How They Broke Britain - by James O’Brien

This book should be a mandatory for all sixteen-year-old children to give them an understanding of the modern political landscape before they become legal voters. It might perhaps explain why they enter adulthood in very uncertain times.

It strikes an opening chord with me when I realise it’s our passivity that has allowed us to get here. We stopped noticing it, we just kind of accepted the incompetence.

It all starts with brutal austerity to save the Banks. I always remember a respected colleague telling me that you should never only cut costs, as you can’t shrink your way to greatness.

I went on a bit of a journey with this book. At first it made me sad and to be honest a little depressed.

But as you move through the chapters, and you reflect on this cache of incompetents and fantasists it makes you feel angry. I get the fact that not everyone is made to be a fantastic leader but we should never accept liars and ‘faux patriotism’.

When we get to the pandemic years the line that James uses to sum it up is simple. ‘When the public needed us the most, the Government failed. Too busy on holiday writing a book, sorting out wallpaper or his partners dog.

I think James knows that we might not even have reached the end of the road, the journey back will not be an easy one.

So, I ended up angry. If its passivity that caused us to get here, we need to do something about it. I wrote a story before about How We Let the Young Down. We need to make them now see they type of people that have caused this whole sorry mess. Our one job in life is to leave it behind in a better state than when we inherited it.