The joys of Neglexit

The new political buzzword is ‘Neglexit’: the state of being in which, because the government is so wrapped up in Brexit negotiations, Britain is barely being governed. No big, visionary new policies are being launched. Gone are the days when every parliamentary session included an NHS Bill, a Criminal Justice Bill or an Education Bill.

‘The UK is stuck in political and bureaucratic torpor. The country — as an administrative entity — has virtually stopped working… ministers just don’t have the time to attend to the needs and ambitions of ordinary citizens,’ said a report from Bloomberg Businessweek. ‘Theresa May’s flagship EU Withdrawal Bill has taken up 273 hours of legislators’ time — 17 times the average spent on other bills.’

How dreadful that sounds, I thought, as I crawled in my car towards a box junction last week. Then I realised I was at one of those junctions where the traffic lights had stopped working and no traffic police had yet arrived to take control. That very junction was not being governed. All of us crawling cars were having to make our own decisions about when to make the leap of faith across the yellow criss-crossing. We waved, we thanked, we let other people have their go. Was this, in microcosm, our non-governed country making a perfectly good job of managing on our own without being directed from on high? Was this ‘anarchy’ in the best sense of the word: anarchy meaning not chaos, but, literally ‘without chief / ruler’, which some see as the supreme utopia?

Not being governed is appalling, of course, if you’ve been waiting two years for the money that was ‘pledged’ or ‘set aside’ for your flood defences to materialise, and for the work to start, as is happening in Cumbria. It’s appalling if you’re in temporary accommodation, waiting for a new council house that hasn’t yet been built and now probably won’t be until 2028.

For many of us, though, who are trundling along in our small traffic jams, along our roads where the rubbish is still being collected, towards hospitals that still look after you, there’s a sense that Neglexit isn’t all bad.