Postcard from Post-Britannia

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After bankers ransacked the country in 2008, the resultant unhappiness from unemployment and austerity was directed by corporate and government media away from banking and towards others that people could feel self righteous about: the unemployed, immigrants, muslims. This was stoked by a party previously founded by the bankers, called UKIP.

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The narrow vote to leave the EU was mostly based on worries over immigration rather than doing anything about banking, tax evasion or any of the other more material influences on citizen’s wellbeing. Psychologists found that people’s vote for Brexit was largely about people feeling that they could exert some power at a time when they increasingly felt powerless.

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This result led the SNP to demand a referendum within a year so they could leave the UK and stay in EU. This was rejected by Westminster but the Scottish Parliament voted to go ahead anyway. A difficult period ensued and as violence threatened to escalate, so Westminster caved in and Scotland left the union the day UK left the EU. The government fell and Boris Johnston became Prime Minister. Anticipating problems with trade and finance as a result of leaving the EU (and some argue to help his friends), he scrapped various taxes for corporations and banks. This created a balanced of payments crisis and was used to justify even more draconian cuts on the welfare state. Now people had to pay for their children to go to school, not just university.

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A vote for the Tories in 2015 General Election should have been seen as a risk to the UK due to how a EU referendum could lead to Brexit and thus Scotland demanding a new referendum. But the Labour party had been so completely paralysed by concern for appealing to everybody (including their own grandees) that they had no core analysis and narrative and reacted to the media rather than setting agendas. Therefore they let the mass media repeat the story that Labour was a threat to the union and they lost, ushering the end of Britain as it was known.

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As the banker rule of the remainder of Britain continued and government ministries began to be merged or shut down and all responsibilities moved to new regional governments, so serious movements began to emerge for Cornwall, Yorkshire and other regions to secede from the UK. Many intelligent people such as Tristram Hunt MP welcomed this in the name of greater democracy, and were given much air time for their views, as none of these new entities could do anything about regulating banking.

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