Too late to save Britain - it's time to emigrate
David Selbourne 3:16pm
David Selbourne is a political philosopher and theorist. This article appeared in
the magazine last week; it is an edited version of his speech for a Spectator debate on the motion, ‘Too late to save Britain. It’s time to leave.’'
Part of me feels that those who have helped to bring the country down — venal politicians, false educators, degraders of the media, thieving privatisers of the public domain — need to be fought to a standstill, here on this battlefield, by those with the energy, strength and clarity of mind to do so. For no one wants to believe that the country of his birth, language, upbringing and way of thinking cannot be redeemed.
But the thousands, and tens of thousands, leaving Britain — another million and more will be gone in the next five years, the largest category of them the young, the skilled, the professional — are not wrong. The country’s dilapidation has gone too far. Britain has been impoverished by the mismanagement of the national economy, the running down of manufacturing, and the voraciousness of free-market ethics.
‘Greed is good’, said the Daily Telegraph in October 2006. ‘Without the City’s enterprise, ambition and, yes, greed, the country would be considerably worse off’, its editorial declared. Today, too late, we have learned that such crudity does not serve.
Now, Britain has passed out of the hands — one hopes forever — of ‘New Labour’, the party’s grand Nonconformist moral inheritance ravaged by Blairism and Mandelsonisation. But what is the overarching ‘New Conservative’ project? Mr Cameron has declared it to be the creation of a ‘big society with big citizens’. There has been no idea so vacuous in the history of political thought. It cannot check the strides of those heading for the doors.
Yet is it not ‘treason’, as vox pop sometimes asserts, to leave this unholy mess behind? It might be considered so, if there had remained a nation towards which to feel patriotic. It might be treason to leave if there was a real nation to betray. In the era of the ‘global market’, with its flux of capital, goods and labour, there isn’t. And most, whether they are staying, leaving, or merely thinking of going, know it. British citizenship signifies less today than at any time in its history.
And what history? How much knowledge of it is being transmitted in Britain’s failing schools? ‘The past, once destroyed,’ said Simone Weil, ‘never returns. Its destruction is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.’ That crime, an unpardonable crime, has been committed here.
Britain is also an increasingly tough place for young people, let down by the education system, harmed by familial breakdown, with shrinking opportunity and an infernal housing situation. But it is not a happy land in which to grow old either. In 1927, André Maurois wrote that ‘in all countries old age is a virtue in a public man, but especially in England’. Can that be said now? Of course not.
Britain’s way of life, like the way of life of all nations, was an organic and particular creation. It had its own ecology, as does the natural world. But in the last few decades, and at accelerating pace, a great unravelling has taken place in Britain, a free country degraded by its freedoms. And ‘business as usual’ will serve the British national interest no more than Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers have served the world economy, or BP’s practices have served the people of Louisiana and Florida. The difference between freedom and licence has been unlearned.
The country’s broadly shared values rested, among other things, on convention, on common law and custom, on a sense of community despite social inequality, on respect for public service and on a belief in the work ethic. They have not survived the self-degrading moral and market free-for-all which has been unleashed upon the land. It has reduced the citizen to a mere customer and consumer, and has invited so many free-loaders — from duck-house parliamentary cheats to fiddlers of the welfare system, indigenous and incomers alike — to take liberties with this battered country rather than to fulfil their obligations to it.
Moreover, the truth about these matters is not in the exclusive possession of either left or right, but lies between them: you cannot strengthen ‘social cohesion’ while privatising public institutions which hold civil society together, or by slashing public provision in order to pay for the harms caused to the polity and the economy by unbridled private interest.
As for the corrupted House of Commons, it no longer possesses the moral authority to lay down the law for others. Many, including leading figures in the new government, should have been driven from public life. For fraud and theft? No. For striking an irreparable blow at Britain’s vulnerable democratic system. In May, Jack Straw told the Times of his ‘relief’ that the ‘poisonous depression of the expenses scandal’ was now ‘in the past’. In the past? It is of the present, and its impact will be long-lasting. But his is the type of insouciance, or disconnectedness from public sentiment, which has helped to wreck the reputation of parliament.
Now the country has been promised a ‘smaller state’, ‘less regulation’, more personal ‘choice’ and the rest of the free market fandango. But it is not a politics capable of restoring Britain to itself, not capable of rescuing it from further dissolution.
For the greater the scope of unregulated moral freedom, of laissez-faire, and of individual rights, the greater the need to manage the chaotic outcomes of their abuse. It applies as much to the City as to the streets. This is a philosophical not a party point. Burke knew it. ‘Liberty,’ he declared in 1774, ‘cannot exist without order and virtue.’ But, today, the concept of order offends the libertarian, while the concept of virtue offends the ‘non-judgmentalist’ and the ‘anti-moraliser’.
In a country that does not know what it once was, or where it is going next, the re-branded and ‘modernised’ mainstream parties — which once represented values as well as interests — have also lost their way (and their memberships) on the ‘centre ground’; Labour no longer represents labour, Conservatives do not wish to conserve, and Liberal Democrats appear to have no principles at all. The parties have become indistinct, inviting the advance of extremism. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. There is a moral void too.
Yet it is not anger which marks the national mood but a confused dismay at the country’s coarsened, directionless condition. Although I say it with regret, it is therefore better to go, if you can. Moreover, those who overvalue Britain’s significance and present reputation, and disparage other nations, are making an embarrassing mistake. There is no utopia on earth, and other free and too-free societies are not in good shape. But few have squandered their inheritance as rapidly as Britain, few have been so self-harming.
Those who have the talent and stamina carefully to record, and to analyse, the travails of this country in philosophical spirit, as a warning to future generations of how the work of ages can be so swiftly undone, might well stay. But if you would live and die somewhat happier than you can here, and if you have the possibility of springing the trap, then I would say to you — after much thought, and some doubt as to whether it should be said at all — ‘Leave!’
Previous
Ben G
July 22nd, 2010 3:27pm Report this commentCheerio then. Can't say I'll miss your uplifting prose.
Don't forget the Prozac!
Philip Walling
July 22nd, 2010 3:30pm Report this commentEmigrate to where?
He's right to be despondent about the future of Britain - the destruction of the education system has left us without a coming generation to get us out of the mess, but I'm at a loss to think of anywhere that will be so much better than here to warrant the loss of one's own roots.
Widmerpool
July 22nd, 2010 3:38pm Report this commentEven the Non Doms are leaving Ha Ha!
About 7,000 have left and only 3,000 have stayed and paid up the 30k according to Wealth Management Publication Financial News.
If this is so its a massive slap in the face for Boy George who first mooted the Non Tax aped by Darling. It was supposed to raise 650 million pa it only brought in 130 million[according to the Financial News]; add to that the loss to UK plc of say 100k p.a. from fleeing Non Doms and that's another 700 million lost revenue. No wonder Boy George was not allowed to put the IHT allowance up. Let's hope the Boy does better on his Tax Simplification and no more rats leave the sinking ship[Non Doms] pack up and go.
davidk
July 22nd, 2010 3:45pm Report this commentA very poignant piece. Globalisation has lacerated our identity, customs and values. There's no turning the clock back, however.
paul, fed up with it all.
July 22nd, 2010 3:48pm Report this commenti have been predicting the decline and fall of what was great britain for decades, you only had to look at the antics of the ruling elite the are so decadent its untrue, the one great statesman we had enoch powell was told to bugger off for telling the truth, o well pax britannica has gone the same way of pax romana, i am sixty four now to late for me but i have been telling young people to get out to try somewhere better for years.
startledcod
July 22nd, 2010 3:51pm Report this commentCheerio David, you won't be missed.
A Very British Dude has posted an extremely good critique of Mr Selbourne. A must read: http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2010/07/who-is-david-selbourne.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FXDHd+%28A+Very+British+Dude%29
Jackart
July 22nd, 2010 3:57pm Report this commentWhen I picked up this week's Spectator, you expect a range of interesting, well argued pieces which inform and provoke, by people of note. This week's contained one by a "political philosopher and theorist" called David Selbourne who argues that Britain is a country in steep moral decline. If he is, as Lord Carlile of Berriew described him, "perhaps the leading political philosopher and theorist of our day", then I don't know about the morals, but Britain is certainly a country in intellectual decline.
You expect "lights out, it's time to go" nonsense from the right: we've just endured 13 years of economic lunacy under a spendthrift government which tripled an already oleaginous tax code and heaped more ill thought out regulation on business and inposed a new crime a day on the benighted people of this country; more than any regime in its history. As a result, I made plans for a new life in Gibraltar should Labour have won the election. But to see this opinion from a man of the left surely can be marked as an admission of defeat for the leftist vision?
But that's making a serious point, and I would like to indulge in a bit of ad-hominem first. He's a political philosopher, and clearly thinks in terms of morality. Yet he spends the first few paragraphs demonstrating his profound lack of understanding of economics: "Britain" he says
"has been impoverished by the mismanagement of the National Economy"
that's true,
"the running down of manufacturing"
which is false,
"and the voraciousness of free-market ethics"
which is arguable.
Manufacturing output has not shrunk since the recession of the early 90's in the UK. What he means is that Manufacturing has shrunk as a share of GDP. Well so's agriculture, the sector stupid, visionless people thought was the ultimate root of wealth in the 18th century as people left the land for jobs in factories. The shrinking of manufacturing is a mark of progress. What once took 50 people now takes one and some machines, just as farming used to employ an army of labourers now employs tractors. Quite why hammering things together is seen as noble is a mystery to me, though it is surely the same notion as the Romantics had of the pastoral idyll. Making something you can drop on your foot is not, as common wisdom would have it, any better an economic activity than designing the thing or selling the thing.
So we come to Selbourne's notion of "Free Market Ethics" which he blames for the atomisation of society. This is arguable and I argue that he's as full of shit about the morality of markets as he is of the economics of them. There is nothing moral, or indeed immoral, about a free market. The market is a statistical collection of the decisions of millions of moral agents: you and me. What Selbourne is clearly hankering for is state direction of the economy so that less is directed to paying bankers which are "bad, m'kay" and more is directed to nurses and teachers who are "good, m'kay". However the most cursory glance at the 20th century's bloody history would show that free markets are vastly superior to state direction in every way. Command economies turned themselves into vast prisons rather than let their people escape, and succeeded as in turning a Nation populated by Germans into a poor country. The relative economic performance since the war of Germany, east and west should give you a clue about the utility of state control of the economy - one's a mass-murdering prison with an astronomical suicide rate, and one the most successful economy in Europe. Or if that isn't enough evidence there's North and South Korea, Cuba and Spain (which had similar GDP per capita before the Cuban revolution), and so on. To suggest a market has "ethics", though is facile.
He tries to hide his obvious leftism by pretending to balance.
Moreover the truth about these matters is not in the exclusive possession of either left or right but lies between them: you cannot strengthen "social cohesion" while privatising public institutions which hold civil society together...
...why not? Who owns what is less important than whether it works...
...or by slashing public provision in order to pay for the harms caused to the polity and economy by unbridled private interest.
Which is pure Marxist hatred of any sort of mutual or private provision. It's just as easy to argue, especially now, that excessive public interest in the form of a decade of excessive state spending has damaged the economy more than the private interest.
So let's look at the individual people who make up the market, and here, you'd think Selbourne was on surer ground. However this part of his essay is a long rant about the teaching of History in schools, which went tits-up with the abolition of Grammar schools, a policy a "man of the left" like Selbourne probably supports axiomatically. Indeed the one place you can still have knowledge of Britain's history transmitted to the next generation is the fee-paying sector, whose alumni decorate the higher echelons of the professions, politics and indeed celebrity to a greater extent than at almost any time since education became universal.
As for the idea that the country has "coarsened"; anyone of any sense knows that Aristotle had the same complaint. There is nothing new under the sun.
"The difference between freedom and license has been unlearned"
and to cut a long story short, has led to a profound moral collapse, or so he says and therefore we should find "somewhere happier".
Of course "society" of the great unwashed are always looked down upon by the intellectuals who have always espoused socialism as a way to "improve" the people. The desire to improve has led the Fabians in the past to support euthanasia, condone Gulags and deliberate famines Here, it leads the likes of Selbourne to support policies around welfare and education which have condemned millions to a life rotting on benefits bereft of the skill necessary to secure gainful employment. The majority however still do pretty well, despite the state education system Selbourne describes. This is because people, in all their variety pass on values and knowledge, not just state indoctrination centres Selbourne calls 'schools'.
I, for example, don't care whether one family gets round the TV to watch Big Brother with a plate of Pizza, or whether they eat organic rocket and discuss Proust. Whether you inculcate your offspring with the...
"...talent and stamina carefully to record, and to analyse, the travails of this country in a philosophical spirit..."
...is up to you. Whilst there are people of culture and interest, and the blogosphere will show you most eloquently that there are from all walks of life and it is up to you to seek out their company. By indulging in the free movement of people and the free exchange of ideas, we can each seek out our own interpretation of this most excellent collection of islands.
You see, Selbourne fails to understand what the market is. He expects the society of erudite philosopher kings to be laid at his feet by the benign action of an all-seeing state, but the state, or "Society" whatever that is, cannot deliver that any more than it was able to deliver guns AND butter to the Soviet empire. Your choice of your society - your friends and family is every bit of a market decision as that informing the car you drive or the breakfast you eat. Markets are indeed the only freedom, properly regulated with respect for property rights and trades descriptions where appropriate do not represent
"self-degrading moral and market free-for-all",
but the triumph of freedom of choice. The fact that he bemoans that some people choose not to indulge in philosophical discourse is merely evidence of the universal leftist loathing of the people their dishonest rhetoric seeks to serve.
Now we have a Government which is seeking, however imperfectly, to return power to lower and more organic echelons of decision making, I think there's a hope that freedom from an oppressive state will lead to a renaissance of learning and a "big society". But I don't care, because in my home, and amongst my friends, we don't need a renaissance of learning or of hope and ingenuity. It never went away.
Jackart
July 22nd, 2010 3:59pm Report this commentManufacturing hasn't been run down, and markets cannot be moral or immoral.
I think the whole thing is a mish mash of leftist myths masquerading as argument.
http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2010/07/who-is-david-selbourne.html
Alex Gallagher
July 22nd, 2010 4:00pm Report this commentWe're used to Mr Angry of Turnbridge Wells and "I'm leaving the country if XXXX ever gets elected", but this is just the aimless rant of an angry man, and not much use as a source of fact or argument.
If Mr Selbourne really is a "political philospher and theorist", I hope his academic work is a bit more calmly considered.
Still, I'm sure he feels better with all that nonsense off his chest...
..maybe he should emigrate to Turnbridge Wells...
MikeF
July 22nd, 2010 4:02pm Report this commentI believe the usual convention when showing an image of the Union Flag is to portray it as if the flagpole is down the left-hand side of the flag as you look at it. Is it therefore a wry joke or merely an indication that whoever is repsonsible for the image above has never been a Boy Scout that the flag is upside down?
Andre
July 22nd, 2010 4:14pm Report this commentGo where? Obama's America? Burka free France or perhaps a boom economy like China or India.
dearieme
July 22nd, 2010 4:14pm Report this comment"There's no turning the clock back, however". Why in God's name not?
libertarian
July 22nd, 2010 4:21pm Report this commentWot he said ! I agree with Jackart.
What a load of nonsense. As an entrepreneur and business angel I can think of lots of reasons to leave the country but declining manufacturing ( WTF?) isn't one of them as 1) It isn't declining we are still the worlds 8th largest manufacturing nation 2) Even if it was I can't think of why that would make you want to leave but assume it means you want to emigrate to the worlds #1 China !!!!
The so called "market" free for all was nothing what ever to do with free markets but entirely to do with political expediency on both sides of the Atlantic offering cheap money and a housing bubble.
Mycroft
July 22nd, 2010 4:32pm Report this commentOh really! Just think back to the 70s, was the country really so much better then? Yes, some things have got worse, but many have got better, and that dreary sense of hopeless decline that I grew up with has largely disappeared. And anyhow, as has already been remarked, where would one want to go? The more ghastly aspects of modern life are no less ghastly on the Continent or the other side of the Atlantic.
Rhoda Klapp
July 22nd, 2010 4:38pm Report this commentJackart, it would be far better if it were you writing the articles and this idiot emigrating, who's stopping him I'd like to know.
The country is going to hell in a handbasket, always has been. But if you emigrate, just make that a personal thing for your own advantage, not some sort of statement. I have to stay, no other country I want to go to will have me.
Robert Taggart
July 22nd, 2010 4:39pm Report this commentSolution...
Independence ('independence' if we stay in 'europe') for England from the UKGBNI - this will help rebuild our confidence and image.
Republic - an elected head of state would help a little to instill hope in the people, any one of them (in theory !) could aspire to be president.
Secularisation - disestablish the CofE and set all faiths on an equal footing, making it clear that faith be a matter for the individual not the state.
Public Assets - these should be clearly defined and supported, this may even mean some re-nationalisation ! (utilities ?).
Private Assets - should, after the above, be taken as the 'norm' and protected from the more 'ravenous' citizens !
Finance - everyone should be entitled to a decent living, but, credit should become a 'muddy' word ! People should be encouraged to live a less materialistic lifestyle... sod the Jones's... live within your means.
Solution ? well, just a few thoughts ! The grass is always greener somewhere over the horizon ? Nope, it could just be sand !
Surmising, CALM DOWN, CHILL OUT, COOL OFF !
paul
July 22nd, 2010 4:53pm Report this comment@Jackart what an excellent post. Refuting Selbournes obvious strategy to empty the country, of people who think, in order for the socialists to gain power once more.
Geat faminines and destructive wars have been visited on many peoples and they have recovered, take Germany for example.
13 years of incompetence and social engineering, with the law used to debase: rights, perogatives and liberties may be painful. But not as dibilitating as having your infrastructure destroyed.
Great Britian will recover and find her sense of greatness once more.
The globalisation identified above will be arteries from where our: people, goods & services will once more face out to the wider world.
Nicholas Hallam
July 22nd, 2010 4:55pm Report this commentWhat Jackart said (and so well).
Torontory
July 22nd, 2010 5:14pm Report this commentCan I suggest Canada as a great place to emigrate to? Stable economy, cheap residential accommodation, English speaking with a rich diversity of skills. Only downside is the cost of wine!
GeoffM
July 22nd, 2010 5:30pm Report this commentAfter 7 years living in France (only returning to the UK to care for my mother) I can say that life outside the UK can be good, very good.
My only fear was that I didn't want to grow old in a country where, with the prospect of loseing my ability in French as age takes its toll, I may have become isolated.
I should not have worried.
Having visited UK care homes for my father where most staff barely speak English and have no cultural affinity with residents, and with the current explosion of foreign birthrates in the UK, the prospect of growing old in a country where the culture and language is different, where you are an outsider, is greater in the UK than many other places.
The author is right - get out - thankfully I have kept my house in France.
HJ
July 22nd, 2010 5:30pm Report this commentJackart:
"Manufacturing hasn't been run down.."
Actually, it has. Manufacturing output grew by 20% under the last Tory government, but output growth slowed, then output stagnated, then it fell, under New Labour . It is now about 10% lower than when Labour came to power.
In advanced economies, manufacturing output tends to grow more slowly than GDP, but it has still grown quite substantially over the last decade in every other advanced nation you can mention (with the possible exception of Italy). As half our exports (still) are of manufactured goods, this largely explains the trade deficit - services 'exports' are modest by comparison.
Despite the dramatic fall in the number of engineering students, engineering graduates in the UK have one of the highest rates of graduate unemployment.
Michael Sweeney
July 22nd, 2010 5:32pm Report this commentWhat claptrap. Where would you go? We've just had the Open, Wimbledon, our Arts are highly regarded and our Football League is loved throughout the world. We remain a magnet for many talented folks from around the planet. Europe's in a mess. The USA looks a bit sickly too if you watch the unhinged commentaries on MSNBC or Fox. China is far from free. No, for all it's faults, I still love the UK. I'm staying mate. The sooner you leave the better.
HFC
July 22nd, 2010 5:41pm Report this commentMikeF @ 4:02
Actually the diagrammatic depiction of the flag at the head of this column is a travesty.See
www.flaginstitute.org/index.php?location=7.3
Andre
July 22nd, 2010 5:46pm Report this commentTorontory -- and no free speech. I was appalled at the hounding of Ann Coulter and the trial of McLeans magazine for printing Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. I understand a comedian in Vancouver has been hauled before the sans-culottes tribunal for making anti gay remarks to a lesbian heckler. Also isn't it true you have to speak French to a get a drives license or a permy de conduire. Gone is the Canada of Robertson Davies.
Ed
July 22nd, 2010 5:51pm Report this commentWhy I am happy to have moved to France to retire
1 the health service works well even for old people
2 the lights wont go out in the winter of 2016
3 people are generally polite and kids respectful
4 they believe that if you want to get along in their country you had better learn their language
Seems good to me
Frank P
July 22nd, 2010 6:13pm Report this commentjackart
Excellent and entertaining post; thanks for your link, too; will lurk often henceforth. Sadly, can't agree with all your breezy optimism, but by God you offer a great analysis and argue it extremely well.
If you can find the time to visit here more often as well as maintain your own blog, I'm certain you'll increase your readership there. A good thing, imho. Some of us do get a bit morbid here at times and need an occasional fillip. And please note, ffs, PLEASE note; that word is spelled with an f (as in filter) and not with a ph (as in philter) the latter being a pejorative in-jibe hereupon.
Victor Southern
July 22nd, 2010 7:06pm Report this comment"the voraciousness of free-market ethics". A philosopher is essentially a wordsmith. You should learn the meaning of words so as to use them without a cacophony of errant thoughts. Clearly one cannot have voracious ethics since the voracity depicted is the lack of ethics.
But, then, who am I to argue with a philosopher-king. Good luck in Fiji or whichever country you choose.
ndm
July 22nd, 2010 7:45pm Report this commentDavid Selbourne writes:
-- The country’s broadly shared values rested, among other things, on convention, on common law and custom, on a sense of community despite social inequality, on respect for public service and on a belief in the work ethic. They have not survived the self-degrading moral and market free-for-all which has been unleashed upon the land. It has reduced the citizen to a mere customer and consumer, and has invited so many free-loaders — from duck-house parliamentary cheats to fiddlers of the welfare system, indigenous and incomers alike — to take liberties with this battered country rather than to fulfil their obligations to it.
This strikes me as a description of the Thatcher era - from the initial paraphrasing of Saint Francis to an excessive belief in the "liberating" power of the market. The coarsening of British life is plain but the blame for that should be laid not at the feet of New Labour but in the hands of a Margaret Thatcher whose name is nowhere featured in the post.
Jackart
July 22nd, 2010 8:01pm Report this commentTo be fair to HJ, he's right, and I'm right. This depends on how you account for some types of Manufacturing - whether things put together in the uk but made abroad or vice versa for example. The ONS website is catastrophically useless, I wasted half the time I spent writing my post, looking for evidence to back my assertion up. The best bet is peruse the blogger, Tim Worstall's site - he regularly makes the same point I did and links to sources.
We as a country are moving up the value chain, doing the difficult processes or those which benefit from investment, and we're leaving the repetitive work to foreigners.
It's called progress, and I think the point stands.
Thanks for the supportive comments here and on the blog
Whig
July 22nd, 2010 9:25pm Report this commentI'm sorry is it April 1st? I can't believe that the Spectator even published this utter rot. Go away 'David Selbourne' you're not wanted here or anywhere else. North Korea, I'd suggest, is where you want to be...
HairyNoddy
July 22nd, 2010 9:58pm Report this commentPath back to an England we can love again:
Kill the BBC
Secede from the UK (If Kosovo can tear itself out of Serbia then England can do the same from the UK)
Elect a government which puts the interests of the English first and foremost.
Pull out of the EU
Renounce the European Human Rights legislation.
Start kicking out illegal immigrants, foreign criminals and terrorists.
Start burning coal and trading directly with Africa, giving the finger to the EU.
George S
July 22nd, 2010 10:33pm Report this commentYou emigrate if you want to - defeatism like yours won't be missed.
Wilhelm
July 23rd, 2010 3:35am Report this commentNo mention of the odious multiculturalism cult, an idea made up by the marxists of the Frankfurt school in the 1920s who later fled to America, an idea to destable and overthrow the old order of western European nations with mass immigration and islam.
300.000 British are leaving per year, Frank Field said '' People are voting with their feet, they dont like what labour has done to the country over 13 years ( Neathergate ) and who can blame them "
Wilhelm
July 23rd, 2010 3:44am Report this commentIf I had the money I would leave, Im very upset that I am thinking about it, being forced to go into exile, to leave the land of my birth, to be cut off from my roots, culture and my fellow compatriots.
Because the country has been destroyed from with in for over 40 years by the mendacious socialists and liberals, It isnt Britain any more, that country as Scarlet O'Hara said is '' Gone with the Wind.''
Wilhelm
July 23rd, 2010 4:41am Report this commentThis is how Rome fell, they let in the immigrants with primitive cultures.
Major Plonquer 1
July 23rd, 2010 5:26am Report this commentGreetings from Beijing. I must say that this article has hit the nail squarely on its head and explains precisely why I - and many others - have buggered off to pastures greener. But not in the way you think.
The article is 100% WRONG. We didn't leave the UK because there was too much naked capitalism but because there's NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH. The UK sucks because there are too many people like this author with liberal lefty looney ideas and no real concept of how wealth gets created in the first place. What a rotten place England must be today if this is the prevailing attitude.
Shocking as it may be, the UK will never be a good place to live until you offer at least the same levels of personal choice and entrepreneurial opportunity as we do in Communist China.
I think that sums it up.
AY
July 23rd, 2010 7:50am Report this commentmarkets might be immoral as a result of forces that shape them, - as any other tool exploiting human greed, insincerity, and ignorance.
Just look at these countless armies of clerks, real estate agents, insurers, salesmen, managers, bankers, journos, IT cheaters, all these suite-n-tie burly nobodies, - souls stolen from humanity.
And then look at people who are salt of the earth, those who are paving streets, baking bread, saving lives, designing and assembling hardware. Working for much lower salary, mostly.
As fact, that is immoral.
PayDirt
July 23rd, 2010 8:39am Report this commentI have been around the world, seen lots of different peoples and cultures and still I am pleased I was born a Briton. Nothing, so far, makes me want to move away from home.
Tim Carpenter LPUK
July 23rd, 2010 8:40am Report this commentI sometimes wonder if people like Mr Selbourne is asking all those with gumption and get-up-and-go to go, so those remaining are clay. easy for the moulding.
People are incredibly resilient if they are not prevented from being so. If the State gets out of Education, ends the intrusions, within a few years a new generation will come forward and we may only be left with a "rusk belt" of an infantilised generation bracketed by the new and the older more self-reliant generations.
Unfortunately the "Big Society" appears to be a changing of the guard from one set of barely if at all accountable monopolisers for another. Dave Spart edged out by Hyacinth Bucket.
It is funny to see the Left and "Liberals" squeal at this - maybe now they know a little of how Libertarians have felt for decades, seeing the monopolies dominated by "the other". I doubt the penny will drop, however, in seeing that the least bad answer is to have no monopolies, to have any one clique/gang/crowd hold sway and each group can, if they get off there collective rear ends, do what they want to do for the community in parallel.
NeilMc
July 23rd, 2010 10:17am Report this commentAny chance Jackart and Hairy Noddy could form a coalition government.
Alexander Pelling
July 23rd, 2010 10:42am Report this commentI'm with Major Plonquer on this one. The last time I checked I found that I spend about 62% of my working life earning money that goes to the government on tax. How can I possibly be said to have excessive freedom? 62% of me is a slave.
timac
July 23rd, 2010 11:14am Report this commentCome to spain! It's still a great place to live. Cost of living is low and standard is high if you're on a low to middle income. I can't say you'll find any work, though
bm
July 23rd, 2010 11:19am Report this commentAn argument both unoriginal and incoherent. Britain in 1910 was far more laissez faire than in 2010, and in 1810 perhaps even more than that. Government hardly existed. Yet, presumably, the author thinks it was a much better country then. So what does laissez faire have to do with anything?
FF2
July 23rd, 2010 12:12pm Report this commentHas he gone yet?
HJ
July 23rd, 2010 12:43pm Report this commentbm:
"An argument both unoriginal and incoherent. Britain in 1910 was far more laissez faire than in 2010, and in 1810 perhaps even more than that. Government hardly existed. Yet, presumably, the author thinks it was a much better country then."
This is a strange argument. Economies tend to grow and become richer. How do you know that we wouldn't have become much richer still with a smaller government? The evidence that countries with relatively small governments grow faster is extremely strong. Our growth rate is now far lower than it was then.
Lord grytpype-thynne
July 23rd, 2010 1:39pm Report this commentThe Spectator seems to be going the same way as the Daily Telegraph, in that very curious articles from hopelessly left writers appear with more and more frequency.Selborne's sentiments, hopes and analysis are hopelessly flawed, contemtible and cowardly.Ley us all hope he emigrates for good to his idea of nirvana for the rest of us
Wilhelm
July 23rd, 2010 1:48pm Report this commentBM
I dont think there was 5 million African and muslim immigrants living in England in 1810, son.
MikeF
July 23rd, 2010 1:53pm Report this commentHFC - You are quite right, the flag depicted here is not so much upside down as simply plain wrong. There should be two broad white diagonals uppermost on one side i.e. above the red diagonals and two broad white diagonals below the red diagonals on the other. This abomination has three of the first the and only two of the other.
Memo to Spectator staff - is someone going to do something about this?
Osred
July 23rd, 2010 1:58pm Report this commentTry being an internal emigrant first before you go.
MikeF
July 23rd, 2010 3:16pm Report this commentI meant, of course, to say only one of the other type of diagonal.
Ivor Morgan
July 24th, 2010 11:55am Report this commentThose with guts always stay.
Lucas
July 25th, 2010 10:00am Report this commentI have lived half (almost exactly) my life abroad and still spend half the year travelling abroad for reasons of work. In 1992 I went to live in beautiful, dynamic, fun Barcelona. By 2000 I knew what "scratch the surface" meant and came back to beautiful, dynamic, fun London. Despite flooding our country with third world immigration and lowering standards, as have the countries of the continent - Spain is certainly no different, England is a great place to be. I am here to stay.
Mike
July 25th, 2010 11:29am Report this commentMost emmigrants from Britain not only take their skills with them, but for pensioners they also take a big chunk of change. My own estimate after selling up in the UK plus adding my pension pots and state pensions to the financial mix, it probably totals in excess of half a million pounds or more lost to the UK economy forever. Multiply that by the many thousands that leave each year and tens of billions are lost each year never to return.
I gave up on the UK after Liebour wrecked the country but many of this new crew in power seem just as bad. At a certain point you realise nothing will change and youre better off leaving a dysfunctional country thats lost its way and hitch a ride in another country that still has a culture to be proud of.
Sam ARMSTRONG
July 25th, 2010 9:15pm Report this commentIt's not over yet. There is still a way back
MacTurk
July 26th, 2010 2:03pm Report this commentMr Selbourne would appear to fit the definition of a neo-conserbvative(neo-con). In effect, he is a leftist/marxist who has been mugged by reality.
The article is such a silly, hopeless, woe-is-we whine about how Britain is not the country of his youth. And so?
And it is not as if there is anything new here; the same type of "Doom! Doom, I tell you" article is being published almost every day in "The Daily Mail". I fondly remember Peregrine Worsthorne's editorials in "The Sunday Telegraph". They were very often about the total moral collapse of Western civilization(it used to arrive at Platform 9, or was that the Hogwarts Express?).
This article is not some much Hogwarts as hogwash.
Kev Cooper
July 27th, 2010 6:48am Report this commentI totally agree now, as I totally agreed in 2001 when I emigrated to New Zealand and subsequently Australia, where I now live. I saw the future and it was Blair and his squalid gang and it scared the living shit out of me. Now it is Cameron and toadies, and I believe in 2 years he will be as hated as Blair was. I'm afraid the British public is nopw predisposed to hating everyone in politics and I fear for the future of Britain unless a Margaret Thatcher like figure rises from the slime of Westminister and clears the lot of them out. I really can, for the first time, see Britain as a Failed State.
sean schofield
July 27th, 2010 12:47pm Report this commentThere is an ideal country for the gone to the dogs Basil Fawlty types, Burma or Myanmar as its now called, strong military junta, diabolical human rights abuses ,outragous behaviour all sanctioned and approved by right wing maniacs, you lot would feel very much in a home from home situation, could you also take your mate Theodore hang em castrate them flog em with you please.
Evie Conrad
December 10th, 2010 10:00am Report this commentThere was a lot of truth, in what David said. If some are accusing of him of being a virtual fascist and others of being a communist, then perhaps he got the balance right!
As usual, people are asking the wrong questions. The important battle is not between blue, red and yellow: it is between collectivists [specifically corporatists] and individualists.
All oligarchic statists (whether supporters of Big Business or Big Government) are equally awful and equally determined to erase democratic values.
England used to be a liberal country, in the broad sense. In the British context, "liberal" meant "individualist". [In America, it means "anti-Conservative".] Now, this septic isle is a corporate bureaucracy, of the kind envisaged by Mosley and Mussolini (both of whom, like many fascists, had been socialists).
Only large, powerful groups and institutions [the ravenously greedy NHS Monster, kleptocrat defence contractors, downright evil pharmaceutical companies, the bloodsucking medical profession, self-serving universities, the Gestapo of ACPO and MI5, foreign governments through their agents of influence within Whitehall and the media, the tedious gay lobby, the mad feminist lobby, the scary Muslim lobby, the ridiculous Christian lobby etc etc] have any influence at all.
Those groups are the clients of the corporate state and, undoubtedly, if the House of Lords is abolished, seats in a new Senate will be carved up between the "key partners" [civil service speak for "vested interests"].
The whole state has been hijacked, with the result that the lives of invidual citizens are worth less than the jobs, profits and status of the "elites". This process got under way, a very long time ago. Ordinary people never had much political clout but, at least, for a few decades, they were generally treated with respect.
Thatcher claimed to be a classical liberal and disciple of Hayek but this was empty rhetoric. Basically, what Thatcherism [which was created by about a dozen men in suits, led by Keith Joseph and MI6 man, Airey Neave] sought to do was to return Britain to the 1930s, when the "right sort" of people owned and ran everything.
Monopolies were, in the view of the architects of Thatcherism, the rightful property of the pre-war ruling class: they resented the fact that they didn't have the power and influence their fathers had enjoyed. [Here is the crucial difference between them and Enoch Powell. He was an old-fashioned Liberal Unionist, who regarded all elements of the corporate state with great suspicion and supported free enterprise, not large-scale monopoly capitalism.]
Neo-cons wanted to exercise power through capitalist monopolies. Old Labour wanted to exercise patronage and preserve union power through state monopolies. True liberals recognised that there shouldn't be any bloody monopolies!
Now that Britain has the same distribution of wealth that it did before the General Strike in 1926, it would be fair to say that Thatcherism and its continuation, Blairism, have been incredibly successful. The millions of unemployed, chronically ill, abandoned elderly, people on subsistence wages, who have no hope of a better life, and couples, struggling to hold down jobs and keep roofs over their heads, might disagree.
Let us aim for the ideal of the state as a neutral umpire in disputes between free and (politically) equal citizens. The Human Rights Act is not the problem: it's the corporatists, who use it and the Data Protection Act as false excuses for all sorts of crimes. "Rights" should mean "civil liberties". We need more of them and need to protect them. A system, based on group rights, is bound to place some people above others; the religious minority before the secular majority; speakers of minority languages before speakers of English; women before men; children before everyone.
It is the cult of children, which is most destructive of all. They are allowed to do whatever they like, until they are about eight years old, by which time it's too late to instill decent values into them. When they encounter people, who object to them urinating in public, covering everything in graffiti, sniffing glue or setting fire to bus shelters, they resent the "interference" and often turn violent.
However, the show ain't over till it's over. With a bit of luck, the Euro Zone will disintegtrate or be reduced to a German-Dutch-French-Italian rump (in which the currency will increase in value, making Britain's exports more attractive) and the movement to create a superstate, governed from Brussels, will grind to a permanent halt. In the long term, Britain would be far better off joining NAFTA (an idea supported by a sizeable number of people in Congress).
There is still hope for Britain- unless Greenland thaws out and the Gulf Stream packs up completely. If that happens, the last three weeks will seem mild and I'll be off Down Under, mate.
Michelle
August 11th, 2011 10:09pm Report this commentThis is so sad in light of the year that has passed.. and I emigrated this year to the US, where I can only assume the police would be heavy handed enough to stop riots before they got out of hand and generally I feel that the youth isn't so disaffected though I cannot put my finger on the real reason for the disparity between our nations. Perhaps the optimism of the american dream stills lives in their hearts and they can picture a better future for themselves or maybe its just that welfare is really only covering those truly in need. I hope Britain can find its way and that other nations don't follow this trend. I believe that the traditional mass education system is largely to blame, it was designed to educate us just enough to work in factories in the industrial revolution and cannot cope with the changing times. Right now our children will be much better off learning to build their own houses and grow their own food than going off to college.
Long Zheng
October 22nd, 2011 2:37pm Report this comment*SIGH* Yet ANOTHER propaganda article bashing the UK in every single possible bad way! Why can't we just simply appreciate what we have got in the UK and spare a thought for those countries where it is like hell?
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