Move Britannia

Brits have always worked abroad. We had freedom of movement long before it was available to most of the rest of the world. We used it well, too. Firstly, in bringing civilisation and light to the dark continents then, much later, showing our dissatisfaction with state socialism here in Britain by joining the brain drain to escape punitive taxation that was crippling Britain under the last Labour government to operate on its founding Marxist principles. That was, of course, when we were at the forefront of educating the masses, when grammar schools produced scientists and engineers and bright, young, employable things.

Although some left for good many came back of course, the pull of our glorious sceptred isle proving irresistible; deep-veined patriotism drew this happy breed of men back to our little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea. And for a while it really looked like we had it all again... until the displaced socialists resurfaced in their sheep’s clothing and shouted ‘Cool Britannia!’ even as they began dismantling Britannia’s realm forever. Come one, come all, they cried and come they did. Wages plummeted, education slumped to a shameful low, Britain’s streets and housing estates turned into war zones and this royal throne of kings turned into rows and rows of Burger Kings.

Many of those who could, left these shores. Those with average means retired to the sun and took their pensions with them where their capital could buy their own blessed plots. The best and brightest were drawn to prestigious foreign universities. Tech start-ups made independent wealth for a very few.  The rest clung on, out of lack of means, out of patriotism or xenophobia, or dependence on the bloated welfare state which systematically turned workers into an underclass of low-worth breeders, serially ignored by successive administrations because it was cheaper than the alternative – to admit they were wrong and do something about it.

Instead of training our own we imported cheap labour and perpetuated the rot. Manufacturing declined, the city flourished but went rogue and slowly but surely Britain changed. A dwindling tax base for a burgeoning welfare bill and no plan to take control; just the Ponzi scheme of open-doors immigration. Things can only get better, said New labour, as they watched their plans fall into place. ‘New hospitals!’ they cried and piled up the public debt! ‘More doctors!’ they demanded and imported them from afar, from countries less able to replace them. And somewhere in there (for surely there was a plan?) they presumably called for ‘More administrators!’

Now the junior doctors are threatening to leave and work overseas and their places will be taken by foreign-trained medics because – just as in practically every industry - we haven’t preserved the status of home-grown talent. As the top guys leave we’ll receive the cream of the second divisions and more Brits will feel displaced and forgotten and seek their own exit by whatever means. The health service will suffer and social cohesion will worsen, which will further increase the demand for health services, because poor people cost so much more to keep well.

Rude Britannia...

And future governments will continue to import more poor people to maintain their doomed economic model and still try and spin the discontent as an irrational fear of foreigners, all the while squeezing the funding while trying to cope with an increasing burden. Training could eventually be abandoned altogether, relying entirely on ever cheaper, part-trained, non-English speakers and hiring more and more interpreters to cope with the Babel-chatter of alien labour. Is Brexit the answer? It will never be allowed to happen. But, look on the bright side: Brits have always worked abroad; there won’t be any decent ones left here to suffer.