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Britain has made its point. We can do the past. The rest of the world may be more powerful and richer than we are, but only Britain can embody statehood in a banquet. Only Britain can force the titans of the digital age into white tie and tails, and reduce an American president to quivering admiration.
The question is where now? Trump’s itinerary mostly avoided central London. He did not go near Downing Street, let alone address parliament. Imagine a state visit to the US that did not include the White House or the Capitol. This week was all soft power and flattery. It probably did more for British tourism than for steel tariffs or pharmaceuticals.
Yet as I watched the golden carriage trundle through an empty Windsor park and into a gathering of bear-skinned soldiers, I did wonder what real message was being given out. How could such a country handle a struggling NHS, with its courts and prisons in disarray and its Treasury not knowing where to turn? What of its prime minister, embedded in woes of past and present, but with no vision of the future?
It was the past that cost Keir Starmer both Angela Rayner and Lord Mandelson, key figures in two major areas of his policy. Their faults were not monstrous, their atonement sincere and their talents clearly needed by the nation. Yet Starmer lacked the authority of his leadership to tell everyone to shut up and get back to work. Even a senior aide, Paul Ovenden, had to resign over eight-year-old text messages. Politics is becoming a no-go area for anyone with a past.
Britain has become crippled by the cabinet being seen not as the nation’s executive but as a cabal. Starmer last week felt he could only restore his authority with a reshuffle. A year into office, almost all the leading ministries of state, including the Home and Foreign Offices, are again run by novices. Were David Lammy and Yvette Cooper really so bad at the foreign and home ministries? For the past five years, departments such as transport and culture have had a new boss every year. Ministerial office appears to be merely an internship.
The historical archaism of British government is ingrained. An Attlee, indeed a Disraeli, would recognise the rituals of the modern House of Commons. Many prime ministers have tried to end the theatrical punch-up of PMQs, but without success. Debates are ill-attended and pointless. Select committees are lacking in authority. The House of Lords is virtually immune to reform, with hereditary peers and bishops still taking their seats, the former at least for the time being. As for Britain’s head of state, he still has to be anointed by God with oil.
Every party comes to power promising to end what is widely agreed is the most over-centralised state in western Europe. Every one ends by increasing it. Last year Starmer did not bother even to wait and consider before effectively abolishing what is seemingly local councils’ last area of democratic discretion, over housing and industrial development. His concession to the defence lobby was a reassertion of Britain’s once imperial presence east of Suez. His concession to the Labour left was a return to its ancient war on private landlordism.
Over the years, some of Britain’s favourite television documentaries have been on archaeology, whether presented by Mortimer Wheeler or Alice Roberts. We love dredging up past history. Popular, too, is dredging up grim political sagas as public inquiries. There are roughly a dozen running at any one time, costing as much as a West End musical, and offering a running theatre of political failure.
Barely a week passes without the spectre of past calamities – from the infected blood scandal to the government’s Covid response – haunting the present. Other countries determine issues of corporate responsibility and get on with the future. Sweden investigated Covid in two years. Britain is still doing so, at a cost that is likely to exceed £200m. It can take two years to bring rapists to trial, while thousands of lawyers crowd public inquiries. They are the soap operas of politics.
The reason Britain’s public services are in such disarray cannot be separated from the recent instability of British politics, traditionally indicated by a surge in third-party support. Critical areas of reform simply went by the board. The health service defies reorganisation, as does the legal profession. The regulation of social media and artificial intelligence are clearly beyond the competence of parliament. The assisted dying bill requires the utmost care and attention, not the present shambolic back and forth between Commons and Lords. I have lost count of the neglected issues that would once have been delegated at least to a royal commission, such as the future of universities, the funding of the BBC and local democracy.
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The reality of this week is that, yes, Britain can do the past. But can we do the future?
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Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
