The United Kingdom's Existential Crisis

[Hyde Park, December 2025]

I spent a pleasant Friday evening at a restaurant in Canary Wharf, in the Docklands of London. Yes, those famous docks that were Hitler's particular target. The area has been built up into a financial center that has become quite an impressive place. It's far from the center of London, but the recent opening of another underground line has been a game changer for the area. In addition to the many banks and financial services companies that call it home, there are dozens of restaurants and shops and markets that serve the increasing numbers of people who not only work there, but live in the apartment buildings springing up everywhere.

But back to dinner! Next to us sat three 20-something men, busily drinking their lagers and flirting with women on their phones (but not in person). We struck up a conversation with them, and I was struck by how pessimistic they were about their future prospects. These gentlemen despaired of meeting and marrying and building a middle class existence. Even the one who was in the trades (an electrician) wasn't optimistic about what would be the normal progression in America: Learn, work, strike out on your own and build a small company.

One in particular complained about how England is changing into a place that doesn't seem like it welcomes him. Yet when I asked for whom he voted in the last election, his answer was: Labor!

All three were interested in America, and in fact two had visited, albeit briefly. But they were also woefully ignorant of the differences between the two countries. I had to explain the 1st Amendment! Their opinions about President Trump were partly typical...driven by the incessant drumbeat of leftist media in the UK, but they were not as reflexively critical as I had expected.

What I took away from the conversation was that they saw their future prospects as dismal, and that there was no reasonable alternative available to them on the horizon. They saw no Donald Trump or Charlie Kirk who could speak to them about a better way. They saw the country in which they have lived their entire lives being subsumed by a Woke (their word) insanity that denigrated everything they felt was important. And they saw an economic system that was stacked against them, without any way to change it.

Is it any wonder that the UK is rapidly sliding into both irrelevancy and authoritarian control? Is it any wonder that Islam is on the march? After all, they have a plan. They have an alternative. They have a vision of the future. That their vision is evil and destructive means very little to its adherents, because they will reap the benefits of that destruction.

Is this Weimar Germany in the 21st century? Will a Hitler arise in the UK and show these young men a different path? Or will they gradually be gobbled up by encroaching Islam, and forced into dhimmitude, or worse? Will Tommy Robinson, or someone like him be able to galvanize public support for a push against the destruction of what once was the shining beacon of freedom in the world? Will Nigel Farage be able to fight the structural and political impediments to a Reform Party win in the next elections almost four years from now? Will the UK crash so quickly that the Labor Party has to call an election before that?

I have no crystal ball, but if I were a betting man I would bet against Britain ever becoming Great again.

posted by CBD at 12:00 PM

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