“The Third World is not a reality but an ideology”
- Hannah Arendt
Have you ever wondered what it is like to live in a Third World country? To wake in the morning not knowing if food will be available in the local supermarket; to wonder if the bus or train to work will turn up and if it does will it arrive on time and reach its destination on time without breaking down? Will you wonder if your children’s school will be habitable because of building neglect? Does all this sound familiar? It should as it is a description of the UK today.
Not that the UK has yet to reach the levels of grinding poverty which defines so many poor Third World countries in Africa and Asia although the Government is working on that one. However, many of the assumptions we make that define a First World country are fast disappearing across the UK. The evidence is all around us.
On my visits to the local supermarket there are gaps on the shelves particularly in the fresh fruit and vegetable sections and more so later in the day. In general, the range of products has diminished. Niche products made abroad and imported are less abundant. It is a simple fact that prior to Brexit our stores where better stocked both by range and volume. It appears that the post Brexit trade barriers have simply encouraged many producers not to pursue the UK market. After all, the population of the EU far outweighs that of the UK so producers will get a better return for their buck pursuing that market rather than battling with the import/export restraints that now surround the islands of the UK.
The Government has now postponed five times the introduction of checks on UK imports from the EU and now kicked that can into 2024. Who knows but it could be furthered booted down the road beyond the next General Election. It must be very frustrating for exporters/importers to work in a system where their exports to EU customers are checked at the border to ensure paperwork is in order and all the checks and restraints the UK signed up to as part of the UK/EU post Brexit deal have been met whilst EU exporters to the UK can see their produce sail into the UK without any checks at all. This is despite the Government spending millions on the construction of customs facilities at ports.
The government has already admitted that once the import checks are in place prices will rise to cover the costs. No wonder they keep delaying during a cost of living crisis. So much for control of our borders.
If you want to get away from shortages in the shops and soaring inflation a train journey might be just the thing. However, for many travelling by rail has been blighted with strikes and works to rule. The Government and rail operators appear to have little desire to settle the dispute, so it grinds on.
On the days trains do run the service is far from reliable. Since we were released from the grip of the pandemic, I have travelled several times to Brighton and Birmingham but rarely without mishap. Signal failure, points failure and trains breaking down are regular events. I have been caught out by a goods train breaking down in High Wycombe and blocking the line in both directions and a passenger train blocking Marylebone station when it broke down in the approach tunnel. A train to Birmingham was 30 minutes late because of signal failure. Getting a seat is often a luxury.
A bus ride might be a better alternative. Sadly, these have been cut as subsidies have been withdrawn. Overall, in many parts of the country, bus services remain an unreliable option. This hits the most isolated and poorest hardest.
If you want to really get away from it all then a dip in the local river or the sea might be very attractive. Hang on a minute though - the Government has passed legislation allowing water companies to dump human excrement in rivers and the sea. We are treated to the nauseating sight of the water turning brown at sewage discharge points. While companies which are still in the EU would have been fined for doing this, as part of taking back control in the UK swimmers are free to drink contaminated water. The water companies have promised to fix this in a few/several years but in the meantime face few penalties.
Despite promising not to water down (sorry for the pun) environmental protections this very week the Government now allows contaminated water from homes under construction to flow freely into local rivers.
So what about sending our children to school? Surely all is well in this essential part of national infrastructure. Sadly not. The Government has suddenly realised just a few days before schools reopen for the Autumn term that a number of schools have been constructed with concrete that is now dodgy and it would be risky to let the kids in. The Government apparently does not know how many schools are affected but no worries, learning online is the way forward. This comes from the same Ministers who condemned schools who wanted to continue online learning during the pandemic and did everything it could to force children back.
Sorry to depress you but we must look at that other essential part of our national infrastructure – the NHS. Unsurprisingly waiting lists are at a record level and people are actually dying before they can be seen by a healthcare professional.
The list of national decay goes on. The waiting list in the judicial system has never been longer. Our prisons are overcrowded. Getting a passport, a driving licence or arranging a power of attorney can and often does take months.
So what about escaping from it all with a trip abroad particularly to Europe? In the good old days of EU membership, as long as you had a valid passport, you could breeze into any one of 27 countries. Many had passport screening machines to speed up the entry process. No longer is this the case. We are now a “third country” in EU language which means entry checks with no guarantee of getting in. Each person needs to get their passport personally stamped and you might be asked to prove where you plan to stay, for how long and have the resources to meet your costs. Queues are unavoidable. There are also restrictions on the validity of passports which might otherwise appear in date.
Since Brexit every holiday has been blighted by long queues of cars and lorries at Dover and Folkstone as drivers seek to flee this sceptred isle for respite waiting for each and every passport of every vehicle passenger to be stamped. A process that once took a few seconds per passenger now takes several minutes. Result – huge delays. This is the inevitable result of immigration checks required by the Government as part of the taking back control of our borders agenda. Cleverly the Government got around this one by limiting the number of cross channel tickets not to the capacity of vessels but to the processing capacity of immigration officials.
The cherry on the travelling cake came this week when the air traffic control system broke down stranding thousands of UK travellers in places they did not want to be.
There is hardly an aspect of our public lives that is not blighted in some way. Events that we once took for granted are plagued with delays and every other form of frustration imaginable.
These challenges are exasperated by staff shortages – particularly of qualified health and education staff. There is also a shortage care staff in nursing homes. A lot of these gaps were filled by the EU’s freedom of movement policy which allowed citizens of any member country (including the UK) to work in another. I once met a group of Brits who were running a bus tour business in Venice and a student working in a Hard Rock in Helsinki.
As an aside we learned recently that for centuries our colonial explorers had been stealing artifacts from around the world so we could bring them home and steal them from each other. Who knew?
As our public infrastructure withers away, what is to be done? Do we indeed care that our schools are falling down and NHS ground down to its knees? Have we stealthy signed up to notion that if want a service that is half decent we must pay for it and just ignore those who cannot afford it?
I can find no evidence that the UK has turned its back on the social contract we all entered into after World War II. A contract focused on delivering health, education and transport services that would delivered opportunity to all irrespective of income and background. Today we would add to this sustainable energy, clean water and the journey to Net Zero.
Ten years of austerity and indifference by Government ministers more keen on firing up culture wars and victim blaming has caused great damage. Surely the most potent symbol of this is a Prime Minister travelling by helicopter from London to Southampton and back for a photo opportunity.
To support opening up opportunities for all and cracking the glass ceiling a consistent programme of investment is required. The only response to 10 years of austerity is 10 years of investment in public services. In addition, our trading arrangements with the EU need adjusting.
The only chance of delivering this lies with the return of a Labour government. Will voters do this and give the new team time to deliver? After sitting on our hands for 10 years as austerity rotted away the fabric of our infrastructure, perhaps we should.
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