Modern Warsaw is a thriving city (Image: Getty)
Britain is in denial. Total, complete denial. How else can we explain the utter ambivalence, or perhaps ignorance, with which we treat our national decline? Just last weekend, Lord Frost wrote about his experience of conducting focus groups, and witnessing with horror how blissfully unaware people are of how far the UK is falling down the international league table of wealth per person. Apparently, half of all of us think we’re richer than Switzerland and America. Ha! If only. Dream on, folks.
When I was growing up, a few decades ago now, Poland was regarded as a poor country. And compared with us, it was. Even as recently as ten years ago, Poles were coming to Britain because jobs were so much better paid and there was so much more opportunity. And now? Anyone with any sense has gone back home.
To my shame, I visited Poland for the first time only two years ago. I spent two days on business in Lublin, a medium-sized city south of Warsaw, and was staggered by how wealthy it was. Actually, not just wealthy, but clean and hospitable with a feeling of complete safety and efficiency. It was the most delightful surprise, and I found myself wishing I could stay longer.
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At the time, I thought that perhaps Lublin was a particularly privileged city. And I thought that perhaps the bits I went to were especially neat and tidy. But no, a bit of research tells me that Lublin is entirely typical of the whole country. It’s not exceptional at all.
It doesn’t therefore surprise me in the slightest, yet it apparently does for many people, that Poland is set to overtake Britain for wealth per person in the next few years. As are Romania and Hungary. Perhaps young Brits will start emigrating to these countries for the immense job opportunities and the excellent standard of living. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it, though it would make perfect sense.
Do we care that Britain is being so easily overtaken? Does it worry us, or even alarm us? It darn well should. It’s only when you travel that you see how much better so many other places are. Without that jolt, rather like the saying about boiling a frog by gradually heating it in water till death is inevitable, we just accept our decline. Because we’re oblivious to it.
Well, one day, unlike that frog, I trust we will wake up. We’ll have to. One day, we’ll recognise that more and more people in more and more countries live better lives, with more choice, opportunity and, yes, more cash, and we’ll start realising how far we’ve fallen behind. We’ll finally see how much we are living beyond our means, how we are being kind to be cruel by consigning millions to a life on out-of-work benefits, how we are slowly but determinedly closing off incentives to hard work and entrepreneurialism by increasing the tax burden to extortionate levels, and borrowing eye-watering amounts that future generations will have to pay off.
Yes, one day. But, tragically, not yet. I fear that it’ll be many years, such is our complete, blinkered complacency. We have a long way to go before enough British people realise that there are no easy solutions, and that the only way out of our decline is to hack back the size of the state, tax less, borrow less, incentivise work and get people taking responsibility for their own future.
By then, Poland will have overtaken us, of course, along with many others. We’ll be playing catch-up. But at least we’ll finally have seen the light.
