It is surprising that a nation of fair-play enthusiasts has a favourite pastime of punching down. Looking for a reason for low wages and a failing NHS? Blame the immigrants flooding the borders, leaving our small island full to bursting. Yet net migration was 171,000 last year, down from 944,000 in 2023.
Misplaced Blame
Why are taxes rising? The 24 million scroungers on benefits, many say. But over 13 million of them are state pensioners who have paid into the system, and almost 40% of Universal Credit claimants are working low-paid jobs that keep our economy going. Low productivity? Lazy young people feigning ADHD, some claim. Yet unemployment among 16-24-year-olds has hit 16.2% because the economy has no jobs and we have built so few houses, with the average age of a first-time buyer now 34.
Let us blame militant trade unions, work-from-home civil servants, the BBC, striking doctors, net zero fanatics, terror-sympathising liberals, trans lobbyists, overpaid footballers, or whoever picked the Eurovision entry. But if it is not their fault that this country is in a mess, whose is it?
Three Acts of Self-Harm
Consider three of Britain's worst self-inflicted wounds over the past decade: HS2, Brexit, and Grenfell. In 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron initiated HS2 to win over northerners, estimating the project at £32.7 billion. In 2020, Boris Johnson gave it the go-ahead despite warnings costs were heading over £100 billion. Today, a much-reduced HS2 will cost more than Nasa's Artemis Moon mission and will not be ready until 2039.
In 2013, Cameron called a Brexit referendum solely to appease right-wing Eurosceptics. In 2016, Johnson seized the chance to become leader by championing a Brexit he had previously opposed. This reckless act has shrunk the UK economy by 7%, with some analysts claiming it costs £100 billion annually.
In 2011, Cameron waged war on red tape with a "one in, one out" rule for regulations. Last year, the Grenfell Inquiry into the deaths of 72 people in a tower block fire found that this policy so "dominated" thinking that "even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded." Cameron's government "determinedly resisted" increasing regulations on fire safety. After the disaster, footage emerged of Johnson from 2013, then London mayor, telling a politician who challenged his fire service cuts to "get stuffed."
The Common Thread
Neither Johnson nor Cameron are solely to blame for these calamities, but their fingerprints are at the scene. What links them? Both are over-entitled, over-ambitious Old Etonian and Oxford elitists who saw running the country as their birthright. They made promises they could not fulfil, kicked problems into the long grass, and then ducked out, leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab while they waltzed off to make private fortunes from the mess they left behind. Perhaps, when handing out blame for Britain's problems, we should try punching up instead of down. There are plenty of people up there to hit.
