I’m visiting a small and lovely Scottish town most people in Britain could not find on a map, or even spell or pronounce its name. It is Kirkcudbright (Kirk – oo – bree). I’m here for a festival of arts, books, talks and fun.
The sun is sparkling on the River Dee flowing through the town into the Irish Sea. The 725-kilometre drive from my home on the south coast of England took nine hours and ran across half the UK. But two things struck me as I listened to the car radio on the journey.
First, that I am lucky to live in such a beautiful, diverse, extraordinary country. I drove from the coast towards our greatest city, London, north past Birmingham and Manchester to the green hills and sheep pastures of the Lake District then over the Scottish border to a town that is full of history.
Kirkcudbright has an old baronial castle, three churches, a harbour and pretty streets with gardens full of flowers. The events at the festival are cheerful and positive, attended by people who want to take part in discussions, lectures, music and other events. Yet in all this glorious sunshine there is another side to the story.
So much of Britain just isn’t working. The news on the car radio on my long drive northwards was depressing. It was full of reports about the failure of the British air traffic control system, which ruined tens of thousands of holidays and travel plans in late August, including mine and those of my family. Our flights were cancelled from France at short notice. We were forced to take a difficult journey by road, rail and then a cross-Channel ferry to get home.
Once back in England, the unrelenting bad news continued. There were rail strikes by train drivers and other staff. The rail pay disputes have gone on for months without any significant progress. It meant that no trains were running reliably to Scotland from the south of England.
Then there was shocking news of problems with potentially failing concrete structures in some of England’s school buildings. As schools prepared to return from their summer holidays, headteachers in more than 100 were forced to consider closing classrooms which potentially could collapse. They had only a few days to make alternative plans.
The next news item was that for the first time in British history, both senior and junior National Health Service doctors were all going on co-ordinated strikes to protest against their pay not being raised to keep pace with inflation.
Listening to the news, what struck me most was the collision between these two Britains. One is the beautiful country that I admire and love and which is full of talented people. The other is a country that simply doesn’t work very well. And there is an irony for me at least: the reason I have come to Kirkcudbright is to discuss my new book that is published this month, Britain Is Better Than This. The book is itself an attempt to get to the bottom of why such a wonderful country is failing us all.
The good news is that despite our problems, the UK remains a brainy, problem-solving country of 68 million diverse people. To borrow the name of a popular TV show, Britain has clearly got talent. And yet day after day, we are confronted by the problems I’ve listed and more – failing institutions, a government that has lost its way, and an underperforming economy with an overwhelming sense of national malaise.
I listened to the thoughts of audiences here in Kirkcudbright. Some were in favour of Scottish independence. Others – probably most – simply want Britain to work better. One man wondered if the reason we often have so many useless politicians is that we pay them too little. Others felt the political system was so unattractive that many of us do not vote, or that the governments in London and Edinburgh were in different ways too remote from ordinary people.
As always with a British audience, I ended cheered up and optimistic. Most of us, whatever our views or our politics, want to solve problems – not create them.
Everyone in our discussions behaved respectfully towards everyone else. I doubt if this is quite the model of ancient Athenian democracy, but there were plenty of open debates in a public square. What it showed was that we are all concerned about the future for ourselves and our children at a time of economic uncertainty and a war in Europe.
As I walked out into the early evening sunshine from one event, I was hit by a sense of optimism. There is nothing wrong with Britain that cannot be fixed by what is right with Britain. Britain is truly better than this, better than the failures we see so often in our public life. The next step is not just to talk amicably about our problems, it is to start solving them.
We can hope.
