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Britain has always enjoyed turning serious public life into a national in-joke, from naming polar research ships "Boaty McBoatface" to cheering political chaos like a drunken pub audience watching plates smash. But the joke has finally gone too far.
Britain prides itself on celebrating cultural diversity, inherited identity and regional tradition. Yet there remains one culture it is still entirely acceptable to mock openly: the English upper classes. From accents and manners to country pursuits and old institutions, modern society increasingly treats poshness not as a culture to preserve, but as one to apologise for.
The campaign against hereditary peers is presented as democratic progress, yet it threatens to remove some of the House of Lords’ most experienced and independent voices. From distinguished diplomats such as the Earl of Oxford and Asquith to tireless public servants like Lord Russell of Liverpool, Britain is discarding a tradition of duty and expertise in favour of an increasingly shallow political class.
Modern education has become obsessed with exams, careers and economic utility while neglecting the deeper purpose of learning itself. As Britain abandons classical liberal education, a generation is growing up increasingly detached from history, literature and the intellectual traditions that once sustained Western civilisation.