State of Affairs

The recent election in Britain was something of a debacle. Political parties doing backroom deals, thousands of voters turned away from polling booths, a worrying rise in the influence of the far-right British National Party and the need to deal with a financial crisis that Canada, thankfully, will never have to face. For many Canadians, it revealed a new and far from perfect country that some still see as bathed in nostalgia. Thing is, contemporary Britain is troubled and, according to a recent survey, 75 per cent of the people would prefer to live somewhere else.

The family, for example, is in deep decay. More children are now born out of wedlock in Britain than anywhere else in Europe, single mothers have become almost dominant within working-class culture, and what is known in France and Germany as “The British Disease” has caused havoc with social structures, stability, and community.

Other statistics are equally damning. The rate of teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, alcohol abuse, and drug dependency has reached such proportions that entire government departments are being created to deal with the issue. They are, of course, failing miserably. Binge drinking is now habitual, particularly for young women, and city centres on weekend evenings resemble battlefields with prostrate bodies littering the landscape.

If this sounds like hysteria it is because most tourists see Britain through the prism of hotels, picturesque towns, and appealing suburbs. As a holiday destination the place is still extraordinarily pleasant and the culture undeniably vibrant. Yet beyond the facade is a reality that is far from the country of Antique Road Show and gentle soap opera.

At a political level a wave of parliamentary corruption scandals has reduced confidence in government to horrible lows, not helped by the inconclusive nature of the last election. The Tories have moved left in an effort to occupy the soft centre and the vacuum on the right has enabled the ultra-nationalist and semi-fascist British National Party to win two seats in the European Parliament and a bunch of municipal elections. They will never achieve anything even resembling genuine power as the British people are essentially moderate and tolerant, but despair forces people to seek sometimes ugly alternatives and the party gained more than half a million votes in May.

All things considered it’s a bit of a mess. The health service is massively outdated and inefficient, the education system was emasculated a generation ago, and even once-grand British television has lost much of its splendour. Yet for all that, the old realm still sort of works and still has a hold that is difficult to define but even harder to break.

On the positive side the political system works in spite of electoral messes, immigrant groups are assimilated far more often than they are not, working-class people enjoy a standard of living unknown to their parents and, hey, the England soccer team has a seriously good chance of winning the World Cup this summer. And if they don’t, they can always blame the weather.