Boris Johnson stood up last week in Glasgow and took a moment to tell the international community that “the UK is in no way a corrupt country”.
Well, thank God that’s sorted. We can all rest easy. After he spoke at a conference on climate change, Johnson took a private jet back to London to have dinner with climate change denier Charles Moore. Of course, anyone who speaks Boris knows that “the UK is in no way a corrupt country” literally translates as “the UK is one of the most corrupt countries in the world”.
As he spoke, the PM looked exactly like Police Squad’s Lieutenant Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun, standing in front of an exploding fireworks factory and saying: “NOTHING TO SEE HERE, FOLKS!”
And the very fact that Johnson felt the need to say this at all means the time has come to sincerely ask the question: is the UK now a failed state?
Well, John, what are the characteristics of a failed state? I’m glad you asked. There are differences of opinion, of course, but the majority of political theorists agree that most of the following factors will feature somewhere in the mix…
Firstly, and most obviously, there will be rampant corruption among the ruling party, who are only interested in enriching themselves at the expense of the people they are meant to serve. Given that the Tories recently voted to abolish the very body that looks into stuff like rampant corruption, I think we can probably go ahead and tick this box. All this enriching of themselves and their cronies contributes to…
Growing poverty and wealth inequality. Britain’s – already troubling – wealth gap has exploded in the last year, with the richest 10 per cent of the population gaining £50,000 on average. A report by economic think tank The Resolution Foundation said wealth had increased during lockdown – through a lack of spending opportunities and rising house prices – but that the benefits had been skewed to the richest by a ratio of more than 500 to 1.
Jack Leslie, a senior economist at the think tank, said it was “rare for wealth to increase during a recession but the impact of events during 2020 and 2021 has been to “turbo-charge” the gap between rich and poor”.
You’d have thought this might cause the Government to rethink their plans to scrap the £20-a-week uplift to Universal Credit. You’d have thought wrong.
The other problem with rampant corruption is that it obviously leaves little time for boring stuff like actual governing, which leads to things like…
Failing public services. Have you had a look at ambulance waiting times around the UK lately? How very few A&E departments we have left? Schools so short of money they have to ask parents to chip in to buy basic materials like textbooks? You have? Good, so you’ll join me in ticking this box too. The lack of interest in competent governing will also lead to things like…
Shortages of essential supplies. I’m sure many people in England – even the most ardent Tory voters – contemplated this possibility recently when they were sitting in their car for an hour in a mile-long tailback to get their 30 quid petrol ration so they could drive to the supermarket and stare at a lot of empty shelves. Again, big tick. Although not as big as it might be soon, partly because of another symptom of failed states…
Spiralling inflation. Inflation rose by 3.2 per cent in the 12 months to August this year – the biggest leap on record. Most economists expect this to be a temporary increase, largely due to the pandemic.
However, the Bank of England has predicted the rate of inflation could go up to as much as five per cent by early next year.
At this point, you’re asking – but John, how do the governments of failing states manage to stay in power? Again, I’m glad you brought this up. They do so by encouraging…
Rampant nationalism. By planting the idea that the real thing people should fear isn’t the incompetence and corruption of their own government – it’s pesky immigrants! By fostering ideas of exceptionalism, even as it is clear to the rest of the world how bad things are. A natural result of all this is for the failed state to begin…
Severing ties with the rest of the world. By doing things like voting for Brexit. Then flouting and ignoring international law by failing to honour agreements with other countries (hello, Ireland!). By becoming a global pariah while, all the time, the Dear Leader rides around saying how brilliant things are and how his government is absolutely in no way corrupt at all.
Sound familiar?
I’ll see you all in May 2024 when we’re trundling wheelbarrows full of cash to the supermarket to pay for a loaf of bread that they don’t have, pausing only to salute the giant gold statue of Boris Johnson, who has just been re-elected in a historic landslide. By the very people queueing up to join the breadlines.
