Britain’s cheering gloom

By Bagehot

MY print column this week looks at the deep anger and anti-politics contempt that suffuses national debate in Britain just now. I suggest that British voter rage is oddly encouraging. In lots of debt-ridden western nations, anger at the government is fatalistic, almost nihilistic, and too often focuses on preserving a crumbling status quo and clinging desperately to dwindling sectoral privileges. In Britain, I would argue, voter rage is more constructive: if people are furious about what they see as the unfairness of life in today’s Britain that is because they expect it to feel fair.