In the cultured, metropolitan circles of contemporary Britain you are just as likely to find yourself in the midst of a stimulating conversation about a new opera or play as you are a dreary sneer-fest about how dreadful this nation is. About what a laughing stock we have become in the world, what utter, pathetic fools government ministers are, and what a mess we are in since leaving the EU. Everything we do, according to these people, can only ever be unethical, craven, stupid, corrupt.
If only this endless, haranguing anti-Britain perspective was just tiresome. But it is mad as well as bad, a pathology so tenacious and distorting that it seeks to turn the best things about us into further evidence of our rottenness. It is a fatal attraction to making enormous toxic mountains out of molehills.
There is more than a shred of Remainiac venom in the relentless condemnation of Britain still afoot. It’s there in Partygate, a matter so trivial, in the scheme of things, that no other ruling party in the world would be brought to its knees by it. It’s there in the reaction to the Rwanda asylum plan (a policy that has yet to be pulled off without disaster, but which, based on initial reports into what the asylum seekers can expect there, is not as awful and inhumane as the Britain-haters want to believe). And it’s there, mystifyingly, in our handling of Ukraine.
Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.
Look at France, convulsing with violent social and economic strife so dire that it is now on the brink of voting in either Emmanuel Macron, a man who is loathed by most of the country, or Marine Le Pen, considered by many as a far right stick of dynamite. Would a scandal over cake really gain traction there?
What about in the US, where Biden opens his mouth only to put his foot in it, and each day sees a new low in America’s bitter, self-immolating culture wars? I don’t think Americans would have the bandwidth or interest in an illicit lockdown gathering, what with their other fish to fry.
Partygate is not only insignificant next to what else is going on, it also misrepresents Britain’s Covid response in order, once again, to make us seem like fools. The funny thing is, as those now riding the Partygate wagon used to wail, the British response was actually seen by many as too soft-touch.
They make it sound like Britons were truly under the lock and key of an authoritarian state, when really we had one of the shortest and, taking the whole pandemic together, least onerous lockdowns. We never had to fill in forms to be inspected by police if we wanted to step outside our front doors, as happened in Italy, Spain and Germany. We weren’t followed by drones to the supermarket, as also happened on the Continent. We’ve never had to show vaccine paperwork to go on trains, or in restaurants or museums, as was the case in many US states and again, Europe. And we were one of the first Western countries to shed restrictions entirely.
In short, the fashion to insist that Boris and co are “criminals” unfit to run the country, or to handle the Ukraine crisis, is pure topsy-turveydom and hyperbole. Comedian Nish Kumar’s wilfully stupid, wildly popular tweet sums up the problem neatly. “If the Prime Minister didn’t know a birthday party was violating his own f** lockdown rules maybe it’s not a great idea to have him in charge of a country during a f** war.” This was liked by no fewer than 118,600 people.
It is sad, really, that this is all they can see. That in their myopic world, it matters not that in the face of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the daily butchery of innocents and existential threat to the West resulting from it, Britain’s response has been the strongest in the West. That our contribution of aid and weaponry, which has already led to important victories, may well staunch the worst of the Russian threat. That last week Boris actually turned up in Kyiv to meet with Zelensky, a gutsier move than any of his counterparts have managed, and garnered praise from Zelensky for “helping more” than other leaders in the West.
If we get rid of Boris now because of wine and sandwiches, Ukraine, and world peace, also takes a hit.
But the bigger truth is this: Britain is not rubbish, not even close – a truth that is self-evident in comparison with the rest of the West and indeed the world.
We are not perfect. The Government often appears mystifyingly silly, as well as wrong-headed, on numerous issues.
But compared to what else is out there? I think we’ve got it pretty good.
