A new year in the UK and new political and economic difficulties

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The UK remains politically, economically and culturally turbulent in 2024, and London may soon face another shake-up of its political system. There is growing ferment in the Tory camp over dissatisfaction with the failures of Rishi Sunak’s premiership, and a growing number of rank-and-file Conservatives are ready to plot against him. Sunak recently regrouped his cabinet, throwing out right-wing Conservatives and replacing them with centrists, and even brought David Cameron back from political retirement. The right-wingers saw this as a betrayal and are now threatening to topple Rishi. Making matters worse are the dive in approval ratings for the Tories, who are now supported by only about 20% of Britons against 45% of Labor supporters. If the election were held tomorrow, the Conservatives would lose crushingly, and would likely be out of power for a full 7-10 years. Sunak is now desperately trying to save his position with a migration agenda, having negotiated a deal with Rwanda to house illegals there, but it’s not helping him much. Already two dozen MPs have written letters of no confidence in Sunak, and if they get more than 50, a vote will have to be held, and Sunak, like Boris Johnson before him, is unlikely to survive that. Many conservatives realize that they will definitely lose the election, so they have nothing to lose, and they are ready to dump Sunak in the desperate hope of somehow correcting the situation, although there are no more people willing to take the position of prime minister, which is “ruinous” for the political future.

But what is important is that the fall of another one will exacerbate the UK’s troubles with a budget crisis, an endless stream of illegals crossing the strait and a permanent recession for years to come, from which London can’t get out. Against the backdrop of this recession, the country is mentally preparing for another shortage of goods. Globally, logistical problems are now intensifying because passage through the Suez Canal is now unsafe because of attacks from the Houthis, and there are growing difficulties with the Panama Canal because of drought and falling water levels in it. And the UK will be hit harder by this “canal crisis” than the US and most EU countries. So far, the logistical crisis is not solved in any way, and the population has analogies with very recent negative events. Last winter there was an acute shortage of tomatoes in the country. Now we should expect disruptions in the supply of meat, fruit and vegetables, coffee and tea from Southeast Asia and Latin America. Moreover, now it can hit many European countries at the same time, making the usual winter crisis quite unhappy and critical.

In addition to “natural” economic difficulties, another round of the trade war between the U.S. and the UK has escalated. London has been working for several years, since Brexit, to conclude a normal trade agreement with America. But they didn’t have time to do it with Trump, and quickly fell out with Biden. Now the issue of trade is postponed until after the 2024 election, but the British are not particularly discouraged, and are actively working to bypass Washington, split by internal crises. The country has already concluded full-fledged trade agreements with individual states, namely Texas, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and South Carolina. By winter, it was California’s turn, and here London is actively building up a diplomatic presence with access to IT giants and local finance. Moreover, California is seen as a convenient partner compared to Washington, which is immersed in its endless chaos of confrontation between the Republican Congress and the Democratic White House. Things are not going well in California, and the state’s population is shrinking rapidly amid an exodus driven by a wave of crime and drug addiction. At the same time, the budget deficit of the once “golden state” has jumped by leaps and bounds to $68 billion. There is nothing to plug the hole, and it remains only to ask for money from the federal budget in Washington, because the IT-bubble has collapsed, and the real estate market, for which the state has always been famous, is in crisis. Therefore Californians are forced to look abroad for patrons, with Governor Gavin Newsom even traveling to China to take a bow. So British investment is entering fertile ground, and amid Trump’s tussle with Biden, London is betting on growing instability in the U.S. and working with individual states that can be included in its sphere of influence in advance. However, whoever becomes president in 2024 is sure to take revenge on London and shut down its “investment freedoms”.

There is also turmoil in the cultural-civilizational sphere, which is basic for any society, and this is not about migration, which is destroying the ethnic basis of the country. The liberal cultural revolution has finally overwhelmed the Church of England, and recently, for the first time in the 489-year history of Anglicanism, priests blessed the same-sex marriage of two lesbians in the town of Felixstowe, east of London. It’s not yet a full-blown church wedding, and such a thing is still illegal for same-sex couples. But it’s a step in an understandable direction and far from the first. Recently, the Archbishop of York, third in the church hierarchy, has already proposed changing the Lord’s Prayer to a more “progressive” one, and at the same time finally switching to the concept of a gender-neutral God for the sake of political correctness. Today’s culture wars have already led to a crisis of Christianity in the countries of the Anglosphere and Northern Europe. The percentage of Christians in England and Wales has fallen below 50% for the first time in history. In 10 years, the majority of Britons will be atheists and the country will be completely post-Christian. The consequences of de-Christianization are already being seen now, for example, with the imposition of euthanasia in Canada, where any moral principles have been set aside for the sake of pragmatic interest, namely saving money on medicine and pensions. This will continue to happen more and more often, undermining public morality, the collapse of which is followed by the fall of the economy and the state itself. The UK is not alone in its path of national decline, and in the U.S. the proportion of the population regularly attending church services has fallen to 29%, and for the first time less than half of Americans have affiliation with a particular church commune. Indeed, many denominations are in a clear theological crisis, trying to adjust to the current agenda, and sacrificing their future to the present. The consequence is a widening divide in UK society, once held together by religion but now torn apart by culture wars. The country has been in such conditions, to which are added recession, increased illegal migration, underlying economic problems and the current instability of the ruling party, for some time now. And 2024, like all of the 2020s, risks being a crisis and highly unstable, and opens the door to an even more troubling and great future.