Categories
Brexit UK

Backwards facing Britain

I’ve just realised, with some shock, that I am just the same as the Brexiteers!

They want to take Britain back to some rose-tinted 1950s ish period where Britain ruled the waves (and other countries did as they were told). The ignore that fact that Britain was still bankrupt in the 1950s due to WW2. There was a decade of growth and improvement in 1960s then the country was so broke in the 1970s it needed the biggest ever loan from the World Bank. They forget 3 day weeks, devaluation, Imperial wars, poor life quality and expectancy because the way it is portrayed is through the lens of the middle classes. We started to emerge from 30 years of on and off austerity and economic turmoil after we’d joined the then EEC and they had started to move towards the fundamental freedoms (Goods, Labour, Services). Why wasn’t Auf Weidersehen, Pet described as “unwelcome immigrants steal jobs from locals by working for less than the going rate and refuse to learn local language or customs.”

Anyway, why am I the same as a Brexiteer? Because I want to turn the clock back to the heady days of 2012 when we confidently welcomed the world to celebrate sporting prowess. When the country had a positive outlook and a positive reputation. It was the end of arguably 20 years of “cool Britannia” where we looked to the continent for partnerships that helped us all grow and we took a collaborative approach to everything.

I think 2012 was the end of that era as we’d had the coalition government for 2 years, austerity was start to bite and the LibDems were starting to find out their limits as the junior coalition partner. In my opinion it all started to unwind after 2012. Immigrants and immigration became the scapegoats for everything the government failed us on. Europe and the EU was blamed for every government failure. The rhetoric of the Conservative party became more and more isolationist, nationalist and selfish.

So here we are in 2020 looking forward to the prospect of drug shortages causing animal pandemics, the army on the streets to quell riots food prices rocketing and shortages due to lorries being held up at the ports. Adding to this the now annual flooding devastating the lives of tens of thousands and a second round of Covid, on top of seasonal flu to add another 30,000 or so avoidable deaths.

What, exactly, is this country doing to itself?