A disunited kingdom

Hasan Suroor

WAY back in 1997, in a rare undiplomatic public outburst, the then Prime Minister, IK Gujral, dismissed Britain as a “third rate power” after its foreign secretary Robin Cook gratuitously offered to mediate in the Kashmir dispute, apparently at Pakistan’s instigation. At the time, for all its long-faded imperial glory, Britain still enjoyed a modicum of international standing and goodwill. Its true decline has begun now; more than half a century after it lost the empire, the sun has really started to set on the British Isles, with Brexit marking the last straw on an exhausted camel’s back. British economy continues to struggle after a decade of harsh austerity following the 2008 financial crash which led to millions of job losses and widespread impoverishment. Last year, it registered its worst performance since 2012; ironically, the EU, which it is leaving, grew at its fastest rate in a decade. 

In addition, Britain’s chronically poor productivity levels remain the lowest among advanced European economies; and manufacturing has all but disappeared. Essentially, Britain is running on empty, propelled only by its services industry concentrated mainly in London’s financial hub called the City. And now the City’s future too hangs in the balance with a number of big international corporations threatening to move their headquarters to Paris or Frankfurt after Brexit if a future UK-EU deal deprives them of the advantages of being in London. 

Things are equally bleak in other areas: cash-starved public services are at breaking point; social mobility is in free fall; the generational divide is widening; and social tensions are boiling over after the xenophobic Brexit campaign. In the 1970s, Britain was dubbed the “sick man of Europe” after a long and crippling industrial crisis. Today, the crisis is of a different nature but no less threatening for it raises troubling questions about its future after Brexit, which some have called a form of “controlled suicide”. In a withering farewell critique, the New York Times’ outgoing London bureau chief, Steven Erlanger, quoted “puzzled experts” and “Britain’s friends” as describing  it as a “hollowed-out country”, “ill at ease with itself”, “deeply provincial”, and engaged in “controlled suicide”. His own verdict on a country where he lived for nine years was that it was akin to “a modest-size ship...heading to nowhere, while on deck, fire has broken out and the captain — poor Theresa May — is lashed to the mast, without the authority to decide whether to turn to port or to starboard”. 

At best of times, any external criticism tends to bring out the hidden nationalist in us, so Erlanger’s  piece has made even  liberal Britons — otherwise extremely critical of the state of their nation — rush to rally round the flag. “Brits don’t deserve to be damned by a Yankee”, read the headline of a comment piece in The Times by its columnist Alice Thomson. But, after bravely attempting to “challenge” Erlanger’s verdict, even she  ended up admitting that the country was going through a bad patch though it “doesn’t want anyone else (read, foreigner) to start pummelling it gratuitously”. In their more dispassionate moments, most Britons acknowledge the mess the country is in — and the fact that the mess is most likely to get worse, post-Brexit. A leaked official study, which considered several post-Brexit scenarios ranging from the best to the worst, found that in every possible situation — including the best — Britain will be worse off for many years to come. 

Meanwhile, the Brexit process itself has got mired in a series of controversies over a lack of clarity in London about the precise nature of the deal it wants in terms of its future relationship with the EU. The self-proclaimed British deadline to leave the EU is March 29, 2019, but nothing is settled amid almost daily rows with Brussels. The ruling Tory party is split down the middle between those who want a “hard” Brexit, which means pulling out altogether from the European single market and the tariff-free zone called the Customs Union, and “soft” Brexiteers who believe Britain should continue to retain some sort of access to both the single market and the custom union. Theresa May, whose own job is on the line after last year’s election debacle, is both unable and unwilling to assert her authority over the warring factions. Her own lack of vision has made her a figure of ridicule in Europe.

Apparently, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, likes to tell with much relish a joke to convey her frustration with the British PM’s robotic style and absence of ideas. “Every time we meet, I ask her what kind of Brexit deal does Britain want so that we can move the negotiations forward. To which her reply is always the same: ‘Make me an offer.’ To which I say: But it’s you who have decided to leave and must tell us what you want. But she doesn’t seem to get it.” At home, too, May is facing criticism with one commentator calling her “a black hole that is sucking the life out of the government”. Her post-Brexit roadmap called “Building a Britain fit for future” has been dismissed as “pathetic” and “anaemic”. “There’s no vision, no plan. It’s just about survival”, one minister is reported saying, adding: “There’s a whiff of death about it all. If someone texted me now that she had resigned, I wouldn’t be that surprised.” The New Statesman described her premiership as “a joyless act of managing decline” alienating both Remainers and Brexiteers. 

But Brexit is a symptom of a deeper anxiety about Britain’s place in a rapidly changing world as it finds itself increasingly marginalised  with even its much-vaunted “special relationship” with America running out of steam. Indeed, even its right to continue to sit at the top table at the UN is being questioned by new emerging powers, including India. Attempts to revive Britain’s old buccaneer spirit through stunts like Brexit is a nationalist fantasy. The reality is that it has fallen off the top league but can’t quiet come to terms with its reduced circumstances. Britain is at a historic crossroads and fits Antonio Gramsci’s description of a crisis that “consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”.

At a less philosophical level, the crumbling Palace of Westminster — the seat of British Parliament — has become a metaphor for a crumbling Britain.

The writer is a London-based commentator