How Generation X turned Britain barking mad

What have the following got in common? David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Liz Truss, Nicola Sturgeon, Matt Hancock, Sadiq Khan, Angela Rayner, Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, Professor Neil Ferguson, Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard and Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the Chief of the Defence Staff.   

The answer is that they were all born between 1965 and 1980, making them Generation Xers, and they have all turned Britain barking mad. I say this with a heavy heart, for to my eternal shame I also belong to Generation X.   

The names I listed above are only the tip of the iceberg, a very large iceberg into which the Good Ship Britain has sailed and, as a result, is now listing badly and in danger of sinking.   

In a vituperative and wholly justified article in Thursday’s Daily Telegraph Allister Heath described a Britain that is ‘descending into chaos’. He enumerated the reasons why nothing works anymore, concluding that ‘the government is so uncomfortable with having to govern that it appears desperate to give up power’.   

It is no coincidence that Britain began this descent into chaos a decade ago as Xers started replacing Boomers in positions of political, academic and cultural power. The problem is that Generation Xers have never really grown up. We remain children. We are emotionally immature and intellectually lightweight.  

Covid was the acme of Xers’ ineptitude. When Hong Kong flu swept Britain in 1969-70, killing tens of thousands, the response of the government – most of whom had fought in the war, including health secretary David Ennals – was one of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. The response in 2020 was ‘panic and lockdown’. Nearly all those responsible for formulating Britain’s Covid strategy (I use the term lightly) were Xers: Hancock, Sturgeon, Dominic Cummings, Chris Whitty, Neil Ferguson and Catherine Calderwood, the chief medical officer for Scotland. Boris Johnson, strictly speaking, is a Baby Boomer, being born in the summer of 1964, but given the way he governed the country his general incompetency marks him out as one of us. Most lacked the discipline to lead by example in adhering to their own draconian rules.  

Nor have Xers shown much leadership in fighting the culture wars. On the contrary, men and women who one might have expected to stand up for tradition and history have waved the white flag.  

As war rages in Europe, the chief of the defence staff and the RAF can’t stop banging on about diversity. And Sir Stephen Lovegrove (born 1966), the national security adviser, has ordered Britain’s intelligence services to check their white privilege and avoid terms such as ‘manpower’ for fear of giving offence.   

As for the police, where does one start? Okay, so it tends to be Millennial officers dancing the Macarena and skateboarding with crusties, but their antics have been enabled by Gen X chief constables.  

Similarly, who is to blame for the growing censoriousness of students? Young men and women have always been strident, but once upon a time their elders educated them in the error of their impressionable ways. Today, academia is in the hands of Xers but we are too meek to stand up to the campus mobs who effectively run our seats of learning.  

Generation X is also doing a good job ruining the arts. When Douglas Murray writes of the ‘New Vandals’, as he does in this week’s Spectator, he references the Pitt Rivers Museum, Tate Britain and the Welcome Collection. You won’t need me to tell you that the directors of all three belong to Generation X.  

In August 2020 the Guardian published an article entitled ‘Boomers vs Millennials: let’s call off the hostilities’. The author was an Xer, issuing her message from what she described as ‘generational war’s Switzerland’ where ‘memes portray us as Karen from Will & Grace, sharing sweets with a child as conflict rages around us.’ Generation Xers are so insipid they leave little impression. Millennials rage against Boomers unaware that Xers even exist. In 2019, a 25-year-old New Zealand MP, Chloe Swarbrick, was challenged during a parliamentary speech by Todd Muller. She dismissed him with a sneering ‘OK Boomer’. In fact, Muller is a Generation Xer, but to Millennials such as Swarbrick anyone over the age of 45 is a Baby Boomer instead.  

If one was feeling benevolent one could excuse some of our worthlessness on an accident of birth. Xers left school in the late 80s and early 90s; remember then? It was, so we were told, ‘The End of History’. Communism was dead, killed off by liberal democracy. I went to university in 1990 and all we did was drink and dance. No one went on protest marches because there was nothing to protest about. We were still singing along to The Specials’ ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ long after his release from prison in 1990.  

Perhaps that is why a disproportionately high number of people gluing themselves to motorways in 2022 hail from Generation X. They are making up for what they missed out on as students. Similarly, there is a touch of student zeal in the way Generation X MPs have embraced the cause of Net Zero, worshipping the ground on which young Greta walks. Ideologically hollow at university, when Xers went out into the wider world we wore our smug ignorance with pride. Who do you think invented celebrity culture? The advent of the internet then accelerated our dumbing down. So when the new millennium ushered in economic upheaval, Islamic terrorism, pandemics, Chinese expansion and Vladimir Putin, the visceral vacuity of Generation X was painfully exposed.  

Whatever one’s view on Thatcher, Benn, Tebbit or Brown, at least they had convictions. Today there is a barely a rizla paper between a Tory and a socialist. They are characterised by inanity not ideology, and above all by the fact that most come from Generation X.