How have we gone from Rule Britannia to cruel Britannia?

LIz TruSS came out with some fine sentiments. rather than be racked with shame about our history and doubt about our future, she said, it’s time for the British to be proud once again of who we are and what we stand for. warts and all, she added.

I agree with her. About the past and the future — and even the warts. The problem is the here and the now. The imperfect present. The day today. The problem is what we have become, not what we were and could be again. we claim to be a caring people and the most civilised nation in the world but let’s take a cold hard look at us today. Are we really?

Looking around, it is hard to see ourselves and our country as anything of which to be proud.

I am struggling to see past the second-raters, the posh entitled, the chisellers, snivellers and diddlers who seem to be in charge of running uK plc into the ground. Not just in Government, but in the Civil Service and elsewhere, too.

The only exceptionalism on display today is the uncomfortable fact that we are exceptionally lacking, on far too many fronts for comfort.

This week’s scandal — whether those at No 10 had a party while the rest of the nation was obeying lockdown — is bad enough.

But this putative transgression shrivels to dust beside the can’t-bebovvered attitude of those politicians and civil servants who failed in their duty of care in getting people out of Afghanistan; in providing a safe passage to those who had risked their lives to help us. wFH jobsworths who wouldn’t pick up the phone or put in five minutes of overtime to help, thus ushering some of our allies and their families to almost certain death.

Let’s not forget senior ministers who wouldn’t interrupt their summer breaks to get back to their desks. Including Dominic raab — paddleboarding in Crete — and mandarin Sir Philip Barton, who has said he feels ‘regret’ for not returning sooner.

regret? They should all burn with hot shame. In addition to the blood on their hands, what does this disgraceful episode make us look like on the world stage? who will ever trust us again?

There have been terrible transgressions against our own people, too. The contaminated blood scandal, in which 3,000 people died after being given blood products containing HIV and hepatitis C in the 1970s and 1980s, is a case in point. Nearly 40 years later an inquiry still rumbles on, with evidence hearings scheduled to continue into next year.

A final report is not likely until 2023, with compensation — if there is any to be had — after that. Thousands have also been left with lifechanging conditions while relatives mourn without compensation or restitution for their loved ones.

Likewise the victims of the Post Office scandal, in which lives were ruined over a faulty computer system which saw many being found erroneously guilty of false accounting or theft and sent to jail.

Their suffering was made worse because those responsible for the malfunctions tried to cover up the errors to protect their own reputations. where is the famous British sense of fair play in all this? why doesn’t the Government just do the decent thing and look after these people, instead of dragging it all out and putting them through this bureaucratic torture? These subpostmasters have had to fight for every penny, which is not just unfair, it is an affront to public conscience.

Seeping through whitehall and elsewhere, there seems to be little sense of duty any more, while the notion of self-sacrifice or putting the needs of others first is notable by its absence. Is this what Prince Harry and all the other wokies mean when they talk about mental health and putting your own happiness first?

Listen kids, you don’t even have to give up your job — just follow our leaders and don’t do your job in the first place!

If you feel stressed by the demands made upon you by desperate Afghans, terminally ill patients or suicidal sub-postmasters, just chillax. Light a scented candle and have yourself some me time.

TOAST another marshmallow, bubble up the hot chocolate, turn a deaf ear to the screams of desperation. You deserve it. In the meantime, the Foreign Office is not fit for purpose and attitudes that stink abound elsewhere. For hundreds of years the Brits have prided themselves as being the most humane and civilised nation in the world, but that is not what it looks like right now, either from within or beyond our shores, despite what Liz Truss says. And that is a national tragedy.