IT is self-evident that Brexit has unleashed chaos, a chaos aided and abetted by the Tories’ incompetence and stupidity. The British political class are amongst the most outrageous and prolific liars imaginable, and they do so with a certain pride and braggadocio in the full knowledge that even when we, the public, know they are lying, they will get away with it.
But it extends far beyond the political class – it is a social disease produced by the poison of the free market and its demands for unregulated freedoms in all areas of its influence, to boardrooms, the legal and financial professions, the media, etc.
In their behaviour, the Tories and their allies embody the spirit that Bertrand Russell condemned when he told us that: “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”
British democratic government is founded on trust, and we must therefore rely on, and trust, our political class to respect the laws, values, customs and practices that compose the normative order and ensure civilised governance, our safety and freedom. Our most pressing modern crisis is that the Westminster political class has systematically and recklessly destroyed that trust.
There was a time when banking, the law, etc., were honourable professions with those who followed such professions being regarded as role models and trustworthy. No longer. Captain Mainwaring was defeated not by Hitler, but by the Tories and the free market. This is another of the poisonous legacies of the Blessed Margaret whose terms of office were cancerous and malignant.
She was responsible for the real beginnings of the decay of the British state and the destruction of the traditional verities of British political and social life. Those charged with the governance of the state refuse to be bound by common decency and those laws, norms and values whose observance they not only expect, but demand, from everyone else.
The behaviour of the Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum has destroyed any trust that may have lingered in our system for the foreseeable future, but such distrust and suspicion was already deeply embedded in the British public over the lies and machinations of Mad Tony and Daphne Broon – the Tories have simply taken it to new heights.
Lack of trust in, and contempt for, the political class has become the new norm, but is a norm under which we have neither security nor point of reference. Human beings need security and a sense of certainty in order to live a peaceable and anxiety-free life.
For example, we need to know that if we approach a policeperson for directions he/she is not going to punch us in the face. We need to trust the authorities. A lack of such trust, the absence of meaningful and predictable norms and values, produces what we call anomie, a condition of normlessness, a national anxiety and an inability to make sense of our environment.
Such conditions are the seedbed of fascism, of the demands for strong authoritarians to restore security, confidence, honour and dignity. Vladimir Putin is the beneficiary of just such similar circumstances in Russia after the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Brexiteers beware, and always remember, history is normally the study of the unintended consequences of intentional action.
Your desire for control and national aggrandisement is unleashing a chaos that may yet produce a British Putin.
Peter Kerr
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