You don’t have to be a religious revivalist to believe that the world and civilisation as we know it may be rapidly approaching Armageddon – defined roughly as a massive battle or series of battles which bring about the end of the world. The UK government’s actions appear to be hastening our demise and weakening our resilience. What can the people of this country do to protect themselves?
We face three massive, all too imminent and related threats.
Armageddon: climate change, war and the rise of fascism
Climate change is now a major threat to human health. It is not only forests and moors that are burning, but also parts of cities. Rivers are drying up, wildlife is decimated, crops are failing and people are dying in suffocating heat. Many parts of the world are becoming uninhabitable. Mass migration of millions of the starving and destitute becomes inevitable, resulting in wealthier nations making borders ever more hostile, a situation which sending refugees in expensive planes to Africa or imprisoning them in redundant cruise ships will do little to resolve.
The Ukraine War escalates daily. Fierce resistance by the Ukrainian forces will not encourage Putin in the security of his nuclear bunker to admit defeat. Instead, he will resort to ever more extreme measures, eventually nuclear warheads. Meanwhile, China is beating the war drums against Taiwan. Expect Kim Jon-un with his massive nuclear arsenal to join the fray. European cities are also threatened, including London, which Boris Johnson and Liz Truss with their bellicose rhetoric have been helping to ensure is now an early target for Putin’s long-range missiles.
If this was not sufficient, consider the rise of the neofascists in Europe and America, not only Trump in the USA, Erdogan in Turkey and Orban in Hungary, but in UK our own Europhobic Brexit-obsessed Truss. If, as seems probable, Truss becomes our next prime minister, expect her weak leadership to be reinforced by her already-outlined punitive measures, banning protest and indeed any ‘anti-British’ criticism. This will be supported by the increasingly hysterical tabloid press. Voices of opposition, no doubt including Bylines, will be soon suppressed.
Britain’s unique act of self-harm
Britain is now in rapid economic and social decline. It has already been suggested that Putin initiated the sanctions now leading to our runaway inflation and cost-of-living crisis. No – it was the West that decided to ‘punish’ Putin for his wrongdoing, presumably in the naïve belief that he didn’t have the power to retaliate. Both the UK and western Europe are now seeing their economies in free fall. So, was it a rational strategy? It is also a failure of global capitalism in that a say 10% world surplus of a commodity such as oil or gas, results in pathetically low prices, but a 10% shortage means massive price increases. This amounts to resources being taken away from ordinary people – the vast majority of Britons – and pushed into the coffers of the energy companies and shareholders.
There is every probability that the financial crisis, soon to overwhelm us, will see not only a rise in unemployment but the failure of thousands of small and medium businesses, as declining incomes will mean that discretionary spending on items like meals out, fashion, books, entertainment and music will all nosedive. But the British, uniquely in the western world, have also committed what is perhaps the greatest single act of self-harm since the Civil War – Brexit.
A 5% decline in our gross domestic product does not do justice to the expensive, time wasting, red tape and bureaucracy by the very culture warriors claiming to reduce red tape, nor the soul-destroying queues, delays and irritation. Little wonder many exporters to our historic partners across the North Sea have given up in despair. Worker shortages are now causing massive cancellations of train and bus services (have you tried a long journey by public transport recently?) a situation exacerbated in all public sector industries by strikes as people struggle to maintain rapidly declining standards of living.
There will be destitution and early deaths as people can no longer feed their families or heat their homes. This is not a good time to be old and infirm, as the NHS becomes two tier – life threatening delays for the majority, but excellent service for those who can pay. Care homes now struggle to survive. Their costs will soon be beyond many people.
Incompetence in the Disunited Kingdom
The response by the two pretenders to the title of UK Prime Minister have offered only daily auctions of irrelevance and stupidity to please their elderly, wealthy, mainly Home Counties party members, most of whom have a rose-tinted view of Britain’s long vanished imperial past. Expect them to elect the candidate who offers the least realistic scenarios, cutting taxes for the rich whilst letting the poor die in penury.
Civil unrest through the autumn and winter will be inevitable, suppressed by ever harsher measures. Given the hapless nature of Truss – determined to start a trade war with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol – Truss could be a match for Johnson in sheer incompetence, only supported by ever more extremist propaganda in the gutter press.
Armageddon will not overwhelm us overnight, but like Climate Breakdown, in a series of ever worsening disasters that people have to adapt to. Such events, and even their mitigating measures such as once ‘temporary’ food banks, soon become the new normal. The only gleam of hope is the grassroot resilience of the people of all four nations of these islands. With failure at the UK centre, Scotland and Wales are in better places. Johnson and Truss will have soon achieved what the IRA failed to do – unite Ireland, as younger people in Northern Ireland vote with their feet to join the more prosperous EU nation across the ‘open’ border. England, outside London however, has no such counter-balance; only individual actions by local community groups, and more enlightened Councils – Preston is a noted example – can act as a bulwark against an increasingly totalitarian and incompetent central state.
Armageddon: thinking globally, acting locally
There are approximately 5.4 million people living in the Yorkshire Region. This is about the same as Scotland, Denmark, Norway and Finland, all better managed countries than England. If England’s nine regions could enjoy the same degree of partial autonomy as that of Wales and Scotland with an elected Assembly or Parliament, they would be far better able to activate and energise the huge local response that is going to be required to provide food, warmth and shelter for fellow citizens, and perhaps even civil defence, to avoid the series of catastrophes almost certain to face us in the decade ahead.
With an abyss where responsible central Government should be, it is now up to the people of Yorkshire working through our democratically elected Leaders Board and One Yorkshire Committee, to build the networks and lines of communication we are going to need for the various forms of citizen action that will be required in the near future, if we are to survive.
People in Yorkshire have a proud history of volunteering, whether in military, environmental, social, sport, cultural groups. Reference is often made to ‘wartime spirit’. Like it or not, another form of warfare is upon us, perhaps literally in the case of a ruthless dictator now in charge of one of the most powerful nations on earth, or more figuratively, in terms of climate change and grotesque, post-Brexit mismanagement by central government. We must think globally and act locally to save the people of Yorkshire as well as our environment.
