I want to show a few extracts from the article in case you can't see over the paywall.
"Underpinning almost everything Britain has done since 1945 is a belief among most of its people that we are special, different, important. Many middle-sized nations cherish this conceit in some degree — think of France — but few allow it to influence their political courses as doggedly as do Winston Churchill’s inheritors.
"World War II still dominates British self-image. As a historian of the conflict, I am sometimes driven to despair by my fellow-countrymen’s determination to preserve nationalistic myths about it, rather than to acknowledge harsh realities. The phrase “Grand Alliance,” coined by Churchill, fitted the glorious, largely fictional pageant of which he became the most influential literary begetter, through his six-volume history of the conflict.
"In an important study of Britain’s relationship with the EU published in 1998, the journalist Hugo Young, himself a passionate European, wrote of Conservative Party antics: “The world they defended seemed … to be nostalgic and narrow; assailed by demons, racked by existential confusion. They were incapable of absorbing the possibility that Europe, by immensely strengthening the postwar local economies, might have been the making of the nation-state in the modern world.”
"Almost half a century ago, in 1973, the British people reluctantly acquiesced in joining the European Economic Community only because they had exhausted all other possibilities of extending their influence abroad. While U.K. governments enjoyed close relationships with Washington, none doubted that we were immeasurably subordinate to the U.S.
"When Britain’s empire was lost, it sought instead to sustain global reach through mastery of the Commonwealth, to which most of its former colonies and dominions belonged. This institution has proved to possess a ritual significance which pleases the Queen, its official head, but has yielded only marginal economic benefits and negligible political ones.
"It is pretty potty, of course, that a middle-ranking offshore island, with little indigenous industrial capacity, should aspire to condescend to other nations. But the French social historian Francois Bedarida, who possessed a deep understanding of the British displayed in several books, was not wrong when he wrote a generation ago that “the train of prejudice” against France ran through British souls, and was “still on the rails.”
"Many British people, at the onset of this year of our Lord 2021, still sincerely suppose that, because we were on the winning side in 1918 and 1945, while most Continental nations were humiliated or shamed, we are superior beings. Michael Howard observed after the 2016 Brexit referendum: “We shall be condemned to become global harlots, doing business with any regime that will accommodate us, however unpleasant.”
I think all we can hope for is that Brexit finally shatters the delusion that we are 'great' and that Europe has somehow held us back from our rightful place as leader of the free world. Britain begins to look like the Jack Russel of international trade and diplomacy amongst a lot of Alsatians and Rottweilers.
Many lessons are very soon to be learned about ourselves.
Perhaps the next immediate one will be how not to manage a pandemic. Christina Pagel, a professor at UCL, tweeted scarily last night about the new variant of covid-19 and the way new infections are shooting up "everywhere" including in London where they have had tier 4 lockdown measures for weeks. Don't read it if you are nervous about what's happening across the country:
THREAD - Covid-19 in England.Things are going from very bad to much worse.Here is where we are in 9 tweets. 1/9— Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) January 3, 2021
She says we are going from bad to worse with no sign that tier 4 measures are having any impact at all on the spread of the disease. NHS hospitals now have 32% more covid patients than at the April peak.
Pagel adds:
"Admissions are also now at April peak levels - 'on top' of this much higher occupancy 'and' cases are 'still' going up which they were not at April peak. We are still, at best, 2 weeks from peak - and that's 'if' decisive action is taken 'now'.
The emphases are I should add all hers and in the original tweet. She says, "Admissions are rising everywhere. Steeper than they did in the autumn. No sign of slowdown - even in London, 2 weeks after tier 4 started. I can't tell you how scary I find this. We are not even slowing this thing down - let alone reversing it."
She retweeted a graph showing how the number of cases per million population in the UK is rising now at near vertical rates:
The UK’s Covid-19 curve is now almost vertical. pic.twitter.com/ZtRCJRDzwA
— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) January 3, 2021
Hospitals in London (London!) are apparently running low on oxygen and are having to ration patients.
It has never been a good time to catch coronavirus but now is the worst so far. People who enjoyed Christmas with relatives and who caught covid-19 as a result are already infected and some of them will need hospital treatment in the next few weeks. Treatment that may not be available because wards are full of other covid patients. Many of them will die.
If you were being careful before - redouble your efforts. Up here in North Yorkshire we have relatively low rates but this will almost certainly increase.
The impact of Brexit will soon be felt in supply chains and the two great mismanaged issues of our time are about to collide with a vengeance. It is not impossible to see a real national emergency coming.
