How Do You Know If Your Society’s in a Death Spiral?

If Every Day Is Politicians Finding Scapegoats to Demonize While Life Falls Apart…You’re in Trouble

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There’s something remarkable, weird, funny, and idiotic happening in Britain these days. I know — there always is, but this, well…prepare yourself.

The story goes like this. The PM, Rishi Sunak, announced a new plan to… “stop the boats.” I won’t bore you with the details. The point was to demonize refugees crossing the Channel in little rubber boats as Britain’s biggest crisis. LOL. This is a country where vegetables are being rationed. Yes, really. So in response, the UN swiftly pointed out that this breaks international law, because, well, nearly every country signed treaties after the last World War, one of those being the Refugee Convention.

Along came one of Britain’s most beloved public figures, a footballer by the name of Gary Lineker. He’s a former striker turned BBC football commentator. He tweeted: Good heavens, this is beyond awful. Then he pointed that Britain takes in fewer refugees than most other countries, that there’s no ”huge influx.” And then he said that all this reminded of…1930s Germany.

And all that? Provoked a firestorm. The BBC said it was going to “speak frankly” to Lineker, and of course if he’d praised the policy they’d surely have said nothing at all. The government went bananas, and so did the right wing press. A footballer…comparing us…to the Nazis! Good Lord!! Know your place, man. Lineker was unbowed: “Great to see the freedom of speech champions out in force this morning demanding silence from those with whom they disagree,” he said.

Now. What’s the moral of this bizarre, insane story? Well, I’m about to get there. Let’s go back to what’s actually happening in Britain. It is a failing state.

You can’t — I’m not making this up — get vegetables. They’re being rationed. But that’s just one in a long, long list of things you can’t get, at least not reliably, or plentifully, or just the way that people are used to in most other countries, especially rich ones. Ambulances don’t arrive on time — they can take hours. There’s such a woeful shortage of nurses and doctors that the waiting list for routine medical care is years. Schools are running out of money. The average Brit struggles to pay the bills, which have skyrocketed to eye-watering levels.

Britain is a country in severe, profound crisis. Not just one crisis, really. The list above? It’s barely a beginning. Britain’s economy is — famously — performing worse than Russia’s. You know, the one the entire West sanctioned. It’s in double digit contraction territory compared to where it would’ve been staying inside the EU. For the average person, that means the sharpest, fastest, hardest fall in living standards in recorded history.

Britain is a country in severe, profound crisis — in every imaginable way. It is in dire economic crisis — think about what it means for your economy to be in worse shape than Russia’s. It’s in catastrophic social crisis — think of what it means for people not to be able to get ambulances, routine medical appointments, pay the bills. And added to that list is what might be called the Mother of All Political Crises.

Think about what’s really happening. It hardly takes a genius to see it, does it?

There’s a country beset by crisis after crisis — serious, ruinous, utterly catastrophic ones. In response, what does politics offer? Big Lies. Demonization. Scapegoating. Hate. As a way to distract from all the real crises.

That, my friends, is a how a society enters a right wing death spiral. If you think that’s exaggeration or hyperbole, let’s remember where Britain really is. It’s economy today is 11% smaller than it would’ve been if it stayed inside the EU. So…where is it in five years? 20% smaller? A decade — 30% smaller? The projections are for Britain to be about as poor as Moldova by the end of the 2020s. Right wing death spiral. This is how you die as a modern, wealthy society.