instantly identifiable, as well as conspicuously wearing gold chains and rings, and smoking huge, phallus-like cigars. But because such "eccentricity" is considered a natural part of the British psyche, it was tolerated and indulged without question. This "eccentric" side of the British psyche also hides a darker truth: that what might sometimes be called "eccentricity" in complacent eyes, should really be called something much more sinister.

During the decades of sexual abuse, sex crimes were not taken as seriously by the police as they are now. This reflected a casual indifference in British society towards sex acts. These things were never spoken about in polite conversation, with chauvinism and "naughtiness" the frivolous norm, and a complacency towards the behaviour of "dirty old men". It was in this atmosphere that Jimmy Savile thrived.

And yet this "atmosphere" still exists in British psyche today: casual chauvinism is the norm: "The Sun" still has its "Page Three"; anyone who has been to resorts like Magaluf will know about the rampant sexual depravity that goes on - far higher than in, say, German resorts. The British are sex-obsessed yet sexually-illiterate; have among the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and broken families in Europe; have the most irresponsible attitudes to alcohol in Europe, and as a result, night-time Britain often resembles a war-zone when the bars close.

Yet this is all part of "British Culture", supposedly. And Jimmy Savile - in the way he exploited that culture -  is partly a product of that.

The state of the British economy and its post-Imperial future

As I wrote in an earlier post here, "The Future Of Britain" is written by its past. Any national economy has to have a valid and sustainable model to grow.

Britain had been struggling to adapt its economy in relation to the world and its own population since the end of the Second World War; by the end of the seventies, the new Conservative government followed the economic thinking of the Monetarist school. An inefficient manufacturing and public sector was seen to blame for many of the problems that existed; the private sector was seen as the most efficient sector, therefore this was promoted by the Thatcher government, while at the same time killing the power of the unions to control employees pay rights.
The Conservatives, due to their background, were naturally more minded to trust the opinion of The City, which up to this point had played a minor role in the British economy. Influenced by the Monetarist, laissez-faire approach, the complacent arrogance and ignorance of the Conservative government led them to believe that the British economy did not need a strongly-supported manufacturing base to the economy. In fact, many of them associated factories and manufacturing with backwardness, union militancy and inefficiency. It was the government's belief that an expansion of a booming financial sector was Britain's way forward in the post-modern age: with a strong financial sector, everything else would fall into place and grow along with it. It would be a sign of progress, therefore, that Britain would no longer need a real manufacturing base.

Up to the end of the seventies, Britain had a large manufacturing base that produced exports. Although it had its inefficiencies, the modest income of these industries was allowed to wither by the government and an ignorant private sector; rather than invest to regain their competitive edge, they were cut down, slice by slice, to maximise profits through minimising costs (i.e. laying-off the workforce and relocating premises). The manufacturing base became an early casualty to "globalisation", as companies moved their factories abroad. As was already said, the government turned a blind eye to this as it saw the financial sector as the future of Britain. The incoming Labour government in 1997 continued with this willful ignorance and complacency, continuing to massage the ego of the financial sector further. By the start of the 21st century, resting the hopes on the financial sector was the only hope to keep Britain's economy going, as there was very little else left to support it. Manufacturing was minimal, as "service industries" had replaced manufacturing. Even the agricultural sector had become unprofitable due to the lop-sided effect on the price of imports from the strong pound (courtesy of The City). All was good, as long as the economy kept booming.

The results of this thinking are clear to see now. Believing themselves to be infallible, the financial sector quickly began to forget the most basic rules of economics (let alone ethics) in order to make the most profit possible. The City and the government encouraged an expansion in credit lending, as well as making people see their own homes as an investment rather than a roof over their heads. By 2007, the whole system in Britain that was creating the financial-backed boom was shown to be the complete fraud that it had been all along. Ireland used an almost identical model, to the same sorry result.

This explains why Britain in 2013 has a completely dysfunctional and lop-sided economy, unsustainable in any real sense of the word. The best way to explain this, apart from in layman's terms, is to compare the British model to other economies and their models around the world.
In order for a nation to grow, it needs growth supported by exports. A few countries can get around this by being financial centres, such as Singapore, Hong Kong (although not technically an independent state) and Switzerland. This is the model that the British Conservatives aimed (and still aim) to imitate. But, by nature, such countries have a generally small, highly-skilled and educated workforce, which fits in well with the financial sector. Britain has none of these, except for London and the South-east (I'll come back to this point later in a moment).
For a country to have exports, there are generally two paths to success: either produce demanded products (such as Germany, the Far East and the USA); or have a demanded resource, such as oil (The Gulf States, Central Asia, the USA, Russia, etc.), precious metals (Africa, Mongolia etc.), coffee beans, whatever. Without either of these paths, the chances of economic growth are limited.

The Conservatives still believe that Britain can be ran like Singapore, but this thinking merely displays their blinkered London-centric mentality and economic ignorance of the rest of the country, never mind their complete ignorance of economics.

I said that only London and the South-east compare economically to places like Singapore; the rest of Britain in 2013 feels more like a neglected colonial appendage to a London city-state - the "Kaliningrad" of London, to use a Russian metaphor. Economically, there is London and the South-east; and then there is everywhere else. Greater London's economy is still flourishing based on the financial sector and related services. Meanwhile, the other regions of the UK are an a different economic country, dependent on the success of London somehow trickling through to them. If nothing changes, the future of Britain will be this: to be the "Empire Of London" in all but name; a wealthy London supporting its neglected and dysfunctional regional "colonies", made economic dependencies of the Imperial Capital.
Fifty years ago, the economy of the UK was far more balanced, as the manufacturing sectors of the North and the Midlands actually contributed much more to the economy. But no longer. Sold a lie by the government thirty years ago, it is Britain as a country overall that is suffering the results of that complacent idiocy.

Germany thrives still because its economy is balanced; its manufacturing sector was continually nurtured by government. Turkey is an up-and-coming power due to the investment thrown into its manufacturing; with a similar-sized population and dynamic approach like Germany, Turkey has a great opportunity to match Germany as a regional power in the medium and long-term.

Britain, sadly, has little future under the economic orthodoxy of its establishment. If you imagine rich Singapore controlling a economically run-down South-East Asia, you might be close to the truth to what future "Britain" as an economic power holds, as a wealthy and ignorant London establishment neglects the unfashionable and depressed corners of its "British Islands Empire".
And some of the establishment have the gall to question why rich London should support its poor regions.
Because you made them poor, that's why!

The Future Of Britain

Realistically, what is Britain's future as a nation-state and power in the world in the coming decades?

In truth, it is not that hard to make some educated guesses based on what is happening in Britain now, where the direction of global politics is going, and what the predicted trends will be.

As I've said in my earlier post here, Britain in 2012 is a nation-state in stagnation, and socio-economic dysfunction in many of the regions outside of the South-Eastern England. The stagnation is due to the financial crisis, while the dysfunction is a combination of longstanding structural failings in long-term strategic thinking by government and the private sector, exacerbated since 2008.

The British economy since the decline of the manufacturing sector thirty years ago (accelerated by Monetarist/Thatcherite economic policy) has been increasingly dependent on the financial sector as the main driving force behind economic growth. This strategy, backed by the financial sector and followed trustingly by the government ever since, was meant to ensure a stable future for Britain in the 21st century. It has produced the opposite.

Looking at it objectively, this is obvious: it is reckless and naive to rest the hopes of nearly sixty million people on the success of the banking sector. But this is what has happened to British economic policy in the last thirty years.
Britain likes to compare itself economically to Germany, as a comparable economic power. But this is unfair: Germany does indeed have a strong economy, one that these days effectively keeps the Eurozone working and itself from feeling the effects of the economic crisis. But Germany's economy is based on two prongs - its financial sector, yes, but also its vigorous, efficient and dynamic manufacturing sector, that provides a healthy flow of exports.
The British government, under the supervision of the shortsighted financial barons, allowed its manufacturing sector to atrophy and wither. Furthermore, unlike Germany, the British government's attitude to unions has been aggressive, with catastrophic results on union membership and wage stability.
It is often forgotten in Britain that Germany's unions have a seat on the corporate board. This is not seen as an aggressive move on the part of the unions; it is seen as a co-operative approach between employee rights and employer rights. It means that companies make decisions together with their employees, rather than resembling a war-zone. The difference between Britain's workplace and the German workplace could not be greater.

 The arrogance of the banking sector and right-wing economists explains how this happened. This combination of arrogance and what I call "post-Imperial complacency", is why Britain:

1.  imports the majority of its foodstuffs (because it is cheaper for the huge private behemoths like "Tesco" etc.), forcing the home agricultural sector into penury.
2. has an ever-growing "North-South" divide (because the private sector sees Britain outside of the London metropolitan area as an economic inconvenience, forcing an ever-growing "brain drain" from the regions) 
3. has a dysfunctional housing market from lack of private and public sector planning and motivation. The  "North-South" divide means that while house prices in the depressed regions stagnate and some areas become depopulated, the London area becomes massively overcrowded, with an ever-increasing cost of living. It makes Britain an increasingly economically-polarised nation: the regions trapped in a cycle of lower and lower incomes and economic prospects; the capital trapped in a cycle of higher and higher costs. Over time, it means that the two parts of the country may become impossible to reconcile economically, with those in the regions unable to relocate, while those in London unwilling to move to the economically stagnant regions.
4. has a mountain of debt, some government-incurred due to bailing-out the banks, some due to government overspending, and the rest due to personal debt brought about through irresponsibility. 
5. has a fast-growing population, much of it from the families and direct descendants of immigrants. But due to lack of government strategy and planning, there are fewer and fewer places in schools for them, resulting in overcrowding or family relocation simply to find a suitable school.
6. Has a generation (or two) of graduates who are to have a mill-stone of debt around their necks for much of their adult life, but without any suitable employment. In other words, Britain is becoming a nation-state of the highly-educated under-employed.
7. Has an increasingly dysfunctional employment market, as a result of the combination of points 1,2 and 6, as well as the over-dependence on the financial and (fluctuating) service sector. The number of long-term unemployed is reaching levels not seen for decades, and looks like a "new normal" is emerging of a permanently-unemployable underclass. Furthermore, the proportion of part-time and temporary jobs is increasing, so it appears that Britain will have an increasing portion of the population without stable career prospects.

These issues are all a direct result, in one way or another, of the government's economic strategy of the last thirty years. When you put all your eggs in one basket, as the UK government has done with the financial sector, the result is always predictable. It's simply a matter of time.

So that is the domestic state of affairs in Britain. From that we can make some educated guesses about what will happen to Britain's role in the world.

Britain's future in Europe is the most pressing foreign policy issue these days, and looks likely to dominate until the matter is decided one way or another in a referendum. The weak and directionless leadership of David Cameron, exploited by UKIP's Nigel Farage, is adding to the sense of drift and swift decline of Britain's reputation in Europe. It appears all-but-certain there will be a referendum on the Europe question in the next few years, either before the next election or shortly after. But any UK government is deluding themselves if they think they would be able to "re-negotiate" Britain's terms in the EU. For one thing, it would represent a dangerous precedent to what is a highly-centralised organisation. The EU leadership could not risk the contagion of other nations also wanting to "re-negotiate", leading to a chaotic and unruly clutch of European squabbles.

No, any referendum would be either "in or out"; "out" most likely meaning some kind of "free trade association" similar to that which Norway has with the EU. Judging how things stand, that vote is most likely to be "out", leaving Britain semi-detached from the centralised EU bureaucracy by the end of the decade.

That decided, it would leave Britain more reliant on its non-EU economic partners. In the next five years, we are likely to see the influence of three powers becoming more obviously apparent: China, Brazil, and Turkey. 

China is obvious. It's influence in Africa, South America and Europe is bound to increase further, and as the Chinese middle class gradually increases, we can expect to see the effect of the stronger yuan (renminbi). Brazil is becoming an increasing rival to China in Sub-Saharan Africa, taking advantage of Brazil's more benign influence in Africa compared to China's more naked neo-Imperialism. This rivalry is likely to be the next "scramble for Africa", soon to appear in the news.  Much of South America looks to be already in the pocket of China, but the Far East is where most experts in geopolitics think any future Chinese conflict may occur. While Japan is not likely to lose its status as the most advanced economy in the world for a fair while yet, a conflict between these two cannot be ruled out, though it may not occur until China itself feels either threatened (by Japanese paranoia towards China) or over-confident (about asserting its claims to disputed naval territories). This all depends on the balance between hawks and doves in the Chinese leadership, and by impression is that, for the time being, the Chinese are happy to be the world's mercantile power, if not its military one.

Having already mentioned Brazil's growing influence in Africa, this will put Europe (and Britain) in a dilemma.  Who to support? Brazil is obviously closer to Europe culturally, as well as sharing an apparently benign interest in expanding its trade links to Africa. But the sheer size of China's influence on Europe as well as in Africa, may result in some difficult choices in the coming decade for Europe and Britain. The USA also may face some awkward choices in the coming decade regarding China and Japan.

I mention Turkey because of the Middle East. It already looks like Turkey has had an early advantage in gaining access to the Egyptian economy, due to the "good neighbour" policy of its Islamist government. As well as already gaining an increasing share of trade in the Balkans, Turkey looks likely to do the best out of the legacy of the "Arab Spring". In Egypt, Turkey has already gained friendship with a market of equal population size to itself. Then there is also Syria, which looks likely to become a strong economic partner to Turkey when the civil war finally is resolved one way or another. Turkey already has a strong economic hold on Iraqi Kurdistan. Furthermore, other EU countries may look to Turkey as a more convenient and agreeable trading partner than China for some of its imports. So Turkey's future economic prosperity looks to be secured in the region for the long-term, with its policy of "New Ottomanism".

Where does this leave "post-Imperial" Britain, set to be semi-detached from Europe, and with a dysfunctional economy? Looking at the situation with realism, and looking again at the common links that the USA and the UK share with their shared view of globalisation, it would not surprise me if Britain, in a new period of post-EU uncertainty, turned to its greater Anglophone cousin across the water by the end of the decade, for the warm embrace of combined "Anglophone Neo-Imperialism". 

As I'm sure some would be bound to say at that time, "there's more that unites us than divides us".

What the 2011 UK census tells us about post-Imperial Britain

The main points that stand out for me from the 2011 census are:
1) atheism is increasingly the norm,
2) London's white British population is a minority in the city,
3) the immigrant population has increased by around three million in the last ten years,
4) there are now more than half a million Polish people in the UK,
5) the tenant population has increased by more than half.

Britain is a post-Imperial power, and has been since the rapid disintegration of the Empire after the Second World War. In a nutshell, what has happened to the UK since then is the effective implosion of its Imperial society. Whereas in the 19th century, Britain spread its social values to its colonies around the world, after the end of the Empire, its former colonies have sucked back to the "homeland" like a collapsing star sucking matter back in on itself. The "homeland" of the former British Empire is now a teeming microcosm of its former Imperial population.

This was inevitable. And what I write here is neither a condemnation or otherwise: this is simple observation, free of judgement.

An Imperial power the size of the British Empire cannot discard the great majority of its Empire in the space of little more than twenty years and expect to continue unscathed. Until the 1950s, Britain was an island of generally homogeneous white people that still ruled a vast colonial population. But that "Golden Age" of Empire was destroyed by the effects of the Second World War. After the war, the bankrupt "Empire" was shown to be a financial conjuring trick, and suddenly the "homeland" needed more people to re-build the economy. So it turned to the colonial populations.

Britain, like France and Portugal, were European, post-Imperial powers looking for a way to survive when it was clear that Imperialism was no longer financially viable and practical in a Cold War world dominated by two huge continental superpowers, the USA and USSR. For the broken European powers to survive, they pooled their talents around a new Franco-German centre, based on trade. After a couple of false starts,  Britain joined the European club, thus put the final nail in the coffin of Imperialism. Britain's last formal colony, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), was relinquished shortly after Britain joined the European club, the (then) EEC.

Britain, always being largely ignorant of continental politics and society, has been considered the black sheep of Europe. Thus its critical voice was always easy for the others to ignore. The expansion of the former EEC, now EU, into Eastern Europe, has had an immediate effect on the population of the "homeland"; now more than half a million Poles live permanently in the UK - a tenfold increase on ten years previously.

Since the 1990s, Britain's increasing role has been as the "conscience of the world"; in order to replace its middling role in the Cold War, it has largely embraced the American belief in an "open door" policy to immigration. This largely accounts for the unprecedented rise in the immigrant population in the last ten years.

The effect of this on British society in general is clear from the 2011 census. London, like New York, is one half of the Anglophone twin cities of globalisation. These two cities symbolise everything that globalisation represents, and are living examples of it. Boris Johnson is another living example: born in New York, now mayor of London, and a passionate promoter of both cities, and the concept of globalisation generally.

As I've said before, "Globalisation" is the direct result of the Anglo-Saxon economic model propounded by the British Empire and the USA. It is also largely interchangeable with the core ideas of Economic Fascism, as I've also said elsewhere. The fact the "the world lives in London", or New York, doesn't change the fact that the same economic model that brings people around the world together, also makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The story of 2011 in Britain is now of economic stagnation in a society of unprecedented diversity. But what this really masks over is the danger of communities in general slipping apart. I don't mean in stark terms of race, religion and so on, but more in terms of more social insecurity, and more psychological distance between people, exacerbated the socio-economic plan of the current Conservative government. As fewer and fewer people can afford to buy homes, or as more and more jobs become temporary and part-time, it makes it more and more difficult to make real roots and develop a real sense of "community". This is the real danger: people no longer talking to their neighbours because they never know who they are (or when they're at home) for long enough, and people not making real workplace connections because they never see the same people from one day to the next.

This is the other story of Britain in 2011. That Britain, long the arch-proponent of globalisation and economic liberalisation, became a victim to it in 2008. But the culprits were not affected, nor punished. It was everyone else who was a victim to it, and the average person on the street who has continued to suffer. This is what accounts for the rise in tenants in the UK, for the first time in living memory, as people see the "homeland" of the former British Empire become a third-rate nation-state. Britain imports most of its goods, manufactures little, and has a national housing shortage; if it were not for the amoral practices of the financial sector in London artificially flattering the state of Britain's economy as a whole, the country would be on a par with failed state.

That said, it is the amoral practices of the financial sector, who have had the ear of government for thirty years, that are responsible for the economic stagnation and social dysfunction outside of the Home Counties.

 "Strength in Diversity" is a great slogan for 21st century Britain. Another way of putting it is "The Empire Coming Home". Both are technically correct, but the second is heavy with loaded xenophobia. The stark future facing Britain is not of "rivers of blood" as Enoch Powell said, but of "streets of desolation", as whole areas of the UK gradually turn into economic black holes.

The Soviet Union was wasted on the Russians; the British would've done it better!

I remember reading Bill Bryson's "Notes From A Small Island" when I was younger. One of the excellent and pointed observations that Bryson made about the UK and the British is he thought that the British have a national psyche that fits in well (better than in other nations) to the psychology necessary for Communism to function.

In other words, he thought the British would've made a "better job" of Communism working properly, as intended. It was a pity, so Bryson thought, that Communism got its revolution in Russia - the British would've made sure it was done properly. Furthermore, behaviour that the British think of their national virtues are exactly the same mentality needed for Communism to flourish.

He mentions a few points to support his theory: that the British are fastidious in following the rules; looking to follow advice from "authority figures" (people in uniform, a tannoy announcement, etc.), is natural to them; the British sense of "making do" is second nature; "mustn't grumble";  the British are easily pleased by things other nations think of as ordinary (like a simple cup of tea sending them into raptures of joy); the modest culinary tradition of Britain lends itself to modest expectations of life in general; the British love of queueing; and so on.
These are Bryson's thoughts; I'd like to indulge a thought experiment and continue this line of thinking. Because I think Bryson was bang on the money in describing the British psyche: in many ways, the British are inadvertent Communist "thought-criminals". Even though Communism has never worked in any country it was implemented in, there is a sense that had the revolution ever come to Britain, we would have made a good job of it; because we're British.

Britain after WW2 was a quasi-Socialist state, until the '70s. The British love of the NHS is undiminished, even well into the 21st century; there is nostalgia for the "good old days" when things in life were more certain.

The British as a nation have many positive and negative characteristics. What is interesting is that those characteristics (either positive or negative) are also commonly found in people and conditions that are in Communism. You can check out British people's fifty most common characteristics here.

Bill Bryson said, jokingly, that the British dress like East Germans. What he means is that the average Briton has little or no dress sense. The British, on the whole, wear clothes for comfort rather than style. Although this has changed over the last twenty years, it's still more than true on a general level: rather than going to Camden Town, or the fashionable parts of cities, but go to a small provincial town, and you'll see people who are not in the slightest bothered about how they look; in some towns, "shell suits" are still being worn; plenty of people still wear shapeless things that belong in the bin. I rest my case.
Then there's the food, and British people's attitude towards it. British food can be very enjoyable and tasty, but ordinary British food is very bland for foreign palates. British people see food in a functional way; enjoyment is secondary. Conversely (but also consequently), because Britons have such a limited range of flavours in their food culture, anything slightly tasty can send them into raptures. This sense of small things making people disproportionately happy is what a Communist regime would kill for.

Then there's the British virtue of "making do". Any Communist government would love to have a population whose natural state is "making do": it makes their job easier if the population naturally makes a virtue of getting by through limited means.
Whenever I've been to "Argos", I've often thought "this is what Britain would be like under Communism". The catalogue shop, a mecca for those of limited financial means, is organised like a shop from government central planning: go to the catalogue and check if its in stock; go and take your ticket to queue for the cashier to pay; take your receipt to wait for your order; pick up your order from the counter. The whole operation is like something from Minsk in 1979; and yet, the people all accept this process with often stoic calm. It's a Communist government's dream.
Also, there are the "pound shops"and "charity shops" that proliferate in working-class suburbs and small towns, and exist in such numbers in no other country in the world (as well as car boot sales). This is another part of the British psyche - another symptom of the concept of "making do", the second-hand culture that would normally exist only in wartime or austerity, but exists as second nature in Britain. It's as though British people are "closet Communists" in denial. The British seem to have an odd fetish for making the most of the least; a national psyche built on frugality and self-denial.

This laudable behaviour, the sense of selflessness and consideration of others, is what makes the British so unique, as well as eccentric (compared to other nations). This puts more meat on the bones of Bryson's thesis. There are also the less laudable parts of British behaviour which people will recognise when I mention them, that fit in with people living under Communism.
The British love to moan, but hate complaining. What I mean is, they love a "good nag" to their relative, friend or neighbour, but hate public confrontations. They would rather eat tasteless, watery soup, and say "The soup's lovely!" when asked by the staff, rather than complain for poor service.
Apart from this habit (which you would normally find in people living under totalitarian regimes), the British also have a liking for nosiness. Called "twitching curtains" in the "50 most common characteristics" this is one of the more unpleasant parts of British behaviour. No wonder then, that Britain has the highest rate of surveillance in the world, if nosiness is considered the norm!
Then there's enjoying other people's misfortune (number 14 on the list). Does this mean that if Britain were a Communist state, it would encourage people to "do one over" on people they didn't like? Let's not get tempted!
There's also "stiff upper lip" - a euphemism for being unable to express our feelings; linked to that is when we do the opposite - not saying what we mean. Civil-service-speak is also our second nature, as well as being overly polite.

So you get the idea. Combining the positive and negative characteristics of the British, you get the feeling that Communism is therefore our natural psychological state, seeing as so much of it matches to what you would usually find in people living under a Communist regime.
Except that we're not living in a Communist regime. And why is that? Maybe "Communism" never grew to greater popular support because the British already have "Communism" living inside their heads much of the time - so why bother putting into practise what is second nature anyway?

If you want to experience what Britain would be like under Communism, you don't need to go very far to experience it. Go to the local charity shop; to "Argos"; watch DIY programmes on TV; above all, go to a traditional British seaside resort (preferably one that hasn't changed in the last twenty years; there are many of them, to experience restaurants where "customer service" and "tasty food" are unknown concepts); or, even better, the "Adelphi" Hotel in Liverpool - said to be the worst hotel in the UK, though it still has an official "four star" rating.

Communism exists in Britain everywhere; you just have to know what you're looking for.

London 2012 displays the best and worst of the UK.

With the Olympics a few days old now, it is already clear what kind of face Britain has shown to the rest of world. As might be expected, foreigners have been given, in the sphere of the Olympics, the psychology of Britain in a microcosm.

London as a choice of venue for the Olympics in the 21st century was always going to have its critics, from Londoners themselves, probably most of all. And Londoners have some fair reasons for complaint. But first, let's deal with the positives that people give for endorsing London as a "natural" choice as an Olympic host city.
Those in support of London 2012 talk about London as "the world's city": like New York, the other great Anglophone metropolis of the world, London is a multi-cultural melting-pot, and a demonstration of what good things can be achieved from globalisation. In other words, London and New York are, almost without doubt, the two world cities that most symbolise globalisation; and it seems no coincidence that they both happen to be the two greatest cities of the two Anglophone powers in the world. Globalisation, therefore, can be said to be best represented by the Anglo-Saxons. The British Empire's long legacy from both sides of the Atlantic is to have been the brainchild of what we know as globalisation today.

London as "the world's city" is the main reason given for those supporting London's host status. Other reasons include things like British people's passion for sport; British people's natural openness to foreigners (given the first positive earlier); London's ability to provide the logistical support and organisation, and the right venues and settings for an Olympic host city. These points may well all be true to an extent, but each  has a flip side, which I'll talk about in a moment.

As I said, Londoners were probably amongst the first sceptics/cynics towards the optimism created around London's hosting of the Olympics. The status as "the world's city" is probably without dispute, barring New York, which I think puts London/ New York on an equal (even attached) status as the "twin" Anglophone metropolises of globalisation.
Londoners' main concern about hosting the Olympics was logistical, and has been shown to be justified, as we have seen so far: the traffic caused by the Olympics has been crippling in some areas, as well as causing a huge strain on an ancient metro system. These were issues that were not properly resolved before the bid was put forward, and had not been dealt with in the seven years leading up to the event itself. All this was predicted, and little was really done about it, except to encourage Londoners to either go abroad on holiday for two weeks, go to another part of the UK, or go out into the city as little as possible. Not exactly an advert for "British organisation" when your plan is more-or-less to cross your fingers and hope that nothing goes wrong!

I talked about the "flip side" to some of the positive reasons given for London 2012.

One reason was Britain's sporting enthusiasm. Yes, British people are passionate about sport; but there's a big difference between being passionate and being good at it. The thing that sadly distinguishes Britain from many other "great" sporting countries is how less seriously we take sport as an undertaking. This comes from the top and passes down through the psychology of Brits themselves. Apart from the introduction of lottery funding (saving British Olympic sport from becoming a continual laughing stock; one reason why we only got one gold medal in Atlanta 1996, before the lottery funding seriously kicked in), which has masked the government's underfunding to an extent, Britain's government spends much less than other comparably-sized nations (let alone the likes of Australia!) on sport as an investment. If anything, with the selling-off of public playing fields and the like over the years, the government has been allowed to do this because of British people's psychology. This is because Britain as a nation seems disregarding of taking sport too seriously: a game of "gentlemen amateurs" is still the prevailing mentality amongst many people, which any other nation would think belongs in the 19th century. As a result, sport is not taken as a serious profession, unless you want to be a top-class footballer - and even then, the natives have to compete against "more glamorous" foreigners who Brits prefer to see play rather than their own.
So no wonder Britain is still lagging behind the rest of the world in Olympic achievement - much of the British success is made in spite of being British, not because of it.

These are the main issues before even the Olympics had started. But what we have seen since are stories that are even more revealing.
There was the G4S scandal, which showed how the country is really ran to the world: badly. An Olympic host city, whose government sold a massive security contract to a company who then completely failed to provide the required number of staff, causing the government to rely on soldiers who had been on their hard-earned holiday, as well as police who are already fully-stretched as it is by their own government. The government would have saved more money if they had just used the police to begin with (as the police chief explained the cost ratios), but the government were determined to sell off this role to a private company which ministers had shares in. This was a pathetic fiasco worthy of a banana republic.
Then there's is other issues surrounding the government's cowardice to the Olympic committee over ticketing and logistics. Because the Olympics is essentially a huge multinational-backed sporting event, the companies involved want as many tickets for venues as they can get. The government therefore allowed them masses of tickets, at the expense of ordinary sports fans. But because the companies themselves are not really interested in "sport", only what money they can get out of it, the result is half-empty venues because many seats are reserved for "absentee" sponsors who want the tickets, either just for the sake of it, or to sell-on at an inflated profit to someone desperate enough to pay the massively over-the-odds price. This is where internet ticketing companies like "Ticketmaster" and the like come into play.
And because the Brits can be such "jobsworths" when it comes to following the rules, no matter how insane or unfair, they refuse to sell the tickets to the general public, or let in people for free just to fill the venue for the sake of it, or allow non-sponsor approved products into the venues. This is another of the "flip sides" to British "organisation": when following the rules, we can act too much like sheep.
Then there's the issue of the "ZiL Lanes": again, the government's genuflection to Olympic corporate interests means that whole parts of London have become virtual no-go areas for cars, as well as other major routes being reduced by the "Olympic lanes"; and again, because some British people are so scared of breaking the rules they even don't use the "Olympic lanes" when they could (out of hours), they make a bad situation worse.
To add farce to the organisational fiasco, I read that some keys to Wembley stadium have gone missing. Let's hope that no-one planning anything unpleasant finds them...

To end on a positive note, the great highlight so far has been, ironically, the opening ceremony. The choice of Danny Boyle, famous director and a working-class Lancashire lad, was inspired, because his background would bring a more balanced and broader perspective to the event than someone from metropolitan London. What was even more extraordinary, was that no-one except for Boyle himself and those directly involved in the event, knew what the full schedule would involve. He had sole knowledge and control of the event; a blank cheque to display his talent and vision as he saw fit.
The event was at times jaw-dropping in its ambition and spectacle; more like watching a live motion picture, happening right before your eyes, than just a public event; you never knew what twist of the story to expect next - precisely the intention of Boyle, no doubt. Boyle managed to achieve in that hour-plus of energy and analogy, more than has been seen at any previous Olympic opening ceremony. It is doubtful that any other organiser would have been able to achieve the effect that Boyle did on Friday night in the stadium, or at any future Olympic opening event.
Boyle did indeed succeed in telling a story, live before our eyes, and in such as way that only someone as inventive and bold as he could have. This was Boyle displaying the very best of Britain to the world, in an hour-long spectacle that summarised it into a microcosm of nostalgia, energy, egalitarianism, inventiveness, and diversity.

Unemployment is no longer a lifestyle choice: it is economic necessity

Inflation can be a misleading thing. Officially, inflation in the UK is fairly low compared to other nations, at 2.5%. But that tells barely half the story.

Real wages have barely increased over the last few years. Meanwhile, food prices and fuel prices have increased sharply, to the extent that some are having to seriously ration their car use; those that, due to their word commitments, do not have the luxury of that choice, are squeezed even further. Haulage companies, for example, have seen their costs increase by double digits year on year, with those increased costs passed onto the retailers, and then onto us, the customers. That is just one example; a microcosm of the overall hidden inflation that is squeezing the average family to the bone. Then there are the increased costs of utilities, creating massive rises in monthly bills for the average family.

 Many young families cannot get mortgages from risk-paralysed banks unwilling to lend; the result of that has been a surge in demand for rental accommodation in recent years, resulting in significant rises to rents around the country, and a further eating away of the hard-earned wages of everyday families.

Apart from the miserly wage increases, there are then government policy changes, such as the changes to working family tax credits, that make thousands of families worse off. These things all add up to a situation where some families are literally better-off week-on-week by being on benefits.

The overall rate of unemployment is apparently coming down; but there are two significant caveats to that point, it be true or not.
It may well be that the overall rate is coming down. But much of that decrease is taken up by a significant increase in people accepting part-time employment. The East of England, where I live at the moment, it the centre of this story. In other words, an increasing section of working people cannot find real jobs; only part-time jobs. In the mid-1970s there was the three-day-week for a while; for many people now, a three-day-a-week career has become the new reality. How these people make ends meet on a part-time salary, I don't know. Many, for obvious reasons, would rather stay on benefits than accept a part-time job that cannot economically support them.
Which leads me to the second point: that while overall unemployment may be coming down, long-term unemployment keeps on going up. For these people, the longer they stay unemployed, the less employable they can become. In other words, even when the economy does eventually improve for real, there is still likely to remain a significantly higher rate of long-term unemployment than we have experienced before. It seems the "good old days" of high employment may well be a thing of the past.
And if costs keep on increasing (and there is no reason to expect that they wouldn't), and if the government remains determined to cut the size of the state (and, consequently, the economy) for the foreseeable future, then the government will continue to have a massive welfare bill on its hands, undoing all the efforts that they have made to reduce the government's deficit.

The situation has come to this: the government's obsession with cost-cutting has eroded the economy so much that economic logic has been turned on its head. Conservatives wanting to reduce the size of the state will be responsible for the largest increase in state welfare benefits for their unemployed population ever seen in British history. The UK, with its millions of part-time "three-day-a-week", may reduce a significant portion of the population to virtual financial slavery. Meanwhile those of the population unemployed and unemployable will make the UK a permanent "welfare state" not seen since the days of the Soviet Union.

Quite an achievement for a Conservative government...

How the UK became an anachronism

The UK (or to give it its full title, "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland") is in trouble.

As I recently wrote, and as it's often in the news, Scotland is planning to decide on its constitutional marriage arrangements with its southern neighbour. Either divorce (independence) a marriage of convenience (devo-max), or to retain the current awkward arrangements.

If Scotland did choose independence, the "UK" by definition, would no longer exist - because there would no longer be a "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"; just a Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It's Scotland that gives Britain the name "Great".
It seems extraordinary (ignorant as well as arrogant) that Westminster politicians have not realised what "The UK" is: a legal union of two states, England (with Wales and Northern Ireland), and Scotland. Westminster seems to think that it carry on as before if Scotland leaves the union, with Scotland as a "successor state", as the EU also appears to believe. But by that logic, there would be two successor states; England and Scotland, not Scotland and the "RUK". Westminster's logic of a legally-superior "RUK" is a fantasy land where Westminster can have its cake and eat it.
Westminster and the EU's logic is based on a false understanding of the special form of historic union between England and Scotland. Scotland would not be a "successor" state. England does not "own" Scotland, in the way that other states have "broken away" from their larger, former overlords. The example of South Sudan breaking away from Sudan is not appropriate; the nearest contemporary comparison would be the "Velvet divorce" of Czechoslovakia, but even that is not totally accurate, as their state was an artificial creation after the First World War, it was not a legal union of two states. This is what Westminster fails to remember, and the EU for that matter, too.

Since "The UK" joined the EU, surely all legal documents have applied equally to Scotland as well as England, as in any political union. But equally, Scotland leaving the union should not be the same as Scotland leaving the EU: as Scotland joined the EU in the same treaty as England, but in its own legal right as one half of "The UK". Everyone outside of Scotland seems for have forgotten that Scotland has a separate legal system. When Scotland joined with England in 1707 it deferred its parliament to Westminster, but retained independent legal apparatus. This is why I agree with Alex Salmond's explanation why Scotland should not have to "re-join" the EU as a "successor state". Either both Scotland and England are "successor states" to a defunct "UK", or neither. There could be no such thing as a "RUK" in legal terms, as there are only two legal "parts" to the union - England and Scotland. If one pulls out, it's all over: you have two brand new entities. The nearest legal comparison to such a situation would be the break-up of the Soviet Union, or the that of the former Yugoslavia. But the EU didn't have to deal with any of those countries being already member-states. And even those were unions of several or more states, not just two, like the UK. The ignorance of EU politicians on the unique legal nature of "the UK" is as surprising as it is insulting.
Catalonia's independence movement bears many similarities to Scotland's, and in more ways than one. For Spain itself is a "legal union", at least historically. For Spain before Franco was a Kingdom of two crowns: Castille (centred on Madrid) and Aragon (cented on Barcelona). So Catalans' interest in Scottish independence is also based on the historic similarities in the relationship between the union of England and Scotland, and the union of Castille and Aragon (now called Catalonia). The fear of Catalans copying the Scots is the reason why Madrid is so hostile towards Scottish independence, and why they are trying to make things awkward for Scotland's relationship with the EU.

That all said, the most likely outcome for Scotland is "devo-max", also called Home Rule, where Scotland remains part of the UK for appearance's sake, but only foreign policy and military arrangements come from London.

But even that option is worth talking about, and people would be wrong to downplay its significance. Because Home Rule for Scotland, which is almost certain to be the most likely outcome in 2014, means the end of the UK as we know it.

And what is this "UK" anyway? According to polls, more English people favour Scottish independence than the Scots themselves; it seems the British public as a whole are in favour of financial independence for its constituent parts (i.e. they raise their own taxes, rather than a lump sum decided in London). Even some Tory MPs favour this idea, as they see the financial sense of financial devolution.

By that definition, the "UK" as a concept no longer has the support of the majority of British people. The UK could soon turn into a big house party where all the guests agree to bring their own drinks. Forget the idea of "collective responsibility".

With the UK's status quo as good as dead by the end of 2014, the most likely arrangement would be some form of quasi-federal status of the different parts of the UK; after Scotland votes for Home Rule, no doubt the voices from Wales will become louder. Infact, the Welsh have already made noises on that issue, so expect Cardiff take start causing trouble in tandem with Edinburgh. At the current rate of frantic political debate, the Welsh assembly may well ask for a referendum on "devo-max" itself before very long.

And then there's England itself, by far the largest part of the UK. One reason the Welsh are not happy about Scottish independence is that it would make England seem even more dominant politically; the Welsh don't want to be left alone with the insufferable English and an intractable Ulster problem.
England itself has regional issues; cost of living disparities that cause much Northern resentment at a distant-seeming, aloof London elite, are just one example. So even the cry for regional devolution with England may well become impossible to ignore within a few years.

So, where does that leave "the UK"?
By 2015, as things stand, David Cameron in all likelyhood will be Prime Minister of an international power with much reduced central authority. His constitutional power north of the border, with a Home Rule Scotland, would be negligible. If Wales soon demands Home Rule within the UK, then the same would be said of Wales. Northern Ireland's parliament may well also ask for similar powers, leaving Cameron "Prime Minister of the UK", but in practice, effectively just Prime Minister of England, but responsible for the defence and foreign policy of all parts of this so-called "UK".
This will make Cameron, and future UK Prime Ministers, more like an "official" head of government, if not in reality on the ground. The UK will effectively be more federalised, and less centrally-powerful in some ways, than the EU is now.
There's a beautiful irony to that fate for "Euro-cynic" Cameron.

So within four years, the UK will, barring a miracle, become another type of unique constititional entity in the world. Already the UK was renowned in the world as being the only joint monarchy of two consensual states (and confusing foreigners endlessly about what "Great Britain" and "The UK" was, and why the country has four different national sporting teams).
And we'll make it even more confusing after 2014, whereby "The UK" will have a national government that doesn't even properly rule within its own borders, making "The UK" as a nation-state less powerful than the smaller nation-states within it.

There is a wonderful irony here. That the UK, that most conservative of countries, that cherished its establishment and its institutions only fifteen years ago, has been so transformed in itself that the country's own people seem to be indifferent to the country's constitutional existence.
What happened to the "British"? The Scots, Welsh and English have rediscovered their sense of national identity, in spite of the common cultural ties. The other irony here is that there are probably more people from ethnic minorities who would call themselves "British" (albeit with a hyphen) than the "natives".

In this way, it adds to my idea that Britain as a socio-cultural concept is as distinct from Europe as is Scandinavia; everyone knows what "Scandinavians" are, their culture and peculiarities, even though, as a whole, they are several different nations. The UK exists as a default option for those people of the British Isles who don't feel quite up to the idea of going our own ways.

As Alex Salmond said, if Scotland went it alone, England would lose a surly lodger and gain a good neighbour. That's also what the Scandinavians did a hundred years ago; in spite of the friendly jokes that Scandinavians have between themselves (their version of the "Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman" jokes), they get on well as seperate nations.

In that sense, borders hardly matter at all if the cultural ties are still strong, as they are between the UK and Ireland. It looks like the UK will live on for a while yet, but any new British "marriage of convenience" will be no more than that: a pact between financially independent nations to pretend, for the sake of convenience, to be a single country, with a symbolic head of state, and a symbolic head of government.

And that seems a very "British" way of dealing with something. Funny.

English liberals should also be worried about Scottish independence

It always pays to get other perspectives in an argument. When there were the riots back in August, some of the best coverage was from the "Daily Telegraph"; I may not have agreed with many of their opinions, but it was useful to know things from the other side of the coin.

With the Scottish referendum issue now in the news, it's easy to think that all politics centres around Westminster; that's certainly true when compared to the rest of England. I guess that most English people are pretty oblivious to Scottish concerns; that's understandable, when Scotland feels so inconsequential to the overall fate of the UK.
That may be so, but it also pays for British politicians in Westminster to actually pay attention to what Scottish people actually think, rather than just repeating the same mantra day in, day out, that England and Scotland have a "unique history together", and all that.

David Cameron and the rest of Westminster would do well to occasionally read "The Scotsman" newspaper, Scotland's version of "The Times". That way they might better understand what Scots actually think about London rule, and where the Scots see themselves. I recently read "The Scotsman" myself, and it's a real eye-opener.

For this reason, here's a plausible scenario that could lead to Scottish independence by default.

The UK government has declared that any referendum on independence should be only a "in-or-out" decision and of a time of London's choosing; they say that Salmond is using the referendum issue for his own political purposes, and is nothing more than a trickster; furthermore, from a legal point of view, only Westminster has the right to grant legally-binding referendums, so Salmond's unilateral referendum would be challenged in the Supreme Court.

Now, all this may well be true, but it cuts little ice in Scotland. Salmond points out, correctly, that the SNP had long ago said it would hold a referendum in the second half of this parliament, so they're merely sticking to the timetable they promised some years ago. And the Scottish people know this too. Furthermore, Salmond points out although the legal decision on the referendum may lie with London, this is essentially a Scottish question of sovereignty, not an English one. Scotland chose to join with England of her own free will; any right-minded person would see that they should have the right to leave of their own free will. Anything else would make England seem as an imperial power keen to cling on to one of its last remaining colonies (and give even more ammunition to Salmond).

Most Scots do not want independence; this is clear for now. However, the majority are in favour of further powers to Scotland short of independence. The UK government's decision to block any option to choose for Scots' preferred option of "Devo-max" is therefore unbelievably short-sighted. Not only that, but by denying Scots the powers they wish for, they may well, perversely, be more likely to support outright independence just out of spite.

As things stand, Salmond has declared he will plan for a referendum for 2014 anyway, regardless of Westminster's legal objections, and one with an independence and "devo-max" option. This kind of petty tit-for-tat over the legal smallprint of the referendum from Westminster only benefits Salmond; it's the UK government who look petty, not the SNP.
So the most likely result as things stand is an "illegal" unilateral referendum by the Scottish government in 2014 that with either result in a demand for outright independence, or something not far short of it.
Then the legal battle would commence between the UK and Scottish government in the Supreme Court, which would add only more to the rancour between Edinburgh and London, leaving the two parallel governments god knows where. And again, this would only benefit Salmond.
Alternatively, in the likely 2014 vote, Salmond may well have already easily persuaded Scots that the only way to prevent this kind of long and absurd legal battle in the Supreme Court is to vote for outright independence, therefore giving him the moral authority to demand talks with the UK government and be done with it. And this scenario is not exactly unlikely, as I said before: given the option of fighting a ridiculous legal battle for more Scottish sovereignty within the UK over a seemingly more straightforward independence, many Scots may well prefer the latter. Many sane people would, given the options.

So, let's say that it's now the summer of 2016; one year after a UK general election, and six months since Scottish independence.
Within the rest of the UK, the immediate political beneficiaries would be the Conservatives, as they have traditionally had a firm majority of the English seats over Labour. In fact, A UK without Scotland may well lock Labour from power almost permanently, as they usually could rely on their dominance in Scotland to offset any lack of support in England. In that sense, Labour have been a more "British" party than the Conservatives; since the Second World War, the Conservatives have lost more and more support outside of England, leaving them an almost entirely English party.

So the legacy that a vote for Scottish independence would create is also to bring out effectively the death-knell to the Labour party; it's support would be broken up across different countries, and Scotland's independence would only add further to calls for Welsh independence, Labour's other stronghold.
And where would that leave the English left-wing? Stuck in a country dominated by Tories, with England as a one-party-dominant state. The best thing for English liberals to do in this circumstance would be to emigrate to Scotland. Any Conservative Prime Minister would in this political climate be under even more pressure to show more "bulldog spirit" to Europe, with people more likely to vote "yes" on exiting the EU. And then we'd be in very interesting territory.

What's more, everything I've just talked about is not a flight of fancy; as I've explained, this is a very real possibility, as things stand. Just don't say I didn't warn you.