by Alex Yates, The Critic
The more anti-immigration unrest grows, the more repressive the state is becoming
It is hard to create a narrative of contemporary Britain without slipping into a script that reads like a caricature of an Adam Curtis film. We are constantly told one thing by politicians and the media, but then look around to see a reality that is not just slightly different, but its complete opposite.
No one really believes the stories we are told, no one believes that the country’s trajectory is a positive one, but no one in charge seems to have any idea on how to course-correct.
We are repeatedly told, for example, that there is no money left, that we must accept deteriorating public infrastructure and could never possibly find the money for investment and that spending has already been cut to its bare bones. But then the benefit bill goes up year after year, and the state keeps on adopting duties for which it must pay — yet no one in charge has any plan to stop this endless welfare growth.
For decades, we were told that immigration was going to be our economic jet fuel; all the experts agreed, and well-credentialed people from serious sounding, acronym-named institutions assured us it was true. Yet after the biggest wave of immigration in this country’s history, that economic boom never came, and instead living standards have visibly deteriorated. It seems clear to anyone daring enough to look that the great majority of the millions who came are not the budding doctors and engineers we were promised.
Then we were told that net zero was to be our next great hope, allowing us to hit two birds with one stone — simultaneously reducing our emissions as well as turbocharging the “green industrial revolution” and its plentiful well-paid jobs. But those plentiful “green jobs” never came, and instead we got rising fuel and electricity prices, and global emissions that continue to rise, no matter how many of our power plants we blow up.
Which brings us to last week, and the most mind-bending narrative inversion of all.