The story and moral of the emperor’s new clothes is well known: so determined was everyone (emperor included) to believe that he was covered in the latest finery, that they could not see the reality that he was wearing nothing at all. Many in Britain are asking if a similar story is not unfolding in the UK. They say that there is a remarkable unwillingness there to face up to reality. Attitudes to two areas in particular — the state of the economy and the state of its health system — indicate a refusal to face facts.
Just over a week ago, the latest monthly trade figures were announced. They showed a record deficit — $3.3 billion — for June. If invisibles are excluded, the figure is even more astonishing: a monthly trade gap of $4.6 billion. There is nothing new here. Each month now breaks fresh records.
A few years ago, such staggering deficits would have had major repercussions. The government would be under attack in the press and from the opposition; the pound would be subject to intense pressure. Today, no one says a word: not the media, not the government, not the opposition. There is an almost conspiratorial pretense that everything in the British economic garden is rosy. The government and the economic pundits join in: the news is not as bad as feared, they say — a bizarre way of looking at economic performance.
The same complacency affects the UK’s national healthcare service, which is in dire straits. Yet politicians, particularly on the left, backed by the media, continue to insist that it is the envy of the world and that it must be maintained intact at all costs. But this “envy” has failed to deliver, no matter how much money the government throws at it. Waiting lists for operations get longer; nurses and doctors scarcer; hospitals — budget-led rather than care-led — are forced to choose whether patients merit treatment, either on grounds of age, infirmity or state of health. British medicare is today a rationed system.
Finally this week, the UK government half faced up to the fact that the system is dying on its feet with an unprecedented announcement that British patients may in future be sent for operations to places like France and Germany, where there are no waiting lists. A brave step; but still is heard that the British system is the envy of the world.
But voices are beginning to be heard that no amount of money will make it work. It needs to be put down quietly and replaced with one in which healthcare and funding are quite separate; which provides medicare at the time when people need it but does not require patients to put their hands into their pockets when ill.
Some attribute these two particular blind spots to Chauvinism, a malady from which all countries suffer to varying degrees. But their worry is that there is something seriously amiss in the UK. Like the health service, its economy is fundamentally flawed at present. Manufacturing output continues to plummet; agriculture is in its worst state since World War II. Recession has already started in the US; it is bound to bite in London soon.
With it, the scales are going to drop from people’s eyes — and when they do, many warn, the air in Britain is likely to be poisonous with recriminations.
