‘Now the very bounds of Britain are laid bare, and wonder grows where knowledge fails.” (“Nunc terminus Britanniae patet, atque omne ignotum pro magnifico est.”) Tacitus was writing of the Roman invasion of this country 2,000 years ago. Unlike Brexit and post-2010 austerity, that invasion was not an act of self-harm but inflicted from without.
All these years later, the bounds of Britain are most certainly being laid bare. In his latest Inside-Out political newsletter, the former Financial Times commentator Philip Stephens makes no bones about it: “Britain is trapped in a spiral of decline. The economy is locked into low growth and high inflation. The public realm is in an advanced state of breakdown. And the nation is looking on incredulously as the Tories prepare to fight each other over the spoils of opposition.”
