Britain is sick

Back in the 1970s, before Margaret Thatcher introduced a modicum of economic sanity, Britain was known as ‘the sick man of Europe’.

That was meant figuratively, as a figure of speech describing the catastrophic state of the British economy. Half a century on, the figurative has become literal.

Britain now has some three million people on permanent sickness benefits, which suggests we have more invalids than in the aftermath of either world war. Thousands more sign on every week, with overworked GPs either too weary or too scared to deny them the sick notes.

This is the situation that Rishi Sunak promises to change by stripping GPs of their power to sign people off work – if the Tories win the next election. Acting in the same spirit, I hereby undertake to eliminate bad weather if I become God.

That’s not an onerous commitment because there’s no chance I’ll become God. But then there’s no chance the Tories will win the next election either. And even less of a chance that the incoming Labour government will improve the situation. In fact, it’s guaranteed to make matters even worse.

It’s not just sick notes either. Some 10 per cent of our GDP is spent on welfare payments (excluding pensions), and that proportion is climbing steeply like a jump jet. Essentially, half the population are working to support the other half, an arrangement that spells economic, social and, above all, moral disaster.

There’s nothing new about this observation. If you’ll forgive a long quote, R.G. Collingwood (d. 1943) said it all when analysing the reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire:

“The critical moment was reached when Rome created an urban proletariat whose only function was to eat free bread and watch free shows. This meant the segregation of an entire class which had no work to do whatever; no positive function in society, whether economic or military or administrative or intellectual or religious; only the business of being supported and being amused. When that had been done, it was only a question of time until Plato’s nightmare of a consumers’ society came true; the drones set up their own king and the story of the hive came to an end.”

Go back another century and Tocqueville presaged Collingwood by writing that “public assistance and ‘pauperdom’ exist in a symbiotic relationship”. And in the distant past both Plato and Aristotle made statements to the same effect, proving that Britain’s problem, while dire, is neither new nor unique.

A Briton would have to earn a gross salary of over £50,000 a year to match the full range of benefits on offer, and most benefit scrounges lack the qualifications to command such pay. So why would they want to work? Would you go to work every morning if you could make more money ‘chilling out’ at home? (The expression comes straight from young people explaining why they aren’t seeking jobs.)

Stating the blindingly obvious, this problem could be solved in five minutes. Technically, that is. Politically, it’s impossible to solve at all – not in Britain, nor in the US, nor in any country constituted along Enlightenment principles.

Call me a determinist, but it’s only individuals and not societies that are endowed with free will. Once a country steps on a certain constitutional path signposted by an ideology, it can only move in one direction, all the way to the precipice.

Any sociologist worth his salt will tell you how to solve the problem in question. Their research shows that people work much harder to get the basic necessities of life than they do to improve their lot further, once food and shelter have been taken care of.

There’s your solution: social programmes offering basic necessities for free must be abolished, or rather limited to the people who are too ill or too old to work. Able-bodied Britons in full command of their faculties must work for their sustenance – or starve in the street.

They won’t: given that choice, they’ll happily snap up all the lowly jobs now done by migrants from Europe or elsewhere. Such jobs exist and in huge numbers. It’s just that they pay less than our generous, compassionate Exchequer.

So much for the technical solution. Now a few words about the political impossibility.

Over the past three centuries, the Enlightenment has inexorably produced a certain mindset that can’t be changed without mercilessly cauterising the collective social brain. This mindset is at its most evident in societies calling themselves socialist or communist, but that’s just a matter of degree.

A thoroughly democratic country governed by people who have to seek majority approval every few years will inevitably empower the majority to demand handouts, especially in the absence of religious faith. The most obvious way to curry favour with the public is to bribe it by flinging the public wallet wide-open.

That’s why the welfare state is bound to appear, grow to maturity – and then turn into an ogre devouring public finances and, much worse, public morality. Everything else is just rhetoric, and we’ve bred a species of politicians who can juggle words like ‘compassion’, ‘socioeconomically disadvantaged’ and ‘social justice’ with the dexterity of a circus performer.

To paraphrase Jean-Claude Juncker, our politicians know exactly how to solve the problem of an economy sinking under the weight of the freeloading masses. They just don’t know how to get re-elected once they’ve solved it, in the only way it’s ever possible to do so.

This sort of corruption is a two-way street. Politicians corrupt the public by bribing it with blithe abandon, and the public corrupts the politicians by demanding more. Neither group is made up exclusively or even mostly of inherently corrupt individuals. They just sense the inner logic of their society and act accordingly.

As far back as in 1958, when the welfare state was still in nappies, the quintessential Tory Peregrine Worsthorne wanted his party to “pledge loyalty” to its “basic features”. He was preaching to the choir: the party calling itself Conservative already knew it would never gain power by bucking the DNA of modernity. And power is the be all and end all of modern politics – bono publico be damned.

Rishi Sunak is on a losing wicket, even though he doubtless understands the nature of the problem. Yet he also realises that a Conservative Party justifying its name would be heading for political oblivion.

Real conservatism is only possible at various gatherings where likeminded individuals exchange stories of woe, variously clever speeches and badly printed leaflets. Outside the walls of those hotel conference rooms, the welfare state will continue to grow until the economy bursts like an over-pumped helium balloon.

Rishi-washy will be fine come what may. But that’s more than one could say for the rest of us.