Britain’s decline and fall

WRITING to his wife in May 1942, Evelyn Waugh recounted a true story of military derring-do. A British commando unit offered to blow up an old tree-stump on Lord Glasgow’s estate, promising him that they could dynamite the tree so that it “falls on a sixpence”. After a boozy lunch they all went down to witness the explosion. But instead of falling on a sixpence the tree-stump rose 50 feet in the air, taking with it half an acre of soil and a beloved plantation of young trees. A tearful Lord Glasgow fled to his castle only to discover that every pane of glass had been shattered. He then ran to his lavatory to hide his emotions, but when he pulled the plug out of his washbasin “the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.”

A year on from the Brexit referendum Britain feels like Lord Glasgow’s castle. The most visible damage has been done to its domestic politics. With the Conservative Party in turmoil Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s hard-left leader, talks about being prime minister in six months. But just as serious is the blow to Britain’s global standing, which is lower than it has been at any time since the Suez crisis in 1956, when America crushed Anthony Eden’s attempt to reassert British power in Egypt.