At the beginning of the first Thatcher government (1979-83), the economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that Britain was the perfect place to conduct the dubious monetarist experiment recommended by his fellow economist Milton Friedman. This was because although Galbraith (rightly) thought the policy was crazy, British “phlegm” would see us through, and the tolerant nation would not “take to the streets”.
This memory came to mind recently when I was at the revival of that great 1970s classic Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s farce has been updated by Tom Basden, and is a five-star triumph. The memory was evoked by the central character, the “maniac”, declaring: “Scandal is to society what confession is to the sinner. It’s a catharsis [that] fixes nothing: the hostile environments, the sewage in the seas, the peerages for political donors. And what’s the result? Do we arrest anyone? Can we change anything? Of course not … In glorious democracies such as ours, we get to moan about it instead.”
The most glaring example of this public tolerance and moaning is of course – wait for it – Brexit. The damage mounts, but there has been nothing in the shape of a public inquiry or a royal commission into what is indubitably the biggest and most damaging political and economic scandal of our time. » | William Keegan | Sunday, August 6, 2023
