Broken Britain I

James Melville / KJM Today

March 29, 2025.

I love Britain.

But I hate what has happened to Britain.

Britain is broken.

You can feel the decline everywhere, except in the deep pockets of the greedy corporations who have been allowed to plunder the assets of Britain.

We are an island full of natural resources and with a temperate climate. We should have energy security, vibrant agriculture and fishing industries, blue collar industries to be proud of, manufacturing centres of excellence, but instead, it's all being destroyed, sold off or closed down.

The industrial and community fabric of so many communities has been wilfully destroyed or neglected for decades. We have infrastructures and public services that are rotting despite having the highest tax burden in history.

We have an ongoing cost of living crisis where supermarkets, utility and energy companies fleece consumers on a daily basis while showing record profits.

Image - Kevan James

And for all of this, I blame governments for being more concerned in political game playing, consolidation of power, suppressing freedom of speech, indulging in petty punishment rules and surveillance culture, facilitating corporate greed rather than addressing the many concerns and challenges faced by individuals and communities right across the country.

The first job of any government should be to wholeheartedly serve and protect the citizens that they are supposed to represent.

Instead, we have successive governments who are punishing the public and are in thrall to billionaires, global technocrats and asset stripping corporations like BlackRock.

Britain is broken – but not for the corporations who are asset stripping and plundering Britain - facilitated by governments - at our own expense.

Shameful.

It’s a horrendous state of affairs and there is a lack of genuine political alternatives that the public can genuinely connect with and unite people across the political spectrum.

Something has to be done and urgently.

© James Melville 2025.

James Melville hit the nail on the head here. Opinion will obviously vary as to which particular government started the rot - some will say the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher; some will say the Labour government of Tony Blair.

Most frequently today, many say on social media that it is all down to '14 years of the Tories,' referring to the period from 2010 to 2024. Certainly the Cameron-led coalition had a chance to undo the damage wrought by the Blair/Brown government, but since then, the Tories have been too busy trying to imitate Blair, rather than doing anything else.

Image - Kevan James

We would suggest however, that the rot set in back in the mid-to-late 1960s and into the 1970s. Thatcher's government, like that of Blair, had a chance and did some good things (all governments have, even Blair's) but she and her government signally failed to replace those industries that fell by the wayside. One good example was, for all the merits of the right to buy one's own home, the ability of councils to replace housing stocks was neutered.

John Major's woeful attempt at running the country led only to the rise of Blair and all those so-called politicians who have since tried to be the next Tony. Not for nothing did David Cameron describe himself as "The heir to Blair."

We now see the country where it was in 1979 - unkempt, uncared for and decaying visibly.

Not until we find people willing to stand for parliament who come from real-life backgrounds, people who have spent at least 20 years working in real jobs, fretting over paying their bills, raising their families, replacing career politicians who have never done anything except be MPs, will we see a chance of retuning the UK to what it once was, and could be again.

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