Some generous souls are claiming it’s not Boris’s fault — which may be true, up to a point, of which more in a moment — but whoever is to blame one thing is abundantly clear: Britain is a failed state, the Sick Man of Europe, and those of us who grew up believing that to have been born British was to have won the lottery in life have now been sorely disabused of the notion.
How can this possibly have happened to the land of Magna Carta and English Common Law, the heroic seafaring nation which coloured the atlas pink and stamped its character on half the world’s nations from Australia and the U.S. to India and South Africa, that invented most of the world’s best sports, produced most of its greatest literature, beat Philip II of Spain, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler and discovered almost everything worth discovering?
Just when did Britain become so incredibly, embarrassingly shit?
Well, it’s easy to blame Boris, as I have done on occasion, for being a priapic lard-butted lightweight chancer who should never have been given the keys to Number 10. As we’ve learned to our cost, he’s all mouth and no trousers, great for an impromptu bon mot or jolly photo op but perfectly useless in times of crisis, being too easily led, having no opinions of his own, the backbone of sponge and the moral character of a Plecostomus catfish.
James Delingpole, “Britain is now the sick man of Europe”, Breitbart, 2020-08-14.
September 17, 2026
QotD: Boris Johnson
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UK, Spain, Portugal, even France, used to dream big and go all in.
Now, small. Small goals, small apartments, small refrigerators and washing machines and dryers. Really pathetic to an American visiting.
I grew up relatively poor in USA 50 year ago and lived in a bigger better house with a decent lawn and big backyard with a second hand above ground pool that is beyond the dreams of a European today.
I think the best were lost and the spirit of fight died in two wars. Communism and socialism has bled out the rest of their souls.
Europe is a museum or mausoleum.
Comment by Pat McCracken — September 18, 2026 @ 21:57
John Carter discussed the timidity of western European nations in this post. The best were indeed lost — between 1914 and 1918 for the British and French, and 1939-45 for the Germans — and the survivors never recovered the brash confidence of their nations before the opening battles of WW1.
Comment by Nicholas — September 18, 2026 @ 22:54