Cruel Britannia: How post-Brexit England is falling apart

On my first day in the UK in four years I was jet-lagged and hungover. My wife, daughter and I were catching up with friends and family post-COVID, post-Brexit, pre-however it ends in Ukraine.

I fixated on a gadget on the living room table. “What’s this?” I asked.

It wasn’t like this before, was it? Was it ever like this before? Britain is a nation plagued by economic problems.Credit: Getty

“It’s a smart meter. It tells me how much electricity we’re using.”

It read £15.30 (about $27) for the day. Its owners had been out, picking us up from the airport. How had they used so much? Later, on a petrol station forecourt, I’d think about the fuel they had used coming to get us, and then I’d think about offering them some money for it.

The cost of electricity has soared in the UK. Likewise petrol, and diesel, and crisps, and milk, and beer, and shelter. There are statistics to show this, of course. Percentages that tell half the story, the input half; the half that triggers whatever it is that comes next.

It felt heavier than numbers could account for. There was a sense that things were happening to people. Some, other, things were happening around them. It wasn’t good, but what could you do? Nobody was angry, and nobody seemed to think it was about to get better. It wasn’t like this before, was it? Was it ever like this before?

Striking ambulance workers in Manchester last month.Credit: Bloomberg

I kept thinking about the electric meter. I remembered that, apart from the room we were in, all the lights were off.

We drove to London because the trains weren’t running. Oxford Street was busy. “See,” said London, “everything is normal.” I asked a man in a shop about sending something back to Australia. “We’ve been advised not to send anything abroad,” he said. “Not until we hear otherwise. We can’t guarantee it will get there.”

At a christening, we stood around and talked about the cost of living. They wouldn’t stand for this in France, we agreed. There would be riots.

What’s stoicism? What’s indifference? Which one keeps you from drowning?

Shortly before we’d arrived, my friend’s dad had a heart attack. We heard that the wait for an ambulance would have been nine hours, so my friend drove him to the hospital instead. He’s still alive, but the wait for an ambulance is longer now.

While we were there, a relative found themselves in the state of diagnosis where nobody has said cancer, but everyone knows it’s cancer and what cancer might do. “They’re rushing me in,” she said. “That’s good,” I said. “When?” “Next Monday. Hopefully.”

Utilities, transport, healthcare … the things that make a country a success or a failure. The things that make a country function like a country. We stopped at more than one petrol station with no fuel, more than one with fuel but no way to take our bank cards. I laughed at a sign in one of their windows that read “Help Wanted”. Yeah, right.

Maybe a nation, like a sturdy vessel, can drift slowly and indefinitely towards the horizon. Maybe bits can fall off and not be replaced and the basic structure, the ribs, are enough to keep it going. Maybe the water stops pouring in when the ship sinks low enough.

A Brexit supporter outside the Houses of Parliament in 2019.Credit: Getty

Three days before we left England, somebody threw themselves off a motorway bridge. We heard from somebody in the traffic. They were agitated. They’d been stuck there for four hours. “Yeah, it’s horrible,” they said. “People have got to get to work.”

I got a text message from my brother-in-law the day we arrived back in Australia. He’d been in the UK too. Like us, he’d emigrated and, like us, he’d noticed a change in the UK since the last time we had been there together. We had wondered what we would do if our energy bills quadrupled, or if we couldn’t pay the mortgage.

We hoped our kids wouldn’t get sick while we were there. We hoped our parents wouldn’t get sick after we left.

“F--- me,” the text read. “How good is optimism?”

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