The NHS isn’t working. (This is in the UK.) The dental service isn’t working. The Home Office isn’t working (especially with regard to immigration). Local government isn’t working. The Police aren’t working (properly). The Army is grossly undermanned. Now we learn that HMRC (our tax authority) isn’t working either: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/hmrc.

And all because of underfunding; starting with Chancellor Osborne’s ‘austerity’ programme ten years ago – or Thatcher’s privatisations before him – and the unstated purpose behind those measures: which was the dismantling of the welfare state. That the ideals underlying that great institution are also no longer working, is shown by the widening wealth gap that is developing in the country; again, it seems, as a deliberate strategy – or at least a happily tolerated side-effect – on the part of our rulers.

Some of this I can relate to from personal experience. I’ve posted about my problems with the NHS before; hence my current refuge in Sweden. Just now I’m being hounded by whichever computers are currently running HMRC, to pay them the £5000 they’re demanding of me, but which I certainly don’t owe. (No details here – too boring – except to say that I’ve paid the £5000 anyway, just to get HMRC off my back. I’m hoping for a refund if and when a sentient human being comes into their office to check on the robots, and reply to my letters.)

I’m luckier than most – getting along OK on my (half-) pension, with Swedish doctors, and not needing the police or the Army, yet; but I can fully understand the discontent that currently pervades the country, leading our prime minister two days ago to warn, quite dramatically (from a podium hurriedly erected outside No.10 Downing Street, which led everyone to expect a major announcement, like a war or an election), against ‘extremism’, ‘fake news’ and the prospect of what he called ‘mob rule’ in Britain (https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-tipping-into-mob-rule-says-prime-minister-rishi-sunak/). By ‘extremism’ he clearly didn’t mean extreme neo-liberalism; by ‘fake news’ his own government’s lies; and by ‘mob rule’ he seems to have been alluding to the protest demonstrations that are taking place weekly in London in support of the Palestinians. These have been described by ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman as ‘hate marches’; but by all reliable accounts they have been 99% peaceful, disciplined, friendly and good-tempered, (Even Jews are joining in.)

It really is now looking like the beginning of a collapse of the post-war ‘social contract’ in Britain, which this government is planning to meet in traditional right-wing – even quasi-fascist – ways: bearing down on political demonstrations – ‘you’ve made your point’ (that’s the current Home Secretary) – and creating an easily-identified ‘enemy’, in the guise of migrants and ‘Islamism’, to divert blame from the real authors of our woes.

Which are, of course, the present government, which I think my lifetime’s research into modern British history qualifies me to opine is the most clueless and even frankly ridiculous of the past two centuries’; and secondly, the broader and more impersonal factors that this government is facing, which are evidently quite beyond its intelligence and experience to understand, let alone to counter. In the meantime we have to put up with crazy policies (Rwanda!), poor healthcare, a raggle-taggle army, on-going economic decline, overworked and sometimes corrupt police officers, no close allies, no-one to respond to my tax queries; and – to help us all out – a B-list cast of government ministers who wouldn’t look out of place in a ‘Carry-On’ film. Will the expected Labour government be much better? We can only hope.