Former U.K. Ambassador and fierce critic of the Empire Craig Murray posted an article on his website on July 6, and (reprinted in edited form in Consortium News on July 7), titled “The Death of the British Imperial State.” He writes: “All Empires end in ignominy. The United Kingdom is drawing to a close, not with a bang but with a fart.
“A century from now, the dominant historical narrative will be Chinese, and Chinese historians will puzzle over how Boris Johnson fell over a lie about what he knew of sexual harassment by a very junior member of his government. Learned papers will be written over whether this was truly the cause, or whether the underlying socio-economic crisis caused by inflation and Brexit was the real determinant. Chinese books (or their technological equivalent) will be written on the crisis of neo-liberalism and how Western society reached unsustainable levels of concentration of capital and wealth inequality.”
Murray observes that “neo-liberalism has succeeded in destroying societal values, to the extent that anti-social and even sociopathic behavior no longer appears peculiar. … In a society where authority condones, and constructs a system to enable, personal fortunes of $200 billion or more while millions of children in the same country are genuinely hungry and poorly housed, what values is the socio-political structure telling people to hold?”
As to Johnson, he notes wryly: “As the U.K.’s military, economic and political power have collapsed, so have its political mores—both for good and for bad. Johnson is but a turd spewed to the top of the gushing sewer of British decline.”
Declaring that the United Kingdom is breaking up, with likely Scottish independence, reunification of Ireland, and even Wales’ independence, Murray concludes: “The U.K. has been in socio-political turmoil since 2016 and is now entering profound economic crisis. These very days are the end-time of the United Kingdom. Rejoice!
“I shall leave the last word to that great radical Percy Bysshe Shelley:” Here he prints Shelley’s ode to the death of Empire, Ozymandias.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/07/the-death-of-the-british-imperial-state/
