What is the state of the nation? Thinking about this phrase allows us to look down on ourselves as we are: a ragged and windy archipelago, without the means to feed itself, heavily populated; a place that once acted on the world but is now largely acted upon; dependent for its future upon technologies designed and built thousands of miles away; the former proud possessor of a world-envied democratic culture, too often today pitied or laughed at.
It would be easy to assess the state of the United Kingdom this spring with a long piddle of negativity. The strikes; the migration pressures; Brexit trade friction; the cost-of-living disaster. And so on. But if temperament is fate, then this writer is fated to work as an incurable optimist – a disability, for sure, in political commentary.
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