Why do we stir up trouble in foreign countries but can’t even run our own?
WHAT a twisted society we have become. We stir up wars in other people’s countries and praise ourselves for doing it. But there is no political reward for protecting our own people against crime and disorder on their streets and in their homes. It is no longer clear if anyone is governing the country at all, so busy are we putting other nations to rights.
Burglaries go unprevented, uninvestigated and unpunished, in colossal numbers. Our capital city seethes with uncontrolled knife crime and stinks of marijuana. Christmas brings news of terrible ultra-violent crimes in supposedly peaceful suburban areas. Migrants stride boldly ashore in unknown numbers. We pay heavy taxes for pitiful services, cratered roads and a health system that is the envy of nobody.
Yet, nothing happens about all this. The surest way to gain praise in politics is to make simple-minded statements about a crisis abroad and demand that we send bombs and shells to some strife-torn state, or actually bomb it ourselves.
The idea that such things are often complicated and dangerous, and may do harm, has faded from view. When Prime Minister Anthony Eden dragged us into his disastrous attack on Egypt in 1956, the entire country was bitterly divided. And rightly so. The archives, when they were opened, showed that the adventure was based on lies, futile and doomed.
When the USA sank up to its waist in the bloody mud of Vietnam in the 1960s, the whole world was at odds. Once again, now that the truth is revealed, we know that thousands of brave men died, and many more thousands of innocent civilians were killed, because of a mistake.
But since the Blair revolution of 1997, pious, allegedly virtuous foreign crusades have come back into fashion. Criticising them gets you into trouble. There is only one permitted view. Few go back to find out how things actually went.
The Kosovo episode, for instance, did not bring paradise to that part of the world. Nor did the Iraq invasion. I know most people now pretend to have been against it at the time but as one who actually was against it at the time, I can assure you that they are mistaken. It had wide support. The same goes for the daft adventures in Afghanistan and Libya.
In fact, the last three did so much harm that it will never be measured. Together they began the era of mass migration from the Middle East and Africa to Western Europe. This is probably the biggest event in human history since the First World War, and perhaps bigger.
How can we do all this stamping about in foreign countries when we are so bad at governing our own and also not very strong? Our country doesn’t work properly. You can’t even see a doctor. The police are equally invisible. Our Army is as tiny as our debts are huge. Our grandest new warship, the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, has broken down. Even when it works, we have to borrow aircraft from the Americans to fly off it.
None of this will be properly discussed at the rapidly approaching General Election and nobody will stand in that poll who prefers reforming Britain to foreign policy fantasy abroad. Why do we put up with it?