Yes. The UK is beyond repair. We are going to have to start again from scratch almost, and I say that as an elected representative and someone who has worked in politics and governance for twenty-five years.
But the problem is not quite what you think.
Britain largely works off the back of an unpaid civic tier. This encapsulates everything from scout leaders to WI to parish and town councillors to political activists taking roles in associations and on committees to people sitting on representation boards to school governors to Rotary Clubs to Working Men's committees etc . . . it's huge.
Traditionally, these people then fed upwards into civic governance in some way. One of the key movements was that this tier provided a "pool" by which political groups or parties took candidates for local government or for roles within their party structure.
So what you would get is people with a lot of experience of running things, doing things, dealing with people, and who had solid connections to wider society in all its forms going into political representation. And these people would have a trade or a profession outside of that world as well.
This has all broken down. People are not interested in civic society anymore. British society and culture has been largely atomised, and with the financial demands of the modern world, people are too knackered to go out on a rainy Thursday night to sit in a church hall and talk about buying new swings for the play park.
So what you get instead is the people with "ulterior motives" getting candidacies: people whose focus isn't on good governance, it's being the big "I am", or being on telly, or acquiring power, or pushing a certain agenda -- the psychos really.
And the other problem is that the level of vitriol that elected representatives now get over very minor matters tends to put anyone other than the psychos off standing for election. Who wants that shit in their lives?
So we have ended up with a situation where our political system is now riddled with people that should be absolutely nowhere near it, not just because they are useless and dangerous, but they couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery if they tried -- and that goes for all the political parties, even my own.
Add to that the bizarre belief that, somehow, everything is eternal and will never fall apart or decay or decline, be it the built environment, or cultural beliefs, or institutions, no matter what shit you throw at them .... and now everything is falling apart, and people are shocked.
And then add to that, the fact that government is expected to solve a whole range of social and cultural problem, caused by the breakdown of society and the economic climate and post-industrialisation, and yeah . . . it's really bleak, folks.
It cannot be done. It just can't. We don't have the right people in the right places with the right tools. And even if we did, those people would be eviscerated by the media numpties who live in a la-la land where the only important thing is their cosy lives and them and their mates having top jobs.
It's a shit show. A total shit show.