I don’t know about you, but I’m suffering from chronic metaphor fatigue. There is nothing that goes horribly wrong, falls apart, arrives late, costs too much, delays millions and undermines our sanity that cannot be co-opted as a metaphor for Britain’s dysfunction in 2023. Everyone wants to control the narrative these days: corporations, football managers, reality TV stars. The Government’s attempts to control the narrative have — shall we say — not been entirely successful, in that the narrative about how well Britain is run is less a well-drilled PR machine and more an escaped pack of hyenas. Welcome to the United Kingdom, land of blatant symbolism.
HS2 takes the award for best all-rounder. It’s the Jude Bellingham of national decline metaphors, in that it’s got a bit of everything. Woefully behind schedule, wildly over-budget, subject to the vicissitudes of poor leadership and indecision, HS2 has achieved the spectacular feat of being the high-tech railway to link London with the north that will no longer be going to the north. Or indeed London.
It’s been known for a while that the Houses of Parliament are in peril of collapse and fire: the bill is gigantic and this summer the repairs were put off again. Aside from the very real dangers, the sight of the home of our politics falling into ruins would be the ne plus ultra of visual metaphors. Speaking of crumbling, an appalling manifestation of 2023 has been the more than 100 schools that closed the week before the start of the academic year because of dangerous reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. In Britain, even concrete doesn’t work.
It’s no wonder the British use so much sarcasm. We put it on everything, like ketchup. It masks the taste
The “nothing works anymore” vibe has been nicely supplemented by the Royal Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, which has spent more time being repaired than in service and was out of action for almost a year after a broken propellor and two major flooding incidents.
On the high street, with boarded-up shop fronts or, worse, American candy stores, shoplifting has been transformed from a silly, old-fashioned “crime” into an acceptable part of the grey economy. On the plus side, the police have graciously promised to investigate burglaries from now on while the Home Office can boast of its efforts to increase police numbers by 20,000, having been the same people who cut police numbers by 20,000.
In August, someone pulled the plug out at air traffic control, leaving thousands stranded abroad and out of pocket in airports. Barely a month goes by without gridlock at Dover. A rubbish mountain grew to enormous size in the East End this week, until the Standard drew attention to it.
If you need a face for “how we live today”, look no further than Nadine Dorries phoning it in all year after not getting a peerage. I wouldn’t say her contribution to parliamentary democracy was negligible but she is pretty much an out-of-office reply in human form.
A truly pungent (apologies) metaphor is the raw sewage being pumped illegally into rivers and estuaries by water companies. This works on many levels because it isn’t even just a metaphor. Remember, we are literally swimming in human waste. As reasons to be cheerful go, it’s right up there with Death forcing Max Von Sydow to contemplate a godless universe in The Seventh Seal.
Perhaps the most apposite metaphor of all is one we see on our streets every day: the dreaded dog poo bag. Picked up by apparently attentive pet owners then dumped on the pavement by the bin, they speak of the “we’ve done the hard bit but can’t finish the job” spirit of today. Something supposed to encourage good behaviour has resulted in more mess and worse behaviour.
No doubt 2023 will be rounded off at Christmas with news of furious parents and their crying children being ripped off by some Winter Wonderland that was little more than a malnourished pony with fake antlers in a bog covered in plastic snow spray.
It’s no wonder the British use so much sarcasm. We put it on everything, like ketchup. It’s the only way to mask the true taste of what we’re eating. What we desperately need now are some positive metaphors. To build things up instead of watching them fall down.
We need to shift the narrative. That so many of us are so desperate we will forgo anything resembling vision or ambition and are pinning our hopes on Keir Starmer’s normcore is a measure of how far we have fallen into the mire, the morass, or the pit. Metaphors, eh? Like waiting ages for a bus and then three turn up at once. Hang on, that’s a simile.
