Should we try to cure the British Disease?

This Time No Mistakes by Will Hutton [1]

The literature on Britain’s Decline stretches far back into the 19th Century, when panicked Victorians first perceived the challenge to their hegemony by more efficient upstarts such as Germany and the United States. Authors as divergent as Corelli Barnett and Beatrice and Sidney Webb have all had their say. Will Hutton is something of an old hand by now, as fans of The State We’re in (1992) will recall.

But it’s worth giving Hutton another run over the gallops, if only because he’s so readable. Complex ideas are broken into easily-assimilable parts, and his new ways of looking at old things always keep the reader on their toes. This is no rehash. The gravity of our present situation of soaring poverty, bounding national debt and broken trade partnerships has seen to that. Any reforming Government will face a situation at least as difficult as Attlee’s in 1945, confronting a shattered economy ( for which, read: austerity) and a lost Empire (read: Brexit).

Will there be any chance of a turnaround? Hutton thinks it’s possible. We are less sanguine. “Britain has the misfortune to be run by the British” observed the reviewer of a similar book in 1984. By which he meant the nexus of privately-and Oxbridge-educated clans who go on to populate the leading jobs in law, finance and media. Especially the latter, who use their power ruthlessly to destroy reputations of “enemy” politicians of whatever political party, while shamelessly eliminating any space for objective debate. Since the First World War, the Conservatives have been in power, largely on their own, for 82 years. Majority opposition governments for barely 25. The decline in British power in that time has been both precipitous and undeniable. Can anything really be done?

In the Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Paul Kennedy[3] makes a convincing case that the whole process is inevitable and rather natural. Smaller states like Venice, who “once held the East in thrall” were inevitably eclipsed when larger powers like Spain and France came along. Perhaps the British people, or rather the English, know this, and have consciously turned their back on power. In which case the Conservative policy of managed decline could be the right one after all.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/31/will-hutton-this-time-no-mistakes-extract

[2] Will Hutton: This Time no Mistakes Head of Zeus 2024 (appears 11 April)

[3] Paul Kennedy The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Random House 1987

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