FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON – A distraught Britain, with its worn shield, patches on the ground and sagging trident, looks dejectedly at the rocket sinking before it: today's Telegraph cartoon says more than a thousand words about the state of mind of a country whose youngest, High-profile fiasco has caused consternation and reflection.
It turns out that in January the test of a submarine-launched nuclear missile was a flop, quite literally: The Trident, launched from a Vanguard submarine, landed instead of 6,000 kilometers over the Atlantic Ocean flying a few hundred kilometers in the water meters from the Marine unit, all under the eyes of Defense Secretary Grant Schapps, who had come to witness the amazing maneuver in person.
Above all, the high-profile failure has called into question Britain's ability to provide nuclear deterrence at a time in history when we face threats from Russia and China: but above all, the nuclear arsenal is one of the last vestiges that London claims as its own Great power status. If that doesn't work, the demotion will happen immediately, especially since all British forces are in trouble and the generals are openly talking about the fact that Britain is no longer able to remain at tier one of the military powers (with the United States, Russia , China and France), but slips to the rank of Germany and Italy. But there is more: the reduced ability to wage war is an expression of a decline that affects all levels of society.
Last week it was announced that the UK economy would be in recession at the end of 2023: And these are not abstract numbers, as middle-income families are now 16% poorer than their peers in France, Germany or Holland, and the typical British family it is around 10,000 euros per year poorer than its international counterparts. The “Remainiacs” (the Remain in Europe crazies, as they call them here) are pointing the finger at Brexit, but the reality is more complex: since the 2008 financial crisis, Britain has been trapped in a spiral of low growth and low productivity, the causes of which and remedies that economists continue to question. What is certain is that the brutal austerity policies imposed by the Conservative government after 2010 are having a devastating impact on public services: one of the consequences is that the mythical National Health Service is collapsing and Britain now has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in the developed world.
A picture that is collapsing: schools, bumpy roads, an overburdened justice system and a dilapidated public sector. There has been little investment at both government and private levels over the last 15 years, partly due to the climate of uncertainty caused by Brexit, and the result is a system with poor infrastructure (trains in England are a nightmare) and a lack of innovation of companies. But it is society itself that seems to be sick: unemployment at its lowest level – just 3.8% – hides the fact that 5.6 million people are now not even looking for work and are living on subsidies (in certain areas the depressed north, (e.g. in Blackpool one in four workers lives on public support). Of this army of non-working hours, half report long-term illnesses that make them unable to work.
It is no coincidence that King Charles' deteriorating health is seen as a sad metaphor for the senile decadence of an entire nation. Of course, the English make self-pity a national sport and sometimes forget their own strengths: after all, this is still the country that last year attracted over a million legal immigrants in search of a better future, where hundreds of thousands of foreign students flock to universities, which remain among the best in the world, where the city remains a global financial center, not affected in the least by Brexit and which, in fact, continues to break records, in the heart of a London that is among the most global and fascinating on the planet. But the great splash of the trident in the ocean has become the mirror in which Britain reflects all its evils.