‘Crisis Britain’ is anti-Brexit propaganda that serves the left’s politics of victimhood
Politicians peddle a narrative of crisis but our nation is not a basket case
THE spirit of Private Frazer from Dad’s Army seems to hang over modern Britain.
“We’re doomed,” was his memorably bleak catchphrase, and his grim outlook echoes across the airwaves today.
In gloomy tones, we are constantly told our country is on the verge of economic disaster or environmental catastrophe.
According to the narrative eagerly peddled by much of the media, there is a crisis or a timebomb on every front, from mental health to obesity, from welfare to housing.
In this climate of despair, our politics are said to have been broken by Brexit, our jobs plagued by insecurities and our public services wrecked by underfunding.
Supposedly most of us are too fat, poor, abandoned and depressed to lead fulfilling lives. But this tale of woe is grossly overdone.
The British people are far more contented than is suggested by the gloomy politicians, commentators and experts. We take our inspiration not from cheerless Frazer but from the Monty Python song Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.
Only this week Ian Stewart, the chief economist in the UK for the global consultancy network Deloitte, pointed out that recent surveys of public opinion “all tell the same story.
“Happiness has, indeed, been rising in the UK.”
He cited the Office for National Statistics’ own authoritative index of well-being — based annually on the responses of 150,000 people — which last year rose to its highest ever level since the study began in 2012.
JOBS MIRACLE
Just as telling is the latest snapshot from the Resolution Foundation think-tank, which revealed that 93 per cent of us are very or fairly satisfied with our lives, the best rating for contentment since the series started in the 1970s. Even the UN, an organisation that usually likes to talk down Britain, admits that happiness here has increased significantly since 2015.
Such findings blow apart the idea that our nation is gripped by malaise and misery. Britain is doing far better than the merchants of anguish pretend.
A central reason for the increased happiness of the population is the strong performance of the economy, which continues to defy the predictions that the vote for Brexit would be a calamity.
This week new labour market figures showed no let-up in the British jobs miracle, with the rate of unemployment falling to just 3.8 per cent, its lowest for 45 years.
Left-wing politicians and their media cheerleaders are fond of wailing about benefits cuts, but it is precisely that programme of welfare reform that has helped to fuel the jobs boom by providing incentives to work.
At the same time, wages are growing by 3.3 per cent, far above the rate of inflation. And those in work, especially at the lower end of the pay scale, have gained from income tax cuts and the rise in the minimum wage by 26 per cent in real terms since 2007.
Other economic indicators contradict the fashionable story of distress.
For all the talk about the stagnation of incomes since the financial crash of 2008, most Britons have actually benefitted from low interest rates and rising property values. Over the past decade, the wealth of the average UK home has gone up from £43,000 to £70,000, which partly explains why consumer expenditure increased by 18 per cent in 2018 compared to 2007.
The media likes to moan about “lack of resources” in the public sector, but the reality is that Government spending — bolstered by record tax receipts — has never been higher, particularly in areas such as the NHS and education.
Beyond the economy, social progress in Britain is also driving the rise in happiness. Life expectancy is at a record high, assisted by falls in smoking, drinking and — contrary to Green propaganda — pollution. In 1952, 12,000 citizens died in the London smog, a toll that would be unthinkable today. Moreover, younger people are more responsible than previous generations. Teenage pregnancies have seen their biggest drop since records began, while the risk of divorce for newly married couples is at its lowest level for 50 years.
So why, in the face of all this evidence, is there such an emphasis on the negative side of Britain?
Part of the answer is the eternal one — that bad news is more compelling, more dramatic.
“All’s well” cannot compete with a headline that proclaims: “Thousands could die.”
But there are also cynical, political factors at work.
The ruling elite needs an atmosphere of permanent crisis to justify its self-serving power-grabs, lectures, regulations and taxes.
More explicitly, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party aims to win support for socialism by portraying Britain as a ruined land of food banks and mass destitution, where capitalism has failed. The politics of manufactured grievance and victimhood are at the heart of his party’s revolutionary mission. The same is true of the trade unions and a host of left-wing pressure groups, which have a vested interest in peddling the gospel of gloom as they demand more state intervention for their own causes.
The tragedy is that the BBC, which itself is dependent on public cash, chooses to act as a mouthpiece for this propaganda. Its near monopoly means we hardly ever hear positive items about the prosperity brought about by tax cuts or entrepreneurial self-employment.
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Instead, we are subjected to a barrage of despondency about the benefits system and the public sector, which, despite all the media attention lavished on it, represents only 17 per cent of the national workforce.
Fortunately, the British people appear to have seen through this attempt at indoctrination.
From their own experience, they know our nation is far more successful than the basket case portrayed by the politically motivated doomsters.