Economic
crises... unelected cabals kicking out the Prime Minister: the signs
are all there
Britain, the new banana republic
Gerard
Baker 2008 05 30
It's at this time of year that an expat's thoughts turn most wistfully to England. Spring in full blush never seems to hold quite as much promise elsewhere. When you've lived abroad for as long as I have, the heart pines more urgently for the little rituals that mark the lengthening of sublime English days. The happy wheeling out of the barbecue for the inaugural dinner al fresco. A thrilling English Test victory at Old Trafford. The annual exchange of recriminations over the Eurovision Song Contest.
This is the time of year that inspired the poets to write about the bucolic pleasures of England - all blossomed pear trees and wise thrushes. For me, the most painfully nostalgic of home thoughts from abroad is this: why is it that strawberries never taste so good anywhere on Earth as they do over there? But, and I worry about writing this, because it can be irritating when people say critical things about their country from afar, but this year it's not the sweet scent of strawberries that is emanating from Britain but the faint whiff of banana.
It's been a long time since Britain last tried to turn itself into a fully fledged banana republic. But there are troubling signs that the oldest and greatest continuously functioning democracy in the world is succumbing once again to a serious bout of bananisation.
The news from home as reported overseas makes it look as though the country has stepped into a 30-year time warp. The papers and television are full of stories of fuel-price protests, power cuts, new airport terminals that lose your baggage, panicky Budget measures to placate angry constituents. The country seems gripped by a lowering mood of economic stagnation, social disorder and political paralysis. To be fair, this slightly Latinate quality to modern Britain is in part the inescapable - and certainly not exclusively British - consequence of an economic crisis that has produced calamity all over the world. But the data points seem somehow more alarming, more extreme in Britain than anywhere else. No other country, as far as I know, has had a Latin American-style run on a bank in the past few months. There are troubling indications that inflation is now rampant. It may not quite qualify as banana-style hyperinflation yet but real progress is being made in that direction. In April producer prices rose at an annual rate of 23 per cent.
There are strong indications that double-digit declines in property values are around the corner. No one has called in the IMF yet, but perhaps we shouldn't rule it out. With the Budget picture deteriorating rapidly it won't take much for the UK to be tipped into a classic currency-fiscal downward spiral of the sort made famous by banana republics everywhere. There are signs too that the political culture is becoming bananised. The public seems to favour leadership qualities that emphasise personality traits over the faintest evidence of competence or aptitude for the job. I can't be alone in seeing Boris Johnson, the blond aristo with a large popular mandate and a cultish following among the capital's youth, as a very English version of Eva Perón. Don't blub for me Argentina, old chaps.
At least, I suppose, we don't have to worry about a military coup. The repeated privations and humiliations visited upon Britain's Armed Forces have reduced them to a state where they couldn't overthrow a statue. But far and away the most alarming sign of bananisation to date is the feverish talk that the governing party is plotting once again to throw out the leader. Gordon Brown seems to have survived the immediate crisis that broke after the local elections but my friends tell me he remains under a kind of house arrest. His colleagues, if that is what they can be called, are ready to move against him at the first sign of another error, another dip in the polls.
What kind of a constitutional government is this? My memory may be defective but wasn't it only a year ago that Britain ditched its last leader? Tony Blair was re-elected in 2005, I seem to recall, to a third term that he promised to complete before stepping down as Prime Minister. That was cut short by a pre-emptive coup. Some may take satisfaction that the plotters are now the target of a plot themselves. But this isn't Haiti. This is England, for heaven's sake. Presumably if Mr Brown has to go, how long can the public expect the next man to last? Why don't they just rotate the leadership through the main offices of state, as the Latin American juntas used to do through the various Service chiefs, until one of them proves himself to be the strong man, and seizes the epaulettes for good?
As the Guevarists discovered, once you've dipped your hand into the blood, it can become quite habit-forming. But is there any group of people anywhere less representative of the public than the cabal of Labour Party constituency members, trade union leaders and clapped-out Cabinet members who now seem to hold the nation's leadership in their trembling hands?
For a generation now Britain has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most dynamic, flexible and stable countries in a rapidly changing and challenging world. While Europe stagnated, Britain fought its way back into the first rank of nations. But a combination of economic shocks and political mismanagement is threatening to inflict severe damage to that reputation. Far from restoring Britain's standing, the spectacle of excitable ministers plotting yet another overthrow only enhances the unsettling sense that the country, or at least the Government that runs it, has gone bananas.
| Banana
republic is a
pejorative term for a small, often Latin American, Caribbean or African
country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture,
often ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy and corrupt clique.In
most cases they have kept the government structures that were modeled
after the colonial Spanish ruling clique, with a small, largely leisure
class on the top and a large, poorly educated and poorly paid working
class of peons. The term was coined by O. Henry, an American humourist
and short story writer, in reference to Honduras. "Republic" in his
time was often a euphemism for a dictatorship, while "banana" implied
an easy reliance on basic agriculture and backwardness in the
development of modern industrial technology. Frequently the subject of mockery and humour, and usually presided over by a dictatorial military junta that exaggerates its own power and importance—"the epaulettes of a banana republic generalissimo" are proverbially of considerable size, usually portrayed in satire with a pair of mops—a banana republic also typically has large wealth and income inequities, poor infrastructure, poor schools, a backward economy, low capital spending, a reliance on foreign capital and money printing, budget deficits, and a weakening currency. Banana republics are typically also highly prone to revolutions and coups. In 2005, Judge Richard Mawrey in the United Kingdom quashed results of election of two local councils after it was proved that there was widespread fraud and vote-rigging during the election. In response to the administration's assertion that the Postal Voting system was functioning properly he said, "Anybody who has sat through the case I have just tried and listened to evidence of electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic would find this statement surprising." In September 2007, UK CBI President Richard Lambert slammed the government and City authorities, blaming them for the Northern Rock crisis, claiming the run on the bank was "something that happens in a banana republic". |
See also
Making a new Britain
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