Inequality, injustice, social divisions and Brexit: an expression of Nihilistic rage?

Perhaps one of the cruelest forms of psychological torture is to be educated but poor, living within an unequal and unjust society. Trapped inside a body that instinctively craves for more, requiring intellectual and creative advancement, but is held back by the invisible walls of society, such a person can easily become a burning mass of resentment. Black people know all about this in America, and the historical source of their resentment is well-known.

In England, the historical source of resentment is the injustices carved into the class system. The pride in the British (and in particular, the English) flag that some of the white working class there have feels especially ironic, given that the flag represents the same system of injustice that has existed there for a thousand years. The education system is designed to entrench social divisions within society, with the only way to get an education that is worthy of the name meaning you have to pay for it.

Born into the wrong background, and your intellect is simply wasted; this is the most basic meaning of “injustice”: to have something useful to offer society, but to have your productivity and intellect deliberately repressed by the barriers of the social system. Meanwhile, those whose intellect is objectively inferior and whose nature is less productive, are indulged by a system that rewards the fate of their wealthier parentage; this is the most basic meaning of social immorality and corruption, where the poverty of the poor is exploited by those who fear losing the injustices that keep them in their place. 

“Know Your Place”

Libertarians argue that such injustices would, over time, equal out under a free market; that intellect would naturally balance against any inequalities in the system. But this can only be true in a system where there is equal opportunity; where the rich have an equal opportunity to fail as the poor have to succeed. There is no such system in place in America, let alone in England.

In England, the social system is designed to instill a sense of “knowing your place”; a Westernized and more genteel version of India’s caste system. The historical injustices and prejudices within society were one reason people settled in America in the first place, it should be remembered, and the “American dream” still exists there in people’s hearts regardless of the harsher reality. In England, no-one really pretends that such a “dream” ever existed; only the myths that were projected by its ruling elite, with Churchill being among its most famous polemicists. Even during the days of Empire, the best way for people born there to thrive was to leave Britain itself and seek out a life in one of the overseas “colonies”.

This explains why some people still have nostalgia for the Empire, and see Brexit through the same revisionist lens. The “Empire” was seen as a success because people had somewhere else than Britain where they could make a stab at being successful. This explains why the Scots were among the most resourceful of pioneers and colonists; given the dearth of opportunity (and the ingrained prejudice) at home, they sought a more just chance at success overseas.

So when the empire began to fall apart after the Second World War, and the “homeland” itself became a destination for the “colonials”, the irony (and sense of injustice) was not long in being felt by the “natives”. That same sense of bitter injustice was the root of the racism that greeted those who came from overseas to settle in Britain; not a country with streets paved in gold, but a country with inhabitants that brooded in quiet resentment. Wind the clock on several decades, and that same brooding resentment is felt in many parts of the country; the source of it is the historical injustices mentioned at the very start that were never put right.

Deaths of Despair  

     

Industrialisation led to parts of Britain that had never known prosperity and productivity becoming more prosperous and productive than some towns closer to the capital itself. Added on with the effect of empire and a captive (and advantageous) overseas market, in spite of the still-entrenched inequality, the whole of the country seemed to be thriving.

After the Second World War, the trend that had led to some parts of the country losing their primary purpose of existence began to accelerate. Still trapped in the embrace of a fundamentally unjust social system, post-industrial Britain lacked the dynamism to find a sustainable economic model. Instead, the ruling elite turned to Libertarian morality.

The British economy is, in fact, slowly dying. Britain lacks a sustainable economic model for the 21st century. Creating an economic structure that relies almost entirely on collating power and wealth within the capital, it allows the rest of the country to atrophy; returning Britain to the same structural inequalities that existed prior to Industrialisation. Due to the corrupt injustices of its social structure, those in power lack the intellect to deal with the issues rationally, instead only seeing the issue through the lens of protecting their own interests. They would rather ignore the rest of the country’s suffering and resentment – thus not dealing with the issue rationally – and deal with the consequences of that resentment as and when necessary. This is the archetype of reactionary thinking.

The result of that reactionary thinking has seen towns and cities across the country to slip into a kind of slow-motion social breakdown. These are the “deaths of despair” – of suicide or through the self-abuse of poor diet, over-drinking or drugs – that have seen a growth over the last few decades, and a surge in recent years. These are places that literally have no future; their economy has ceased to have an identifiable function, and the government doesn’t care enough (or lacks the intellect) to do anything about it.

In this sense, the future of post-industrial Britain may well follow the (nihilistic) prediction that the Conservative government made forty years ago: there are places in the country that will simply be allowed to wither and die. Such a sociopathic level of indifference is a damning indictment of Britain’s social structure, and there is a valid question to ask whether this structure’s own future is finite as well. How long will it be before the corruption at the top becomes so entrenched and so reactionary that it either eventually over-reaches or runs out of steam entirely?

Nihilistic Rage

There is a narrative (which has some merits) that the Brexit vote was the result of years of accumulated social frustration at the inequalities that had been allowed to fester within Britain, and England in particular. This is an over-simplification, as the vote would not have been possible without an at least equal sense of spoiled entitlement from the Middle classes of England’s rural heart also choosing to believe in a form of nostalgic revivalism, where a mythical cultural homogeneity could be restored. A more accurate representation would be to see the Brexit vote as reflecting both of these contradictory and opposing ideas;such contradictions only being possible in such an unequal society at Britain.

This social inequality explains the attraction of Brexit to those who feel they have no future. As they were told migration and the EU were responsible for their sense of resentment and despair, they turn to the politics of anger as the only way left that explains how they feel, regardless of who is peddling the message and what agenda might lie behind it. In this way, the "politics of anger" is also a manifestation of the nihilistic sense of having no future. If you have no future, you can easily become indifferent to what happens to everyone else now; as far as those people are concerned, they might well be happy to metaphorically let it all go to hell, if it would allow them at least a moment of grim satisfaction at seeing everyone else brought down to their level. These people seem to have become so nihilistic, they don't even care about their own future well-being: they simply want to have a single moment of feeling in control, even if all they want to do is press the self-destruct button.

This explains why the surge towards Nigel Farage's "Brexit Party" is at its most sudden and most incomprehensible in the parts of the country that would be the worst hit by the kind of "no deal" Brexit he advocates: the deprived post-industrial areas of Britain where there is already little in the way of a sustainable local economy. These areas are simply past caring; when you've already hit what feels like rock-bottom, outsiders telling you things will be terrible just sound as though they lack any ability to see things from your point of view. 

It is this psychological separation that is another manifestation of Britain's social divisions; parts of the country that economically and socially feels as though they are on a different plane of existence, as though "the centre" simply doesn't even know they exist.

This is how Britain has become such an object of morbid fascination to outsiders; hypnotized by the spectacle of self-destructive madness that is taking control of events: the all-consuming "black hole" that everyone seems to be dragged into.

Britain and racism: latent prejudice, the British Empire and the "Brexit" effect

Is Britain a racist country?

On the surface, Britain appears to be one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to race relations. But, like how Brexit has had the effect on exposing Britain's dirty laundry for all the world to see, the image that Britain projects to the outside world (and the way it sees itself) is often very different from the reality. You only have to look at the evidence.

Politics in the UK has become consumed with latent (and also overt) prejudice. Britain's governing Conservative Party has become consumed with Islamophobia, where it is widespread at the grassroots level and (used more selectively) at government level. Then there is the "Europhobia" that has become more endemic since the EU referendum; a paranoia that is mainly anti-German in its sentiment and stems from - of course - "the war", where it seems some politicians' prejudice is about not forgiving Germany for killing their fathers.
At the same time, even the party of the opposition has its own "problem" with Anti-Semitism.

More generally, there is evidence of overt and covert racism and prejudice in wider society. There is "unashamed" prejudice shown by the lower end of society, and there is more covert racism within the higher echelons of society. In the latter case, it is a form of prejudice that "dare not speak its name", but everyone understands its real origin. 

A survey not long ago discovered that when it comes to employment, BAME applicants in the job market have almost as much chance of getting rejected for a job on the basis of racist stereotyping now as they did fifty years ago. Black people with "funny names", for instance, have to contend with the latent prejudice of their white employers. It seems that far too many managers are still in the "David Brent" mould. In other words, while things might seem to have improved a lot on the surface, underlying prejudice is not hard to uncover.


"This sceptred isle"

The roots of British identity cannot escape from the fact that Britain is an "island nation".

An uncomfortable parallel is found in Japan: a "island nation" that, after the Wall Street Crash, transformed its identity into that of being a militarist power where the native population were led to believe they were innately superior and that, by contrast, people in China were "dogs".
Britain has historically avoided the descent into racist nationalism that has overtaken many other countries at one point or another in their history, but there are uncomfortable signs now that this descent into the moral abyss is close to hand.
Germany and Japan are the historical examples that come to mind most easily, for obvious reasons. Both were countries that became imperial powers fairly late in the game, and this may have created an innate insecurity in the pathology of their rulers. In this way, the hateful racism that made both these nations the worst villains in the Second World War may have also stemmed from an innate insecurity.

Being one of the first empires built on sea power, Britain's evolution as an empire came about through a combination of opportunism, luck and ingenuity. Seen from the other side, this "opportunism and ingenuity" may simply be called a form of dastardly cunning, for no empire came to thrive on good manners alone. But the ability of Britain's white population today to see themselves as somehow "different" is built on the belief that the British Empire was, if anything, a service to mankind and the world as a whole, rather than the exploitative empire that it was.
The racism that still exists in Britain today stems from the belief that British people are innately "better", which invariably leads to the belief that the empire wasn't "colonizing" but "educating" foreign territories. This then explains why so many people believe that the loss of the empire was somehow an injustice to the country. How could a "proud" nation allow its empire to disappear? How could this "sceptred isle" allow itself to be overrun with "colonials"?

It is this innate prejudice that feeds the politics of race hatred, and explains why a significant proportion of the native white population bear such resentment to foreigners. The white working class have had their ignorance and prejudice stoked for decades by a tabloid media that uses hate as a weapon of misdirection. Xenophobia has been used by the tabloid media in Britain to keep the white working class in their place; ignorant and angry. As long as they were angry at someone else (such as "Europe" or "asylum seekers"), they weren't angry at the real cause of their problems: the ever-more-rapacious ruling class.

It takes a great deal of ignorance to believe that the British Empire was a paragon of virtue, but it is astonishing how many people in Britain today (and they are usually white) that still hold this belief as inviolate. The belief that the British Empire was ultimately benevolent in character still permeates through the thinking of the native white population of Britain today. Apart from the white working class holding on to this idea as an article of faith, it also Britain's (white) ruling class that also believe this without question.

This is also linked to the reason why so many people hold Churchill as the greatest Briton in history, both rich and poor.
Not just by today's standards, but even by the standards of his day, Winston Churchill can fairly be called a white supremacist. Race relations have of course moved on considerably since Churchill's day, but even people then considered him a racist.
Churchill's view of the British Empire was that Britain was populated by people who were innately superior, and this was how he explained why Britain ruled over a quarter of the world's population. In that sense, to borrow Hitler's infamous phrase, Britons could well be seen as the "master race".
Churchill was famous for his disregard for the Indian population (Hindus in particular), and he saw Britain's rule over the Indian subcontinent as a moral right; a "moral right" due to the British Empire's superior intellectual, military and organisational might, no doubt.

In this sense, Churchill's view of the British Empire's rule over its colonies was justified through its innate superiority, and had nothing at all to do with the exploitative manner of its administration. The viewpoint Churchill had of the empire (and its self-justification) was transmitted throughout the empire's ruling class, such as through the boarding school system. 
By being able to separate and indoctrinate boys (and girls) for years in the moral teachings of the "British philosophy", this instilled in them an innate prejudice in favour of British superiority and the innate inferiority of the colonial populations. In this way, at its kindest, it educated Britain's ruling class to see the colonial populations as "children" in need of guidance; while at its harshest, saw the empire's colonial populations as people bred only for natural servitude, like slaves. If the British Empire's non-white subjects had to be educated, it was only for the wider benefit of the empire.

This is why such deep-rooted prejudice takes generations to remove, and explains why much of the progress that has been made since the end of empire has been superficial: the ugly prejudice still prevalent within the white working class, and the elitist snobbery within the white ruling class, are evidence of that.


"Take Our Country Back"

The toxic legacy of this prejudice from the days of empire has now led to much of Britain's white population today feeling that they are still - in an unmentionable way - the "master race".

This quietly-held sense of superiority, of a population that has somehow been held back from greatness by the actions of foreign powers (the EU) and of a proud homeland "taken over" by foreigners, is the prejudice that runs through Brexit.
The mythology of British exceptionalism has many facets, but the narrative is well-known. As the empire that "won" the war, the fact that the empire was lost in the peace seems to have left an abiding sense of betrayal; many of Britain's white population have been unable to come to terms with being taught to see themselves as superior, but being unable to have anything to materially show for it.
Without an empire, and now seen as just another European country, how can these people demonstrate their "superiority"? The answer was offered in 2016.

And now we are at the point where racism has become unashamed and blatant among the more raucous segments of the population, against both those of BAME heritage and European stock. Fueled by the xenophobic language in the tabloid media, the government itself seems to have been taken in by the nativist atmosphere after the referendum: the "hostile environment" can now in theory affect almost anyone that isn't British, and to almost any British person who isn't white.

This is how Britain (and more exactly, England) has become a kind of social laboratory of white-power experimentation in the Western world. Racial prejudice, while still "officially" sanctioned, has become implicitly acceptable, thanks to Brexit and thanks to the "hostile environment".

"The Hunger Games", and how Britain is ran like an empire

The trilogy "The Hunger Games" tells the story, seen though teenage perspective, of how an exploitative empire operates.
The fictional world of "The Hunger Games" is based in the land of Panem: an essentially "imperial" structure where the various districts all function for the purpose of providing for the "capitol", whose own inhabitants largely live dissolute lives that are disconnected from the other districts, and whose understanding of life in the districts is similarly disconnected. It is a deeply-hierarchical and centralized structure, where even the communications between, and thus understanding of, one district to the next is limited. In this way, the capitol controls Panem through a combination of media control, fear and manipulation.

The story at its heart is a classic description of how tyrannical empires work, which is what makes it a universal tale. Its historical inspiration stems from Rome, but there are deliberately-unsettling parallels with some aspects of modern life in America, which is what makes the story also a warning.

The disconnect between the "Beltway" and the rest of America is a common complaint, but the parallels between the exploitative description of life in "Panem" and life in a real-world "empire" come closer to the mark if we look at a different example across the water from America: life in the UK.


Exploiting the "districts" to indulge the capital

While there are certainly valid complaints about how too much power is held inside the "Beltway", the USA is still one of the most highly decentralized administrations in the developed world, where the states have considerable legal powers, separate from the centre. By contrast, Britain (and England in particular), remains one of the most highly-centralized administrations in the developed world.

At a fundamental level, Whitehall and Westminster are loathe to cede power, jealously guarding it within their claws. Simply, they do not trust local government.
Trained to believe in their own infallibility and the innate incompetence (and malevolence) of those outside of the centre, they have only given out a few crumbs of autonomy to the devolved administrations when absolutely necessary, to maintain the fiction of accountability. The centre's instinct is to horde power relentlessly, jealously guarding information (as it doesn't trust the motives of "outsiders"), with decision-making done in secret. There is little real sense of government being in service of "the people", beyond how government needs the people to be compliant and/or ignorant.

Apart from the deeply-hierarchical administrative structure, the wider structure of the economy is aligned primarily with the interests of the capital in mind. Money raised by the government in taxes is disproportionately spent on the inhabitants of the capital and the neighbouring regions (i.e. London and the South-east), with little going on public works in other parts of the country by contrast. This is then "justified" by to the disproportionate amount of wealth the capital generates, in spite of the fact that this vicious circle of wealth-hoarding only makes the inequalities between the capital and the other regions all the starker. This is what then creates the impression of a capital inhabited by people socially and economically disconnected from the rest of the country, whose interests are simply in the exploitation of everyone else.

As in "Panem", the UK's resources are also designed with the needs of the capital in mind, with an economic model that makes the capital richer and richer while slowly starving the regions of both manpower and resources. This economic model also attracts people to the capital because life in the regions for some has become intolerable, adding yet more to the dissonance between the "rulers" and the "ruled".
In this way, the UK has become one of the most unequal societies in Europe.

The question is:why? 


Public schools and "indoctrination" - educating a different class

Britain is still a society where its ruling class (i.e. its top percentile) send its children away from their parents for the large part of their formative years for the purpose of "education". In this very specific way, it marks Britain's (and particularly, England's) ruling class as being self-segregating from the rest of society, using boarding schools as a way to "educate" their offspring in an closed environment through their formative years; away from the opposite sex, away from their family, and away from the rest of society.
It is important to emphasize how much the boarding school system is designed to entrench the cultural separation of a "ruling class" from the wider population. While those who have been part of the system will extol its virtues ("never did me any harm"), it is important to emphasize how this attitude is simply the product of long-term indoctrination - in other words, a form of psychological conditioning and "normalizing".

The "establishment" is a product of the boarding school, and cannot be understood without recognizing this essential ingredient. Until relatively recently, it was debatable whether boarding schools actually gave any meaningful education to its boarders at all. Boarding school was much more about "moral" education than anything else; in other words, about turning children into adults. This was largely done through the "school of hard knocks" approach, and it seems that parents were more likely than not complicit in understanding this reality. They more often than not put it to the back of their minds and saw the boarding school experience as just "one of those things". Then again, there were also some wealthy parents who were simply glad to have their children out of the way for a few years.

One generation's trauma and indoctrination got passed on to the next as a matter of simple tradition, with what we would now call psychological "conditioning" the name of the game. In this way, any memories of psychological and physical abuse are repressed as "character-building"; indeed, building characters that will ideally have hearts of stone.

The wider indoctrination at boarding school was to instill an innate sense of superiority: that the boarding children were there because they were superior, the elite. This was necessary in order to maintain the belief that the "establishment" was in a position of power because it was also necessary; without it, it was implied, Britain would face collapse. This attitude is still ingrained in those in positions of power today.
That superiority is passed on in different ways: such as seeing British education as the best; seeing British traditions as the best ("fair play" etc. etc.); and instilling a general self-confidence that is evident whenever speaking to someone who is a product of the system - the ruling class often excel at sounding as they know exactly what they're talking about even when they haven't got the faintest clue in reality. That breezy self-confidence is then reinforced by those lower in the social order having the in-built assumption that their social superiors must be right in what they're saying to have such self-confidence.

On such ingrained attitudes of deference to the ruling class, an empire is built. The mystique of deference is essential to maintain the illusion.
To prevent the ruling class from being in danger, thus the illusion is fed to the rest of society that their social superiors are more intelligent, more competent and more morally-upright people, while the reality is often the exact opposite. The First World War was the first real evidence of this, and the establishment had to adapt to survive.

On the flip side of this implicit superiority, is fed an innate distrust and arrogance towards those lower down in the social order. If the children at boarding schools are there because they are special, it follows that those who are less fortunate (and less educated) are there through their own failings. This is the essential morality of inequality. Those at the top are there by their own individual merit; those at the bottom are there through their individual failings.
Those less fortunate are undeserving of pity because the moral code instilled in them at boarding school is about "stiff upper lip" and removing sentimentality. This explains such behaviour as burning a fifty-pound note in front of a beggar. Such twisted morals were thought necessary to create a cohort that would take over the reins of power, seamlessly passed on from one generation to the next without any thought to changing the system.

As we can see, the boarding school system is the primary method of indoctrinating a ruling class to perpetuate the established system of inequality.


Destroying hope - neutering the threat through Thatcherism

Apart from a highly-centralized, exploitative system and an indoctrinated ruling class, there are other methods used to ensure that the "lower orders" know their place.
The onset of industrialization created a skilled working class, necessary for the operation of complex machinery. The danger that this led to was that an educated working class might also become more demanding. This became increasingly apparent throughout the 20th century, with strikes becoming more and more frequent as workers demanded a more equitable share in the cake.

The mythology of the "winter of discontent" created a bugbear that the "establishment" could use to reshape society into a form more in fitting to their wishes.
The "establishment" envisaged a society where the capital grew rich not from the output of factories, but from the manipulation of money. Done right, this would benefit the "establishment" enormously; meanwhile, the country's workforce could be restructured to benefit the capital better.

Workers' rights were sharply curtailed. The industries that provided the skilled and reliable work for those that lived in some regions were destroyed. As a result, many towns across those regions lost their primary source of employment, with the only other work on offer being unreliable, low-skilled and low-paid. This has remained the situation ever since.
But those populations did not revolt against the centre. The thing that empires fear most is "hope", and the destruction of industries in those regions effectively killed their hope and self-respect, leaving in its place only a sense of defeat and self-loathing. Those "defeated" populations turned in on themselves, falling back on the dark solaces of alcohol and drugs, turning to crime and violence against each other.
This was how the "establishment" created an underclass and another scapegoat.


Divide and rule - demonizing the poor

After removing the self-respect that skilled employment offered those formerly-industrialized regions, the resulting underclass was the ideal scapegoat in the new "individualistic" morality that the "establishment" were keen to engender.
After being the threat to the "establishment" when they had self-respect, as a defeated underclass, their self-loathing and violence was seen as the ultimate moral evil. After removing their industries, they were further divided by the Thatcher government selling off vast tracts of social housing to those who could afford it. This left "social housing" as the preserve of the dregs of society, creating the implicit connection of social housing with moral failure.

Manipulation from the centre had thus created a sense that the de-industrialized regions, as places of the "feckless poor" were places where nothing good was to be expected; a self-perpetuating myth was created by the centre that the regions were thus incompetent and that only the centre, the capital, was where ideas could come from, where growth came from.
Thus we also had, over the last forty years, a "brain drain" as well as an economic hollowing-out of the regions. Those born in the regions were encouraged to leave and pursue life in the capital as the place where everything happened; thus the formerly troublesome regions became the exploited "slaves" to the capital, in one form or another. Those born into that background had become indoctrinated into associating it with failure, and the capital with success. Exactly as "the establishment" intended.


Creating a false idol - a fake "opposition"

But even people with no hope can only go so long before they look for something else.

As we have seen, the manipulation of the working class began in earnest during the Thatcher era with the reorienting of morality against the idea of social housing and collective workers' rights, in favour of a more individualistic outlook.
This manipulation towards an individualistic morality through the media in the 1980s also coincided with the rising Euroscepticism in the press. The anti-European mood was explained through the same individualist lens; against European regulations that were "stifling" British business.

While the capital grew rich from restructuring the economy in its favour, those regions that remained without any stable industries after the capital's "reforms" simply fell further behind. By the time the financial crisis hit ten years ago, those deprived regions were looking for a scapegoat of their own for their troubles.
 As the media had manipulated them into believing that it was somehow the EU's fault that their industries had collapsed thirty years ago and that European migrants were taking their jobs, it suited "the establishment" to use the EU scapegoat for the further inequalities that the centre was inflicting on the rest of the country. Instead of blaming "austerity", it was better that they blame the EU.

In this way, the "hope" that the long-defeated underclass had after decades of economic suffering, was that leaving the EU would somehow make their lives better. The fact that the people spreading this narrative were figures of selfsame exploitative "establishment" themselves was something that the media helpfully glossed over.
The hideous irony over "Brexit" is that during the referendum "the establishment" was in reality acting as both government and opposition. The winning side, while painting themselves as "insurgents", were in reality "establishment" extremists; far worse than even the relative "moderates" who were in government at the time. The "establishment" extremists were exploiting the sense of "hope" that had been kindled from a manipulative media; that manufactured "hope" they would then be able to crush when the time was right.

In the empire of the establishment's creation, they would even have a monopoly on "hope" itself.

The "Brexit" vision that won over many in the deprived regions is one that would create yet more inequality, cement the domination of the capital over the country yet further, with an agenda that seeks to enrich the voracious hierarchy on the backs of others' poverty.
The cruelest form of "hope" is the one that delivers the precise opposite.

Broken Britain: Brexit as a "Coup De Grace"?

The author has written before about how many of those in favour of "Hard Brexit" see it in more esoteric, transformative terms. Such thinking is inherently dangerous, and it is even more alarming that some in high office actually believe in this form of delusional grandiosity. The people who are in charge of the direction and strategy of the government's Brexit plan are literally off with the fairies. Having a "vision" is one thing; but these people seem to be having "visions" of Britain that make you question their rationalism. This is what is truly terrifying about where the country is heading: it seems to led by people who are in the grip of "mania".

There are those in government who see Brexit as an opportunity to transform the nation into a vision of an orgiastic, free market paradise. Then there are those who, more fatalistically, see Brexit as the inevitable culmination of Britain's intellectual and moral decline; this narrative, its advocates argue, has been going on since the end of the British Empire, brought on by the Second World War, with Britain's entry into the "European Project" simply a sign of the country's national demise. In this narrative, Brexit is the "death blow" to the long decline, leaving a clean slate to start afresh.
This second viewpoint, held in certain "Brexiteer"circles, is controversial as its thinking mirrors much of the fatalism that can be found in the "Alt-Right" and classic Fascist thought (such as by Julius Evola).

As is common with extremist thought, the grain of truth that is contained in their thinking is twisted out of shape into something monstrous. Is it true that there are things wrong with Britain? Of course. Has there been an intellectual and moral decline since decades ago? When you look at the evidence of how the government, economy and its infrastructure has been ran in recent years, it seems self-evident. The political class at the highest level seems morally-absent of responsibility for their own actions and towards the lives of others. This explains how things like Grenfell can happen, the child abuse scandal, food banks, rampant homelessness, the "hostile environment", the collapsing public sector, and so on. The managerial class that run the day-to-day affairs of the economy are only interested in making a quick buck, with no thought towards others or the long-term future. This explains the Carillion scandal, Zero-hours contracts, the country's appallingly-inefficient transport network, and so on.
Put in these terms, it's easy to see how some people can be hoodwinked by extremist thought. Britain seems to be a country in terminal decline, so the thinking goes, and Brexit as a "coup de grace" would be one method of achieving real change.

Except that there are plenty of other methods of effecting "real change" that don't involve leaving the EU.
Britain's terminal slow decline has been self-inflicted, by the actions of a short-sighted, self-serving elite. The political system has atrophied, with the sight of its MPs still doggedly at work in a parliament building unfit (and legally unsafe) for purpose epitomizing the problem. Apart from the 2015 election, the electoral system has delivered hung parliaments since the financial crisis, and looks set to do so for the foreseeable future. The outcome of this could only ever be deadlock in the political system, with nothing being decided, and nothing being done about Britain's worsening and lengthening list of problems. Theresa May and her government symbolize this perfectly.
If the referendum hadn't happened, or the vote had gone the other way, it's easy to see that Britain's problems would have remained unresolved and allowed to fester as they still are now. "Brexiteers" would still be a pressure group on the government, poisoning Britain's relations with the EU because it made good short-term political sense at home. The current high street malaise that is afflicting swathes of Britain's retail sector is not really a result of Brexit, but down to structural failings in the market. These would have happened regardless. Nobody in government has an answer to this innate weakness in the nation's economic model; all that is needed to knock down Britain's lethargic economy is a stiff breeze. "Brexit", however, is an oncoming hurricane.

In this sense, since the financial crisis, Britain has had a zombie economy and a zombie political system; alive, but not really living. The moral and intellectual decline mentioned earlier has come about through a system that creates a class of people who superficially have the skills to administer, but without the intellectual dexterity or moral centre to provide real leadership. Because the system we're talking about is "the establishment", being of the right background, supporting orthodoxy, displaying loyalty and defending the system from outsiders are the traits that accelerate advancement. This is a corrupt, insular culture incapable of seeing outside its own narrow interests. Anything that challenges its position, such as a different way of doing things, must be suppressed.
Returning to the British Empire, it could be argued that if "Brexit" is seen as the "coup de grace" of modern Britain, then the Second World War was the "coup de grace" of the British Empire. In a sense, the real spiritual end of the British Empire was marked by the First World War, with Britain and France the only imperial powers to have really made amoral colonial gains out of it. Those "gains" were mainly in the Middle East at the expense of the Ottomans, and proved to be fleeting; poisoned chalices that proved that imperial greed had superseded strategic sense. It quickly became clear they were not worth having, and by the time of the Second World War, it was clear to their American allies that those empires were morally bankrupt as well as financially broke.

The recurring vice here is short-termism. Opportunistic greed was what saw Britain and France extend their colonial reach into the Middle East, and was a sign that Britain's leaders lacked the ability to see beyond the end of their nose. The same short-termism has been true of Britain's leaders since then, with the occasional exception (fighting against the tide). Churchill's imperialism was emotional and irrational. Britain's empire died because it was run badly, with little long-term strategy. Britain's economy has been run the same way ever since, with it becoming increasingly inefficient and unproductive. Forty years ago, factories were closing and shedding jobs because there was no strategic direction from the top; there an inability to think dynamically. The answer that came along was "neoliberalism", and the restructuring of the economy away from manufacturing and towards services. As we see now, that was only a short-term fix, shown up to be a charade by the financial crisis. And the economy was only held up after the financial crisis by creating a "zombie" economy, that was kept alive but incapable of real growth.

This is what is meant by "Broken Britain": a country that is structurally knackered, held together by a political class that is intellectually incapable of dealing with real challenges. Worse, in Theresa May, the sclerotic political establishment is led by someone who is literally only interested in holding power for herself and the interests of her party. It is a morally bankrupt government, presiding over a country that is slowly falling to bits.
This inherent weakness in both the economy and the political structure of Britain - where short-term fixes are seen as the only answer - is also a symptom of a failed democracy. There is the appearance of democracy, but the government of Theresa May shows less and less inclination to pretend even that veneer is worth maintaining. Since the referendum, all pretense at effective parliamentary democracy has disappeared, its views ignored, with May creating new peers for the House Of Lords at a whim. Since the referendum, parliament has become redundant in the government's eyes. Who cares what it thinks any more? The government don't, as they are now fulfilling the "will of the people"; and the electorate have even less respect for parliamentarians now than they did even before the referendum.
The argument that, due to its cumulative institutional failings over the years, Britain as we understand it has reached the end of its natural life is a persuasive one in many ways. Britain never really adapted to a role after the empire, with its industrial base shrunk to the point of no return, and its natural wealth depleted. While there are parts of the country that will always be wealthy, thanks to government policy the levels of inequality have become so self-evidently enormous and skewed in one direction that they cannot be sustainable. When Britain has regions that have both some of the highest and lowest levels of wealth within the EU, something is seriously rotten with the way the country is ran. As said earlier, it is this persuasive narrative the extremists are taking advantage of, in pushing for a form of Brexit that will completely sweep away the old order. It explains how both main parties in parliament have been consumed by more extreme elements, so that the only real choices on offer to the electorate are between "Hard Brexit" and some kind of "Hard Socialism".So the story goes, the pendulum can only swing so far before it swings back the other way. It is this persuasive narrative that is so dangerous, as it can only lead to a dark path, where chaos is used as a tool by those with few moral qualms.

The answer is not a Brexit "coup de grace", but a political class that is able to think dynamically, by seeking answers to problems from outside its own narrow, incestuous confines. The answer lies not in a "neoliberal" dystopia outside the EU, but in seeking strategic answers from within the EU.
Alas, this seems just a pipedream: the tragedy is that far more people want to believe that the Brexit "coup de grace" is the only way to bring about real change; in reality, it is far more likely to bring about a change for something even worse.

British psychology, WW2 nostalgia, and Brexit

This blogger recently was reminded of how commonplace events like "WW2 nostalgia" days are in Britain. This got me thinking about how this kind of thing compares with other countries that took part in WW2, and what motivation and psychology is behind these kinds of events in Britain.

"Remembering the past" is important for any country; but equally important, is why and how you're remembering it.

When France remembers its time during WW2, it might not be with a great deal of pride. Of course there are the actions of the "Free French" forces that should never be forgotten, and the unquestioned bravery of the French Resistance during the years of occupation. But for the civilian population itself, much of its memory would be tied up with being under the thumb of Nazi rule, or, in the case of the "Vichy" government, the moral stain of that administration's collaboration. In this sense, WW2 was a national humiliation that was only ended through the actions of their allied American and British "liberators". That memory stuck in the craw for a long time in post-war France.

Conversely, there is the experience of the USA during WW2. Fighting a war on two fronts (like the British Empire), against Japan and Nazi Germany, American involvement nonetheless was, with the significant exception of Pearl Harbor, a typically distant affair. Characterized by the wartime song "Over there", the continental USA was largely unaffected by the war on a day-to-day level. The USA paid dearly in military terms, but the country itself was barely touched by the war.
For this reason, the nostalgia that the USA might have for WW2 may be "justified" from a strict psychological standpoint, as it does not create an overly-misleading perception of that point in the country's history. From a prestige point of view, the Second World War was glorious for the USA, as it was one of the leading victors, and it heralded the beginning of the country's role as a superpower. In this sense, the nostalgia makes a great deal of sense, as they are celebrating the birth of modern idea of the USA.

Then there is the experience of the Soviet Union. Its "nostalgia" for WW2 comes through the context of what they called the Great Patriotic War. Like the USA, their war against Germany starts in 1941, albeit six months earlier than Washington. But the price the Soviet Union paid was enormous, both in manpower, resources and land. Much of European Russia was occupied by the Nazis for at least two years, while its cities, and Leningrad and Stalingrad in particular, suffered appalling civilian casualties, on a scale not seen in Western Europe. While the country did receive allied aid from the Arctic convoys, the country essentially had to fight for itself, and it was only through sheer determination, resourcefulness and strategic errors on the Nazis' side, that allowed them to turn the tide. The Soviet Union paid by far the highest price on the allied side, and its "nostalgia" is about remembering the heroic fight against an existential threat, which they then drove back all the way to Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin.
This blogger makes no comment on the nature of the Soviet Union itself, or its conduct after the war; more on that has been said here.

Britain's role in WW2 and its nostalgia come from a somewhat different angle. On the one hand, the nostalgia for celebrating its heroes is genuine and universal. On the other, there is another side to the nostalgia that seems to function as a psychological crutch to support the nation's post-war insecurity. The fact that the post-war situation also saw Britain lose its empire may not be a coincidence.


"British Empire" nostalgia?

It could be argued that in Britain, WW2 nostalgia is for many, in fact, "British Empire" nostalgia.

The manner of Britain's WW2 nostalgia has sometimes seemed vaguely troubling from a psychological point of view, as it is based on historical revisionism. Unlike as is often assumed, Britain did not "win the war"; it was on the winning side as allies of the Soviet Union and the USA. As mentioned earlier, the largest cost in manpower and resources was taken by the Soviet Union, with American resources and manpower proving pivotal to the invasion of France. The Soviet Union and the USA "won" the war; the British Empire, by the end, was unfortunately a worn-out and bankrupt also-ran on the same side (and soon to be shafted by both after the war's end - or even, arguably, during its closing stages). These are facts that have also been conveniently "forgotten".

It is true that Britain was the first of those "allies" to declare war on Germany in 1939, but it quickly found out that it had bitten off more than it could chew. And it was more than pure luck that allowed Britain's armed forces to escape from being captured in 1940. The evidence actually points to the uncomfortable truth that the success of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 was in part down to Hitler's desire to reach a peaceful understanding with Britain, as he didn't wish to "humiliate" Britain, with whom he had a lot of personal respect. In fact, his perception of the grit of British forces was so high that he was shocked that they decided to flee from the continent rather than fight.
Evidence from the German archives at the time suggests that the delay at Dunkirk (the "halt order"), that enabled the British forces' escape, was not really to "allow" them to flee with their honour intact, but more through a misunderstanding of Britain's intentions; it seems Hitler was expecting the Brits to dig in for a fightback from the beach-head of Dunkirk. In this way, more generally he saw the British Empire's existence as a bulwark against what he saw as other "barbarian" races.

Hitler in fact looked up to the British Empire as Teutonic cousins whose global empire exemplified the natural superiority of (as he saw it) the wider "Aryan" race. In other words, the domination of that "island race" across the world was merely another pillar of what he saw as an overall German world domination. Defeating the British Empire's military capacity around the globe would have run against this motivation. The uncomfortable truth was that Hitler saw Britain and Germany as kin, with Britain's declaration of war against it judged as a kind of personal affront.
The idea that Hitler would have considered himself and the British Empire to have some kind of "common cause" would have been morally outrageous to Britain's sense of moral superiority (though it could be argued that sense of innate British "superiority" is in itself a kind of racism). Hitler's "unrequited love" of the country sits awkwardly with the self-perception that Britain has of its own moral certitude - how could an empire feel good about itself if it was secretly admired by the Nazis?  The answer, from a psychological point of view, was to destroy any hope Hitler had in thinking Britain would tolerate the existence of Germany under his rule. In this sense, Hitler's war on Britain could be seen as "revenge" for that rejection, with his visceral hatred of Churchill taking on the mantle of a personal vendetta.

Churchill's long animosity towards Hitler and Nazism in general could, it might be argued, have come from even an implicit sense of old English elitist snobbishness; as a member of the Victorian aristocracy, this isn't difficult to imagine. Apart from Nazism's raw hatred of the Jews, it's not hard to see Churchill viewing Hitler as a little more than a "jumped-up corporal", and Fascism in general as an uncouth, mob-culture ideology, anathema to his own sense of "British Empire" values.
And yet, Churchill himself had a career peppered with controversy. His views on the empire were shamelessly racist; more than many of his contemporaries, to the extent that some of his proposals to maintain discipline in the colonies would have been termed war crimes today had they been carried out as he intended.
It was the decision to bomb German cities and civilians during the summer of 1940 by the RAF that caused Hitler to end the "Battle Of Britain" and retaliate with the "Blitz". In these terms, Churchill's decision to bomb German civilians led to Hitler doing the same to Britons, while sparing Britain's air force from destruction. With the distance of time, such decisions now look morally dubious, with common Londoners becoming the targets instead of Britain's pilots (though whether Churchill could have predicted this is debatable). It then became a battle to destroy each other's homeland, and a metaphor for the destruction of each other's values. Churchill later sanctioned the senseless bombing of Dresden in the final weeks of the war, while in 1943 was complicit in causing the Bengal Famine, which led to the death of two million Indians. And yet this is a man that is idolized in British culture. This is the dangerous "false narrative" that uncritical nostalgia can create.
The wider point about Hitler was that - like Kaiser Wilhelm a generation earlier - fundamentally misunderstood Britain and its sense of prestige. Britain could not psychologically tolerate the thought of another nation challenging its own moral world view, and so had to be made out to be an existential threat to Britain's status. Hitler certainly justified the label as the "monster" of popular imagination, but the scale of that monstrosity was unknown in Britain until the end of the war; war against this "monster" was instead considered a kind of moral requirement for Britain's own self-respect, as well as to maintain its reputation and high standing around the world. The fact that some of the colonies began to rebel after the war was "won" supports this viewpoint.

While Britain had "bitten off more than it could chew" in declaring war on Germany, the threat of actual invasion by Hitler was always a very remote prospect; for practical reasons as well as the "ideological" reasons already stated. It suited Hitler more for Britain to believe there to be a threat of invasion, as this would cause it to divert attention from his real aims ("Lebensraum") in the East. He wanted to bring Britain to the peace table by means of gradual deprivation and collateral attrition rather than by wiping out its armed forces, but was fundamentally mistaken in its effects on British psychology. The strategy could never have worked.
And so Britain during WW2 developed into the wartime saga we all recognize: the bombing, the rationing, the "making do". Britain was reliant on the USA for its survival after 1940, but its moral certitude was still intact. And Britain's WW2 nostalgia is more for a moral world-view than anything else: the idea that Britain, besieged from sea and air, was still able to maintain its independence and moral authority. The fact that it was reliant on the USA to preserve its "independence", and its "moral authority" was once admired by Hitler, is quietly forgotten. The nostalgia preserves the illusion.

Using a cultural reference, "Dad's Army" syndrome and Britain's WW2 nostalgia is all about "winning against the odds" while sticking to your principles. In that sense, from an ideological point of view it shares some ground with Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism; the idea that Britain is achieving things without the help of others (self-reliance) while also refusing to compromise (moral purity). These are values also common in the Protestant faith on both sides of the Atlantic. These are values also found, not coincidentally, in the minds of many Brexiteers.
Nothing is ever that simple, of course, and as already stated, this is factually inaccurate in Britain's case anyway. Britain's homeland was effectively an American protectorate after 1940 until the end of the war (and even, arguably, well into the Cold War), while its moral standing must always be put in the context of its imperial status.

WW2 nostalgia also coincides with the point at which the British Empire's reach was arguably at its height. While its influence was waning in the light of the rise of the USA, that country's isolationism left the British Empire as the world's great global potentate at the start of WW2. In this sense, Britain's status as an island meant the British Empire was an "empire of the sea", with its power projected through the Royal Navy. Its land forces were always fairly modest in size by comparison, especially in places like India, where its authority was held more through reputation and skulduggery than brute force. The nature of the empire's scope always meant that keeping it together was a matter of wits over brawn, with the fabled British education system playing a large role. This was one reason why Britain's rivals never considered her to be a power to be trusted; she always seemed to have a trick up her sleeve, as often proved to be the case. You don't get to be a global empire by always "doing things by the book".
Comparisons with the medieval maritime empire of the Venetian Republic come to mind. This was another potentate reliant on sea power, commerce and occasional dirty tricks to maintain and expand its influence, until its possessions sprawled across large tracts of the Mediterranean. Like the British Empire, its reputation preceded itself; from small beginnings, its authority gradually extended further and further afield, quickly taking advantage of opportunities that arose, while allowing a commercial system at home that encouraged adventurism.
When Brexiteers talk of the opportunities in the world outside of the EU they are instilling that same spirit of adventurism that saw Venice expand across the Mediterranean, reaching its zenith around the turn of the 16th century. This was the same time that Spain and Portugal were using seafaring as a route to riches around the world, with the likes of England and France to follow a hundred years later.
While Britain's military role in the Second World War soon became that of "sidekick" to American power, it did use its military intelligence to great effect for the allies. It is this perception of British intelligence overcoming foreign might that feeds into the historical narrative of "plucky" Britain; a narrative that adds to the nostalgia, and feeds the desire to reprise the same story in the modern era of Brexit.
As WW2 was when Britain's empire displayed its last flourish, WW2 nostalgia can also be seen as implicit nostalgia for the British Empire. With modern niceties, such things can never be stated so openly, and it is also true that many people's nostalgia for empire is also something subconscious rather than overt. But that longing for the past, when Britain was truly "great", cannot be understood without its imperial associations. And this raises some very obvious questions about the real psychology at work in WW2 nostalgia, apart from the ideas of independence and moral certitude mentioned before. It speaks of insecurity instead.

Meanwhile, with Brexiteers seeming to use the same "dirty tricks" that were once so familiar to the British Empire's rivals, the dye seems to be cast as to the direction they want to take Britain. Brexit is about "Empire 2.0", while the country's apparent WW2 nostalgia is a rose-tinted backdrop that acts as the "drug of choice" against the future stark reality of Britain outside the EU, as much as the wistful delusions that many have had about wartime Britain.
The WW2 nostalgia serves a purpose for the Brexiteers. If people can be so willfully delusional about what life was like during the Second World War, then why not about life outside the EU?

Brexit and UK government strategy: Imperialistic Pretensions

A good way to assess a country's true psychology is to look at how it treats other nations.

The UK's relations with Europe and the rest of the world are currently going through a radical reconfiguration, thanks to Brexit. But equally, the way that the UK government is handling Brexit and its relations with its near neighbours in Europe is also highly-revealing in telling us the true nature of the country's leaders, and their motivations. As a result of this, European observers of the negotiation process between the UK and the EU are having to sharply re-evaluate their preconceptions about Britain's sense of morality. They are beginning to realise that Britain's honesty and transparency can no longer be taken for granted. They realise that Britain is behaving like a "troublemaker".


Divide and rule

When the chips are down, Britain's government has an instinct for devious behaviour (in particular towards its own population).The British government's negotiation strategy with the EU (if it can be coherently said to have one), seems to follow on from the same tactics, which Britain also once used when it was an Imperial power.
Back in the day, the British government's strategy for keeping the colonies under control was one of "divide and rule". In India, this was about balancing the different ethnic sides off against each other. The tensions between those sides (e.g. Hindu versus Muslim) were then stoked by Britain as a deliberate policy to sabotage the growing independence movement. This then made post-independence violence all the more certain; as we know, millions died in violence during those population exchanges. Earlier in Britain's rule over India, we had the Indian Mutiny, which caused widespread devastation, and also numerous famines over time that caused the deaths of millions, to the general indifference of its British rulers.
Closer to home, and another example of "divide and rule" that is often forgotten by Britain's population, was the treatment of Ireland: the land "across the (St George's) channel" that was effectively Britain's colony, with much of its Catholic population treated as virtual slave labour. Institutional indifference led to the potato famine, causing the deaths of millions, and the widespread depopulation of Ireland. Meanwhile, there was Northern Ireland, where again, Britain's ignorance of its bloody past and persecution towards the Ulster Catholic minority, is widespread. As we see, the policy of "divide and rule" is still at the heart of how the government runs the country even today, thanks to the DUP. And that doesn't even mention the current government's arrogant attitude towards the Irish government as part of its negotiations with the EU (more on that later).
The same could be said of Britain's rule over Palestine, where the Arab majority were played off against the Jewish minority. As the violence between them and their British overlords got increasingly out of hand, the British left the whole mess to the newly-created UN, who were totally unable to deal with the situation. As with "divide and rule" in Ireland, the Middle East is still dealing with the after effects of that today.

Britain, as an Imperial power, therefore had a long reputation for dealing with its colonies in a Machiavellian manner. The three mentioned, India, Ireland and Palestine, are just a few of the more glaring examples. There are many others. Of course, this strategy was common among all "Imperial powers", and Britain was very far from the worst in this regard. However, the cases of India, Ireland and Palestine are three stains on Britain's colonial record - in terms of the collective human impact of their policies - that stand out even among other acts of colonial infamy by other powers. Britain may not have used torture on an mass scale like some other Imperial powers, but it would be naive in the extreme to think of Britain as a paragon on Imperial virtue, like as it has been with some, nostalgic over the past.

The manner in which the UK government has dealt with the EU during the negotiations follows the same path. On one hand, Britain's Prime Minister talks of wanting a "deep and special partnership" with the EU based on trust and co-operation. But on the other, while negotiations are ongoing with the EU as a whole, her government (and the PM herself) seeks to drive clefts within the nations of the EU itself. Firstly, Theresa May and her ministers engage in the type of diplomacy that looks for issues that individual members of the EU might agree with Britain on, separately from the rest of the EU; the purpose of this is to build some kind of "inner coalition" within the EU that might be more supportive towards Britain's goals. Secondly, in the case of Germany, David Davis seems to be on a strategy to win over the support of its industrialists that would then act a some kind of "lobby" to pressure Angela Merkel on Britain's behalf. In this case, it is like developing a "cleft within a cleft". His comments just recently, where he blamed France and Germany for holding up the negotiations, support the view that Britain's strategy is to drive wedges between nations, as well as even wedges between interest groups in the nations themselves.
These two examples show not only the glaring lack of tact of Britain's government, but also reveal its government's true motivations: treating Europe as a kind of "colony" that can be manipulated and exploited to achieve its goals.

Looking at this objectively, it paints a very poor picture for Britain as a nation to be trusted. Not only is it being devious; it is being tactless. And everyone can see it.
It is almost reminiscent of the tactless behaviour and self-defeating diplomatic strategy of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II. When he came to power, he wanted Germany to be a great power, but also one that had good relations with its neighbours. Through a series of misjudgments, Germany fell out of favour with Britain, Russia and France, leading the Kaiser to look for alliances with nations that others were wary to be close to. This left Germany diplomatically-isolated from the major Imperial powers, leading its government to seek self-reliance as the best form of defence. We know where that ended.
In a different context, Britain's government seem to be repeating many of the same kind of blunders: making enemies where it should be making friends; while in seeking to divide existing alliances, the only effect this has is to unite them against itself as their common agitator. This kind of "imperialistic approach" will only end in failure, while showing to others that Britain's motivations are antagonistic in nature.


"Special treatment"

Apart from the Imperialistic strategy of "divide and rule", there is the UK government's (equally Imperialistic) mindset of expecting the EU to do everything for them, give in to all their demands, while offering little in return.
This is the lazily-entitled mindset that Britain had seen in remission during its membership of the EU. In many ways, joining the EU was an admission of Britain's relative weakness in the post-Imperial world. As it was not in a position to make demands, it allowed Britain an opportunity to reshape its own sense of identity. Brexit represents a backwards step to the entitled, patronising attitude that the country had during its colonial past: nothing is ever Britain's fault.
David Davis seems to summarise this mentality well: a monoglot who is incapable of understanding even the basics of his brief, or seeming to care. To him, Brexit all seems like a bit of a lark. As far as he sees it, Britain has already offered "compromises" (I struggle to think of any), and so the onus is on the EU to do the same. This attitude ignores the fact that the EU is simply following its own rules, as clearly laid out in statute in the Lisbon treaty. This has been explained repeatedly to Davis, who never seems to listen. The EU is not setting out to "punish" Britain; it is simply explaining the rules as they stand, and what is and isn't possible within that framework. But Britain's government wants the EU to ignore its own rules in order to indulge its wishes. In its lazily-entitled thinking, Britain has all the bearing of a haughty Imperialist of yesteryear that expects "foreign lackeys" to do all its work for it, while it wallows in its own self-satisfaction, ordering others around.

For some reason, Britain thinks it should be entitled to some kind of extra-legal cloud-cuckoo land where it gets "special treatment" from the rest of the world.

Expecting "special treatment" on one hand, while enacting a strategy of "divide and rule" on the other, Britain's government has simply slipped back into the lazy Imperialistic pretensions of a hundred years ago, but minus the Empire.
While the negotiations with the EU continue, the rest of the world (who Britain expects to have preferential trade agreements with) must look on with a mixture of bemusement and bafflement. If Britain can't even negotiate properly with its supposed "friends and allies", what chance has it got against anyone else?

Neo-liberalism and the Conservatives: using intellectual and moral bankruptcy to run the UK

Since the onset of neo-liberalism with the Thatcher government, successive governments of both main parties have followed fundamentally the same ideological and economic script.

Back in the 1970s, the British economy was struggling to adapt to the various crises that struck the world economy. The skyrocketing cost of living, loss of British companies' competitiveness, and inflation, all had the effect of bringing increasing demands from the unions, who sought to buffer their members from the worst of it. As we know now, the rise of Thatcherism created an "agreed consensus" that it was the unions that caused the crisis in the UK in the 1970s. Likewise, the same "agreed consensus" is at play with the Conservative government today, who successfully blamed the previous Labour government for "breaking the banks".

The "plan" that Thatcher and her successors have followed for the last thirty-five is simple: to "re-figure" the British economy from a manufacturing (production) based economy to a service (consumption) based economy. At the same time, this service-based economy has been supported by a massive expansion of the banking and financial sector, making the service-based economy - which has been designed to take up the slack of the loss of manufacturing - heavily reliant on the fate of the banking sector. Whereas a production-based economy is reliant on a competitive (i.e. relatively weak) pound to make British products attractive to buyers abroad, the kind of economy Thatcher introduced was reliant on a strong pound: this was what the financial sector was craving, and would also help consumerism (as it made imports cheap).
The result of this was the slow death of manufacturing in the UK, and a balance of payments that has been in a serious state of disrepair for years. Though no-one has seemed to care.
Following on from this, the Blair government took up the idea that young people in the UK were under-qualified for the modern world. For this reason, successive governments since then have promoted the idea that a much larger proportion of younger people should have degrees; the logic being that better-educated young people could get better-paid jobs.
The problem - as we now see plain today - is that these two plans are in many ways nonsensical, and also logically contradictory. But this is how those in government have been running the country.

Intellectually bankrupt

To the casual observer, the UK has done really quite well since the "neo-liberal" revolution has been introduced. GDP is up, and the country is self-evidently more prosperous. Except that it depends on who you are talking about.
Back in 1978, this was when "egalitarianism" was at its height: the gap between rich and poor was at its smallest. Things were only "bad" if you happened to be very rich and Conservative; for everyone else, things were - basically - fine. This all ended with Thatcher. Within a short time, unemployment had trebled. Since the "neo-liberal" revolution in Whitehall, the gap between rich and poor has successively widened, so that now while those at the top ten per cent are many times richer than they were, those at the bottom ten per cent are actually worse off. Yes, they may have some consumer goods that they can afford due to advancements in technology and cost-effectiveness. But they are still - financially - worse off than they were before. This is how this economic system works.

British governments since Thatcher have had plenty of time to make manufacturing more productive and competitive. The fundamental problem about British inefficiency stems back to the end of Empire. It may seem like a difficult point to deal with, but Britain's manufacturing and productive base was reliant on demand from the Empire to keep things afloat. This was surely shown during the Second World War, and going even further back. Once the Empire starting breaking apart, British governments never grasped the nettle about how to make British industry competitive in a real world economy, rather than in a "fake" Imperial economy. The "oil shock" of the 1970s brought that into stark relief, and the Thatcher government decided that it couldn't be bothered to try and make it work. The government would rather let the whole thing die.
As mentioned earlier, the UK has turned into a consumption-based economy, which ironically seems not far off how an Imperial Homeland would be run. Except that Britain no longer has an "empire" that can do its production for it. Instead of factories, the UK now runs on banks. Like in Switzerland. Instead of an "empire", it now runs the country like a PLC, where its citizens are treated like mere "employees", who can be hired and fired at will. Instead of colonies, the UK has "assets", which it sells off to the highest (foreign) bidder.

Which brings us to Germany.

Germany is the country that many others aspire to be, for the simple reason that it is perhaps one of the best-run countries in the world, in terms of productivity, efficiency of government, and the well-being of its people. In this sense, Germany is the "anti-Britain": a country which learned some very hard lessons before 1945 but also learned how to get the best out of its people. Germany is what Britain could have been, if the country were run intelligently.
Britain's economic system can be called intellectually bankrupt because it is a system that a con. By allowing Britain's productive assets to wither and die, though a combination of incompetence and recklessness, successive governments have put all the country's eggs in one basket. That was found out in 2008, when we suddenly realised how absurd the UK's "miracle" of banking really was.
Since then, the British government has decided to react to the greatest financial crisis since the Depression by doing...the exact same thing. Nothing has changed about how the UK economy is ran. The huge bubble that burst in 2008 is being re-inflated once more, except that this time the "recovery" is even more of an illusion than the growth that was created under New Labour. The economy now is growing only due to debt-fueled consumer spending, ever-worsening working conditions, a much greater number of low-skilled and low-paid jobs, and an out-of-control property bubble. The state of the economy is based on even more fragile foundations that before the crash, but George Osborne, the architect of this "long-term economic plan", is only motivated by short-term political gain and the harvesting of votes.
The governments of the past thirty years have all been complicit in the "asset-stripping" of the nation, leaving the taxpayer doubly worse off - in selling off national infrastructure at below-market value, and then allowing these privatised assets to fleece their customers. as mentioned earlier. For the private sector this is a win-win situation.

What has been created since the "neo-liberal" revolution has been a system of Corporate Socialism, where assets are privatised and those privatised companies are then subsidised and if need be bailed-out by the government - the worst outcome of all from the government's financial point of view. In the meantime, this amoral system creates a morally-bankrupt government as well as an intellectually-bankrupt ideology.

Morally bankrupt

The logical conclusion of this economic system is a moral system that has destroyed the essence of society.
On top of increasing inequality to levels now not seen since the Depression, those who have become the victims of this system are then demonised as the causes of its problems. This is where the idea of blaming those on welfare for the need for "austerity" comes from. Back in the 1980s, when the government started selling-off council housing, this meant that only those with the severe social and familial problems became entitled to state housing. The effect of this was creating "sink estates", and thus another "scapegoat" for the government's problems was formed.
This vicious circle is repeated time and time again: the government creates a problem, then blames the victims for the problem.

George Osborne is the architect of the current government's version of this system, where he has implemented a policy of "divide and rule" to a ruthlessly-effective degree. In reality, all his decisions are not based on what's best for the country, but what's best for his prospects. From "help-to-buy" to racking up tuition fees, Osborne implements policies that simply store up nightmares for the future. While David Cameron is the charmingly-affable front man to this game, it is Osborne who is the real "master in the shadows".

Dividing young against old, rich against poor, working poor against jobless poor, this is the morally bankrupt system that the Conservatives use to rule the UK.

Neo-Imperialism and the nature of power: surveillance, Edward Snowden and democracy

The author recently wrote an article documenting the rise of surveillance in modern society, and how this coincided with the rise of the internet and the widespread use of CCTV. When the Edward Snowden revelations were revealed to the world two years ago, the extent to which the USA (and its Anglophone partners, especially the UK) were gathering masses of information across the globe was astounding. In the article mentioned above I alluded to the "public" rationale for this level of surveillance (The War On Terror etc.), but also to the - more likely - "private" reason: they do it because they can.

This is not to say that these people in government are "evil". It is more down to the simple human nature of those with their hands on the levers of power. The capability exists to know almost everything there is to know about people; therefore, not to use it would seem almost like a abrogation of government's instinct to do what it can to control events.

The modern nation-state is a creation of law. It took centuries for autocratic societies to be transformed into nation-states where those in power were held in check by an objective set of laws. Britain was one of the first nations to achieve this basic principle. The USA took this principle to (for the 18th century) its logical conclusion, by creating a state based "on laws, not men". Since then, other nations have improved this concept further. It is no surprise that the nations with the most stringent application of rule of law are also the most stable and the least corrupt. Therefore, any government that follows these principles consistently (i.e. is not a corrupt dictatorship) is bound by the law of the land in its actions. But where does surveillance fit into this?

"Spycraft" has been a feature of governments for centuries, and more sophisticated  - and intrusive - techniques were developed as the technology became available. Fast forward to the end of the Second World War. The USA and the British Empire had won the war, but now faced the threat of Soviet Russia. Thanks to a quirk of geography, many of the world's telecommunications cross the Atlantic between the USA and the UK. This meant they also had the capability to intercept a large volume of the world's telecommunications. Faced with the threat of Soviet Russia, the USA and it's English-speaking partners (The UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) created the "Five Eyes": a secret surveillance network. While those within the "Five Eyes" network worked together, all other countries' communications were effectively declared "fair game" - which included other NATO allies. All this was kept secret from the outside world, until it was cracked open by Edward Snowden.

As the adage goes "information is power". While these governments are bound by their own laws. we also have seen those laws easily modified in times of crisis and war. Freedom (of expression and privacy) and the rule of law is not permanent or set in stone once it has been created. These things can be rolled back. The 9/11 attacks and the War On Terror saw the US government and its Anglophone allies grant sweeping powers of surveillance over their own citizens, as well as others all across the globe. The "rule of law" that was meant to be there to check the excesses of government, was being bent to the breaking point. It would take a great deal of legal trickery to demonstrate that what the US government was doing did not break its own constitution. In the UK, where the "rule of law" was a more flexible construct given the lack of a written constitution, the government were able to do even more.
While terrorism was the official justification to their respective parliaments, in reality the surveillance covered everything from hoovering up the browsing habits of Europeans, to bugging the phones of European leaders. Again, for what possible purpose could this serve to the "War On Terror"?

The meaning of Neo-Imperialism

In reality, these techniques and the widespread use of spycraft on allies and enemies alike showed that the Anglophone spy agencies were really using the technology in whatever way they could, within the (hazy) constraints of the law. Governments are as fallible and as hard-wired to over-reach as the rest of us; the same can be said for companies. Like any ordinary person, given the chance the government will do whatever it thinks it can get away with.

This is the meaning of what we call "Neo-Imperialism". In the 21st century, the world is a place of a number of different centres of power, with alliances here and there, each vying for control. In such a setting, where things seem so uncertain, "information" truly is key. The irony is that the two most significant geo-political events of the last five years - the Arab Spring and its aftermath, (with the subsequent Civil War in Syria and the rise of ISIS) and the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's schism with the West - happened without the west (and the "Anglophone alliance) having a clue about what was about to happen.

An intervention in Libya is called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism", while a non-intervention in Syria and the rise of ISIS is likewise called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism". Neo-Imperialism is about using the modern instruments at the disposal of the world's most powerful governments to try and control events.
We talk about "soft power" and "hard power". The USA uses both. Under George W. Bush, "hard power" was the instrument of preference, supported by "soft power". Under Barack Obama, the emphasis seems to be reversed. The UK was recently shown to be at the top of the world table in its successful use of "soft power". Given its lack of a serious military budget, it is no surprise that the UK uses more indirect methods to get what it wants. It charms and cajoles; it submits and threatens where necessary.

The British Empire may well be a thing of the past, but Britain is still an "empire" in all but name, at least in terms of the way carries out its world affairs, as well as many of its affairs at home. While we are in the 21st century, many nations are still run in a pseudo-feudalistic way. Neo-Imperialism is really just a variation on the world politics of the late 19th and early 20th century, but with modern technology allowing for other techniques to be used for the same ends.

The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of totalitarian states in Russia and Germany. Today, the idea of such a nightmare returning seems thankfully remote. However, while few would see the use of surveillance as "authoritarianism" in the classic sense, the insidious nature of this power is what makes it so easy to ignore. Comparatively few people are truly concerned; they are not aware of it happening, as they would have been in the times of the Nazis or the Soviet Union.
Again, this demonstrates the changed nature of the state: whereas before the state wanted you to know that you were being watched, these days it is done (or was, until Edward Snowden) without public awareness.

As said before, it is easy to understand why governments do it; with the technological capability there, the temptation is too strong to resist, so excuses are created for its use. This technology may seem benign to many but, as with rule of law, these things are prone to change. Governments are masters of "threat management". With the rise of the symbiosis between government and business, accountability and oversight can quickly become lost.
This is the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has ruled the roost in the Anglosphere for the last thirty-five years.