The British have lost faith in their institutions

All of the institutions in which the British public formerly reposed trust – the pillars that supported our society – have been discredited. One after another they have gone down like ninepins, laid low by the exposure of their charlatanry before a disillusioned public. The latest busted flush is the Bank of England.

The Bank’s transparently politically motivated attempt last week to resurrect Project Fear with its caricature forecasts for the consequences of a clean Brexit – 9.7 per cent decline in GDP, house prices crashing and interest rates rising (a surprising claim, since Mark Carney had been saying they would fall, only days before) – provoked not panic but derision. That is what we have come to: the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has become a risible pantomime dame.

What is less funny is what that says about Britain’s credibility in the world, under a leadership of self-interested elites pursuing an anti-national agenda. If anyone ever doubted why Mark Carney’s term as Governor was extended, they can be in no doubt now. A central bank that should be the epitome of sober, detached responsibility has been politicized into irrelevance.

“These are scenarios, not forecasts,” said Carney in a belated attempt to deflect the deserved ridicule with which he was deluged after his “We’re all doomed” Brexit predictions. It was reminiscent of the climate alarmists’ “Weather is not climate”, until some weather event occurred that could be spun to their advantage, and suddenly it was. With the Bank of England a laughing stock it is difficult to identify any remaining national institution that commands the confidence of the British people.

Our politicians were always distrusted, but there lingered a vestigial confidence in the overall political system. Then came the MPs’ expenses scandal and the scales fell from the eyes of electors as they discovered the fiscal eccentricities of the assorted duck-house proprietors and moat-cleansers who represented them. When the EU referendum endorsed Brexit, the public found that they did not even represent them.

Brexit has smoked out the establishment. The BBC’s anti-Brexit bias is chronic. The Treasury’s forecasts are as ridiculous as the Bank of England’s. It is all collapsing – the whole elitist hegemony. In France we can see the first sparks of the backlash against the Green tyranny that has inflated energy bills to unendurable levels: it is only the beginning.

When is it going to dawn on a discredited establishment that condemning efforts to translate the public will into public policy (which we used to call democracy) as “populism” is totally self-defeating? Outside the liberal bubble “populism” is not a dirty word: increasingly it is a label that encourages electors to vote for a political party that espouses it – most recently in Andalusia, a region synonymous with the far left for generations. No European government outside the Visegrad group is trusted by its electorate today.

In Britain the immigration figures give the lie to government claims. We have lost control of our borders and the political class and its corporate cronies are determined we shall not take back control. The House of Commons is resolved to stop Brexit: that is to say, to defy the outcome of the largest democratic exercise in British history. Democracy and Parliament are now incompatible entities.

Consider the controversy over the legal advice on the Brexit withdrawal agreement given by the Attorney General to the Prime Minister. Such legal advice is traditionally, but not invariably, regarded as privileged. Yet if ever there was a situation in which that advice required, in the national interest, to be disclosed it is now.

There is much huffing and puffing by MPs about the right of their House to see the full text of the legal advice. Such seventeenth-century narcissism is not the important point. The issue is not whether the membership of a parliament that voluntarily surrendered much of its authority to an unelected foreign power (the EU Commission) has a right to see the Attorney General’s opinion, but that the people of Britain, whose freedom and prosperity hinge upon the tripwires and backstops inserted into an oppressive withdrawal treaty, should insist upon their own right to scrutinize every jot and tittle of it.

The British public has become alienated from its government, political system, scientific establishment, higher education institutions, national broadcaster, central bank and other banking institutions, taxation regime, and almost every former totem of national identity. Yet the political class remains oblivious and imagines its unchallenged control can continue in the future as it has done in the past. This will not end well.