The gaslighting is now so strong in Britain that you can't watch a government press conference without sunglasses. The last six weeks in plague-ridden lockdown have been particularly surreal. There's a horrible grinding sound as if whoever's really driving Britain is struggling to find reverse, while the CovidBrexidiot at the wheel claims that trade in goods is flowing as smoothly as public funds into his Tory cronies' pockets. Buried within the government's sycophantic media are tell-tale signs that ministers and officials never understood the trade barriers that EU membership suspended between Britain and its closest neighbours, let alone their own new rules; and none has read the withdrawal agreement, EU-UK trade deal or the mystical 'Northern Ireland Protocol'. We were even treated to the Parliamentary pantomime of Brexidiot Villiers urging Brexidiot Gove to 'renegotiate' a new protocol to replace the existing one. Fresh from misselling the benefits of the Japan trade deal, Brexidiot Truss has notified Britain's Pacific neighbours of the intention to join their trade pact rather than the world's largest only 21 miles away. Meanwhile, the Right Honourable Wackjob Reclining-Smug has regaled Parliament with claims that local fish are "happy to be British" and his favourite breakfast is "nanny's home made marmalade on toast".
But none of this is really new. A strong sense of denial and unjustified entitlement has powered British politics for well over a century. While most major countries embraced their relative positions in the world, Britain's political cult leaders and their followers drank constantly from a deep well of nostalgia-laced Kool Aid. Scorning the fact that phyrric victories in successive global conflicts had left their country dependent on both American money and a steadily growing European marketplace, they branded this twin dependence as Britain's 'Special Relationship' with the US and begrudging leadership of a grateful post-war Europe.
Never mind the fact that Britain begged to join the EEC over French objections, then tried to cement its place by transforming the trade bloc into a steadily expanding European Union. Ignore 'big bang' when American financial institutions were encouraged to make London their route for raising and deploying foreign capital.
The British political establishment consoled itself over such bitter compromises with reality by welcoming the embezzled funds of sundry despots and dictators, transforming a string of colonial-era island dependencies into tax havens and London itself into the money laundering capital of the world. Mayfair grew to entertain both US hedge fund managers and Putin's diaspora, united in their need for disruption and the investment opportunities that brings...
There is no better symbol of this constant struggle with reality than the rise of the mendacious Boris Johnson. It may have taken Trump's flash-in-the-pan for British populism to find its voice among the Tories' rabid Eurosceptics, but it took Johnson's peculiarly fraudulent outlook to spot the opportunity to lead them into the centre of government with perhaps the greatest confidence trick in British history.
Whether it's possible for politicians to continue defying the reality of Britain's decline is unclear. Certainly there is little by way of Parliamentary opposition, as their leader seems incapable of unifying his own party let alone pointing out the fundamental flaws in his country's trade plans.
But that gaslighting will definitely need to go up a notch...
