Amoral and venal: Britain’s governing class has lost all sense of duty

Amoral and venal: Britain’s governing class has lost all sense of duty | Aditya Chakrabortty

The debacle that followed the Brexit referendum has its roots in moneyed nihilism at the top of the Conservative party

Even as doodlebugs smashed into the surrounding streets, George Orwell consoled himself with this thought: “One thing that has always shown that the English ruling class are morally fairly sound, is that in time of war they are ready enough to get themselves killed.” Present those who governed us with an existential crisis, he argued in his essay England Your England, and they would do what they believed to be right for the country.

Almost eight decades later, the UK stands on the verge of a calamity as great as any since the war. Whatever the protestations in parliament, we could within days crash-land into a world of medicine shortages and food riots. And where are our political classes? According to the lobby correspondents, Monday’s cabinet meeting was spent war-gaming general election strategies and thinking how to timetable voting so as to “scare” Labour. Wherever the national interest actually featured, it was buried under a thick dollop of party interest.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2CDpnlq

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