Why Britain’s (Severely) Underestimating British Collapse

Post-Brexit Britain’s Collapse Is So Extreme, It’s Genuinely Unprecedented

I know I’ve discussed it a bit recently, but it needs discussing. In this little essay, I want to tie up some of the loose threads, with a simple observation. The scale and speed of British collapse is staggering. I mean that. Watching Britain turn into what it is now — the first rich European country to become a failed state, which in itself is mind-boggling — is to witness something historic.

My job as an economist is to pore over numbers, and think about what they mean. And then explain them to people. In that job, to witness the kinds of numbers that are coming out of contemporary Britain is something that leaves me speechless. I feel like a paleontologist witnessing a mass extinction or an astronomer close up to a supernova. Events like this are that infrequent, that uncommon, and that…big. We have never seen anything happen to a developed country like what’s happening to Britain.

Or, of course, to put it more accurately, what Britain’s done to itself, but I’ll come back to that.

In my profession, we try not to speak hyperbolically. And yet there are times when only superlatives and warnings at maximum level will suffice. Not for “alarmism’s” sake — that’s an American word, the Brits call it “scaremongering” — but for reality’s. You see, we don’t see things like this. They’re not supposed to happen, and they’ve never happened before. Watching Britain collapse is to see something singular in contemporary history. Collapse, on a scale and at a speed that is quite literally off the charts.

Now. Let me prove my case to you, because we should all be chilled to the bone by Britain’s example. Can a modern society really become…a failed state? Can a developed nation really turn into…Argentina? Can it wreck its economy and its society in one fell swoop? In less than a decade, causing a collapse, a literal one, as in the implosion of living standards?

The answers to all those questions before Britain did this to itself were: hmm, maybe, but nobody’s sure. You see, America never had modernity, really. It never had an NHS and a BBC and so forth. America collapsed — but from a nation that had never reached modernity, yet hoped to, to one that was never going to, and would stay stuck in decline and dysfunction, like crumbling Rome.

Britain’s different. It had…everything. I mean that. It had everything that a modern society could wish for, and then some. It used to be the envy of the world. Until a decade ago — just ten years — the NHS was the world’s best healthcare system. Not according to me, but according to international rankings. The BBC was widely acknowledged to be its finest broadcaster, developing many of the world’s finest cultural brands and training its best directors and actors alike. I could go on and on. Britain worked. It was an example of what a modern society could be. The NHS had taught Europe — Europe — that universal scale public goods were possible. The BBC had taught the world what art and culture meant. Its universities produced some of the world’s finest intellectuals, from Amartya Sen to Stephen Hawking, and by and large, its people were some of the most prosperous on earth, in history, period, full stop, admired and liked for being funny, gentle, warm, and wise.

That was just ten years ago. Ten years. One decade.

Now that I’ve set the stage, let’s take stock of where Britain really is. This is the part where we talk about how hard and fast a society can collapse — the utterly shocking, chilling story that Britain teaches the world. Yes, you can lose it all, everything, in one decade. Proof positive: British collapse.

Right about now, Britain’s own finer minds have estimated that there have been 25,000 excess deaths because…the NHS has collapsed. It doesn’t work anymore. You can’t get an ambulance, you can’t get a doctor’s appointment, and if you do, well, you’re the lucky one. Those 25,000 excess deaths have happened “since the summer.” The summer ended on September 23rd. It’s been 15 weeks. In other words, there have been 25,000 excess deaths — because of social collapse — in 15 weeks.