The symptoms of a broken society are all around us. Over a million British youngsters are neither in education nor a job. The incidence of knife-crime has doubled in two years. New victims fall prey to the feral young on an almost daily basis. Even if they do not necessarily host homicides, many public spaces are steadily growing scruffier and dirtier. They look as if there should be a sign: “Decent people keep out.”
Yet we are a rich country. Private affluence is rivalled by record levels of public spending. There is no excuse for deficient public provision. But it often seems as if the right motto for Modern Britain would be: “Nothing works.”
Other societies seem vastly better than we are at avoiding social disintegration….
Britain’s social breakdown is due to its militant secularism.