What the Hell, Britain?
Once the world’s greatest empire, now spiraling into madness and idiocy
I recently wrote in a Medium comment that although the fall of Great Britain is bad for the West, it won’t matter too much, as it has already taken steps to burn its bridges.
I’ll agree with the reply I received. It’s painful to watch.
Obviously, Great Britain as an empire was often atrociously bad and responsible for much bloodshed and injustice (not unlike its successor now and pretty much all of its historical predecessors). But the decline of Great Britain in the past few years from a major player in European (if not world) affairs to an isolated, borderline failed state is really depressing.
And after incredulously watching the new administration literally shooting itself in the foot, causing another disaster on top of an almost no-deal Brexit that will take years to recover from, the natural outcome was for Liz Truss to resign.
All this took me back to the “glory days” of the left-wing SYRIZA government in Greece and the nightmarish negotiations with the EU, when everything was on the table: even a unilateral Grexit and a return to a new drachma currency. Thankfully, these wild scenarios were never realized. But historically, modern Greece has had a much more volatile and tortured political history than Great Britain, including 2 coups, bankruptcies, and numerous wars in less than 200 years. Interestingly, the official collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, under whose occupation my country had languished for four centuries, came right as the British Empire reached its peak.
Even through its own imperial decline, Great Britain was always seen as, if nothing else, a beacon of stability in a changing world. Even the late Queen with her incredible 70-year reign seemed to be a perpetual feature of global politics.
And yet, it took just 45 days for Liz Truss’ government to collapse, a historical low for a British Prime Minister, following Boris Johnson’s resignation that had already made the world wonder: how in the name of all that is sane did he not resign any sooner?
And now we hear that no other than Boris Johnson is among the… top contenders to become the “new” Prime Minster of Britain.
What the Hell, Britain?
Am I the only one who’s honestly concerned about the mental state of the world right now? Didn’t Boris have ample chance to demonstrate his remarkable lack of capability to rule his country already? Must he have another chance to ruin the UK or is he just the boogeyman to make the other leading candidate, Rishi Sunak who would be the first non-white PM in Great Britain’s history, more palatable to some?
I can’t know the answer, but even the idea of “COVID-party animal” Boris Johnson returning to office so soon after his resignation seems baffling and terrifying to me, in equal measure.
What’s next? Trump’s reelection in 2024?
Judging from what we’ve witnessed so far in this 21st century, I’d say anything is possible. And not at all in a good way.
