August 26, 2021 - 7:00am
It’s been suggested that England is the only country “where the people feel Schadenfreude towards themselves”.
I don’t know if that’s generally true of either the English (or the British as a whole), but it’s certainly true of our commentariat. No matter how international a problem might be, you can bet there’ll be someone willing to claim it for Queen and Country. A mess can sprawl over many borders, but we’ll still stick a Union Jack in it.
For instance, here’s Lionel Barber, ex-editor of the FT, commenting on America’s refusal to extend the evacuation in Kabul:
Biden was never going to risk going against his generals. August 31 is the hard deadline for withdrawal. Boris Johnson and Global Britain have been mugged by reality
— Lionel Barber (@lionelbarber) August 24, 2021
Strangely there’s no mention of the fact that America’s other allies, including France and Germany, made the same request and received the same refusal. So has the EU been “mugged by reality” too?
Andrew Rawnsley of The Observer was pursuing a similar line over the weekend, presenting the Afghanistan debacle as if it were all about us. He was particularly keen on debunking the idea of the ‘special relationship’ with the United States (another weird obsession of the liberal commentariat).
It’s not just Afghanistan. The disruption of supply chains is a favourite weapon of British Brit-bashers. Pictures of empty shelves in supermarkets are avidly shared on Twitter (and The Guardian) while hashtags like #BrexitFoodShortages are sent trending.
It would be foolish to ignore the problems caused by Brexit, yet it’s equally myopic to disregard the global chaos caused by Covid. The US is suffering supply chain problems too (and a substantially higher level of inflation than the UK). Meanwhile German industry, securely ensconced at the heart of the EU, is also experiencing disruption. China has just closed a major port because of a single case of Covid — and we can expect more the same as the Delta variant continues to wreak havoc around the world.
But even the pandemic itself — which is, by definition, global — gets the parochial treatment. The “plague island” label was an invention of the Anglophobic New York Times, but our own newspapers — including the Guardian — lapped-up the negative coverage.
Fortunately, we’ve had better news since the dark days of December 2020. In particular, we’ve had the success of our vaccination programme — which has rather spoilt the Covid-shows-Britain-is-rubbish narrative. Nevertheless, if we can present ourselves in the worst possible light we’ll still do it.
It’s not that this country doesn’t have its problems. Of course, we do. But it really doesn’t help to conceive of them as peculiarly British when they’re not. Indeed, there’s an odd sort of arrogance in believing that they are.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeThis article imposes upon me virtually a moral obligation to own up to a recent misstep.
Having lived for a quarter of a century outside my native England, after visiting Brittany last month on family business I decided to make my way to London before returning to the USA.
I duly purchased a last-minute ticket from Paris to Waterloo, via Brussels, since there was no direct ticket available. It was not until I found myself on an unusually quiet platform at Brussels that the truth dawned. Instead of heading for London Waterloo, I was about to step onto a train for Waterloo, Walloon.
Fortunately, after paying a ruinous 350 Euros for a business class ticket, which was all that was available, I made it to London St Pancras and my 6.30pm meeting with plenty of time to spare.
I will make it to Waterloo, Walloon, and the site of the French defeat, some other time.
I did something a little similar on a recent trip to Paris, coming home on an earlier train I didn’t realise that the last-minute booking change had upgraded me to business class, and I totally failed to percieve that all the food and drink is complementary. Didn’t understand until later the odd look I got from the hostess when returning from the dining room having bought the same coffee and sandwich she could have given me for free.
I do like the Eurostar though. It’s one of the journeys where a train really does make sense – ie between two city centres where car use is borderline illegal but public transport actually covers people’s needs (this is only ever true in wealthy city centres). It’s just a pity many people insist on thinking that the same would apply in general.
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The building of great wonders is an uneven thing. Whether the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Panama canal, or the Chunnel, they tend to occur early at times of great optimism and civilizational success often during the early stages of a civilization’s rise or after winning a great war. In times of trouble or times of decline, there are always to be found the usual excuses and we quickly seize upon them. Its too expensive. The risk is too great. It won’t be profitable. Its too ambitious. Those resources are better spent on basic needs.
It is simply part of human nature. We extend furthest and take the greatest risk when we are confident and optimistic. 1994, three years after the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War was such a time of confidence, hope, and optimism in the west. 2024 is not. At 44, I frankly do not expect I will live to see another such time of optimism certainly not in a western civilization desperately clutching the pearls of the past.
Funny, I don’t remember 1994 as a time of great optimism. I remember the fag-end of the John Major government, Mad Cow disease, Fred and Rose West’s house excavations and bloody Wet Wet Wet.
Well, that’s fair. I am an American so I wasn’t familiar with those things. I was also 14 at the time. My perspective probably shouldn’t be considered decisive by any means.
The past is a foreign country, certainly. But I very much doubt “the future” – vegan diets, battery powered everything, world economies controlled by bungling, unaccountable technocrats – is an inevitability.
Doomsday predictions rarely come to pass. Unsustainable economic arrangements – windmills and tofu, toy cars and solar panels – are based on flawed premises, and will be widely unpopular.
Instead, we’ll likely see a bit more insularity, a bit more nationalism, and a bit more global conflict. Political rancor and division will deepen before it decreased.
But liberal democracy, the (more or less) free market, and constitutional rights will remain.
What indeed?
The rest of us are well aware that Londoners would rather spend their money on getting out of the UK rather than connecting to it.
They were going to but the slow track speeds between the rest of the UK and the tunnel meant it was completely uncompetitive versus air travel. There was until quite recently a banner running along a Eurostar train maintenance depot near Manchester Piccadilly stating “Le Eurostar habite ici”. They use it now for other train maintenance activities. It’s really just another embarrassing symbol of the general backwardness of infrastructure in the UK in comparison with its continental neighbours.
Recently I travelled from London to Basel via Paris and Strasbourg. A long day: 6 1/2 hours including changes. However, given that London-Paris/Brussels is 3 hours or less, extension north to Birmingham and Manchester would be equally feasible – if only the will were there (or, Mr Burnham may be thinking, if only London were not there).
“How might we revive the spirit of 1994? What about a truly high-quality cross country railway system…”
I had to stop reading that sentence before it was even over as it basically exploded the limits of my imagination for rail travel in Britain in the 21st century. Never mind the “truly high quality” bit – just get the basics right that fulfil the definition of “a rail system”. Then think about bells and whistles like adverbs and adjectives.
Build infrastructure which indicates some kind of understanding of the volume of people wanting to use it. Make sure that being on it doesn’t make passengers feel like they’re being charged a fortune to be treated worse than veal. Build refunds systems that don’t need you to invest the amount of time it takes to write a PhD to get your money back. Have working loos that you can actually get to without having to go crowd-surfing over the passengers standing all crushed together like sardines.
It seems to me that the train is a means of public transportation which, in the U.K. at least, had its hay day in the earlier part of the Twentieth Century. Since when it has been a story of general decline. Surely the inflexibility and cost of its network condemns it to eventual obsolescence, save maybe as a car shuttle for crossings such as the Channel
Passenger numbers continue to increase, so obsolescence seems out of the question (how else would people get around? More cars? Don’t think so…)
UK rail is a victim of its early success. The infrastructure developed in such a haphazard manner that it’s now virtually impossible to restructure. Upgrades only take us so far, and inevitably fall behind the standards of networks built from scratch with initial forethought.
Rail passenger numbers are increasing simply because the population is increasing due to immigration. Road usage numbers are also increasing for the same reason.
As for your final point, it merely emphasises the fact that railways are exceptionally capital intensive, possess large ongoing maintenance costs, require immense strategic planning, take decades to produce returns on investment (if ever), and still, in the end, require the road network to complete the journeys of everyone who uses them in any case.
If you want a 21st century solution to UK transport, think self-driving high speed coaches on dedicated roadways.
HEYDAY, not hay day!
“How might we revive the spirit of 1994? What about a truly high-quality cross country railway system connected to an equally impressive Northern network? What about the linking up of “Chunnel” trains, as was originally proposed, with other British cities? A revival of the idea of Nightstar sleepers through the tunnel? Car-carrying trains speeding through the Channel Tunnel to the South of France? And, of course, as the late Queen would surely have approved, dedicated carriages for dogs to travel by Eurostar with their human companions? All cordiale suggestions welcome. Palmerston be damned. The Channel Tunnel, 30 years on, deserves to be celebrated.”
The answer is in the article itself: make it a private-only investment as per the Channel Tunnel, let shareholders take the risk, and if no investors can be found to take the risk, we can safely conclude that the taxpayer shouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole either. All these ideas sound wonderful, but they do not remove the need for these investments to produce value.
Personally speaking, I’d say the sort of optimism Britain needs to rediscover involves thorium nuclear MSRs, flying cars, life sciences/genetics (where Britain currently possesses a world-leadership position that’s simply being ignored). Not the expansion of an 18th century technology the principle enthusiasm for which often seems to be based more on a hatred of cars than anything else.
All those dreams require Engineers and Natural Scientists, and appropriate education facilities, though genetic manipulation hasn’t recently had a good press.
There is also an impossible prerequisite that those from the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences need to restrict their comments to what they would like, as customers of these developments, and not make proposals that are contrary to the Laws of Physics and Chemistry. Too many have infested the Dept of Energy, generating the NET Zero Wealth policies we are now having to endure.
PRINCIPAL, not principle!!
I found the tunnel to be a great improvement to my travel time as a European Sales Rep back in the day. I liked it. But the author overdoes it. It’s one way of getting from one place in England to one place in France. Good, efficient but not cheap. There are other ways. There always have been.
There is a limit to the amount of infrastructure a country needs. For example one could double the widths of all motorways but would it be worthwhile? If one looks at the end of the canal and rail building era many were uneconomic from the beginning.
At th monent I sugest improving our sewage treatment capacity; interconnectivity of railways in the areas of former heavy industry and high speed broadband.
Interesting, but please tell Glancey how to spell MITTERRAND!!
It was a golden age. Europe (yes) reunited two centuries after the French Revolution, with the Eiffel Tower illuminated in red, white and blue; Liberty and Fraternity free at last after 75 years of stress and internecine warfare. Through the late 1980s and the 1990s I travelled regularly to Paris and Brussels as part of European projects on transport research (paradoxically not rail), and once Eurostar was available it was the natural choice. The UK was then a full participant, indeed British presence was sought after for its deep experience, reasoned approach, and moderating effect on the diverse interests of continental partners. Today the cycle has moved from integration to disintegration. A generation (or two) to go before ‘end times’ become beginning times again. PS I still have my Eurotunnel shares, even though they have not yielded a substantial return.
As an aside, researching a holiday in Eastern Canada, I discovered that the sleeper cars on the Toronto – Halifax service were originally built in Britain for a Scotland to Paris service via the Chunnel that never happened.