The British Empire is now experiencing a drastic decline as they prioritize a soft power that banks on promoting a culture no one wants to emulate.
It was during a Tory rally on July 20, 1957, organized to commemorate 25 years of public service by Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton as MP for the constituency of bucolic Mid Bedfordshire, that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan uttered his famous pronouncement that Britons had “never had it so good.” Having ridden into office on a wave of popular discontent with the “doctrinaire nightmare” of Labourite socialism, Macmillan could proudly direct his compatriots to “go around the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime — nor indeed in the history of this country.”
Go around that same country today, to mouldering industrial towns like Bradford and Luton, and you will search in vain for the state of contented prosperity described by Macmillan, though you will find, on the litter-bestrewn high streets, plenty of pound shops and vape shops, Dawah centers and remittance services, and Palestinian flags as far as the eye can see. As for the farms Macmillan praised so highly, they are dwindling in number and size with farmers being crushed by lower output prices, reduced yields, and skyrocketing costs, and subjected to a Labour dekulakization campaign redolent of Maoism or Stalinism. The cost-of-living crisis is in full swing. The NHS is in shambles. Schools are crumbling, literally and figuratively, before their pupils’ and instructors’ eyes. Violent crime and public disorder incidents are on the rise. The Victorian-era sewer network has finally reached a breaking point, leaking untreated sewage into lakes, rivers, and seas at an alarming rate. Climate change policies are close to achieving something unprecedented: a “zero-industrial society.” The British Armed Forces are suffering from a recruitment crisis, stockpile shortages, and a total lack of combat preparedness. The Chelsea Partridges have shut down (arguably the most unkindest cut of all). The official portrait of King Charles III, appropriately enough, looks like an insane fever dream.
