It takes a rare mix of melodrama and disloyalty to stand outside No 10 and declare that the country is going to the dogs. But other Tory PMs blazed the way, writes Zoe Williams
Football crowds need more leeway for carnival than the rest of the population, otherwise that guy would never have stuck a lit flare up his bottom at the Euros, and which of us could say our 2021 would have been as good?
When he stands in front of No 10 and calls the country riven and ungovernable, makes a hand-wringing plea for order to perfectly orderly, baffled people, you have to accept that he is doing that on the world stage, even if the rest of the world has its own problems and probably isn’t watching.
Is there any chance at all, when the prime minister announces that the country is a basket case, that it might affect Britain’s international reputation?
Like so many hideous breaches in the fabric of society, this can be traced straight back to George Osborne and David Cameron.
In 2012, the upstart intellectuals of the Conservative party (grim, hollow laugh) published a book, Britannia Unchained.
In among all the economically illiterate free market fundamentalism that would skyrocket everyone’s mortgage a decade later was this extraordinary line: “The British are among the worst idlers in the world.” No longer just benefits claimants, malingering fake-disabled people, generations of the workless: nope, the whole lot of us.
The original article contains 653 words, the summary contains 209 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Football crowds need more leeway for carnival than the rest of the population, otherwise that guy would never have stuck a lit flare up his bottom at the Euros, and which of us could say our 2021 would have been as good?
When he stands in front of No 10 and calls the country riven and ungovernable, makes a hand-wringing plea for order to perfectly orderly, baffled people, you have to accept that he is doing that on the world stage, even if the rest of the world has its own problems and probably isn’t watching.
Is there any chance at all, when the prime minister announces that the country is a basket case, that it might affect Britain’s international reputation?
Like so many hideous breaches in the fabric of society, this can be traced straight back to George Osborne and David Cameron.
In 2012, the upstart intellectuals of the Conservative party (grim, hollow laugh) published a book, Britannia Unchained.
In among all the economically illiterate free market fundamentalism that would skyrocket everyone’s mortgage a decade later was this extraordinary line: “The British are among the worst idlers in the world.” No longer just benefits claimants, malingering fake-disabled people, generations of the workless: nope, the whole lot of us.
The original article contains 653 words, the summary contains 209 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!