That said, Dan is that very rarest of birds - a Tory who sees the bigger picture. This piece on the realities of Western decline and how it is manifesting itself is truly brilliant and the most insightful piece I have read on the economic downturn. Programmed as we are by Hollywood films and media sensationalism to think in catastrophic terms, we are missing the slow, remorseless grinding down which is taking place all around us.
Dan makes the very good point that we are also too strongly influenced by historical footage of the last Great Depression, and think we should be witnessing social calamity all around us: soup kitchens, Jarrow marches and near-starvation conditions. Instead, as we are so much richer than we were 80 years ago, People are not, in the main, reduced to such desperation. As a consequently the political violence or even violent revolution that people predicted in some European states has (yet) failed to materialise.
That said, people are imperceptibly becoming poorer: In the UK, employment is increasing, but wages consistently lag inflation. In many Southern European societies, the situation is of course much worse. As things decline, we can expect life to become progressively nastier and meaner.
But what Dan misses from his analysis is that there is another major difference between society back in the 1930s and today. Then, at least in the UK, there was a much stronger sense of national identity and common culture. Yes, there were those who made the siren calls for workers solidarity and the rousing verses of the Internationale, but generally a British worker, no matter how desperate his circumstances, still identified with the British state.
Now, it would be truer to say we live in a neo-medieval society. In medieval times, as now, society was dominated by a small, very wealthy elite who spent their time manoeuvering at Court and playing international power politics. Motivated largely by personal greed and ambition, they held the general population in contempt and had far more in common with contemporaries in other realms. Political structures were also broadly similar, with weak accountability and the common man having virtually no control over the governing system. The European Union, of course, is a secular analogy for the Holy Roman Empire of the Medieval period.
As the economic conditions of the majority decline, in the short to medium term the very wealthy globalist elite are insulated from the effects and have little personal incentive to improve matters, particularly as that may mean curbing some of their own grandiose ambitions. However, just as the Medieval epoch resulted in peasant's revolt, inevitably the neo-medieval one will also.
One can perhaps perceive how our arrogant, effete, decadent Liberal elite will eventually be brought down by a general population whose culture becomes progressively rougher and more brutalised as economic deterioration takes its toll.
What if anything of our way of life or Institutions survive this process is another matter.
Andrew Cadman is UKIP member and self-confessed "middle-aged geek".
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