British Colonialism and Brexit: Karma keeps receipts.

Empires, though they may last for thousands of years, always, eventually fall. It’s the universal political law of gravity, what goes up must come down. The British Empire lived long and prospered enjoying riches unknown off the broken and welted backs of its oppressed victims and the rape of nations around the world. “The temples of empires come tumbling down, the names of the mighty forgotten. Here is a parable: power never lasts.” wrote Author Cliff James. 

I see the fall of Empire in the challenges of Brexit, the pandemic and the privileged arrogance of the Eton rulers of Britain. 

 As Australian author, Max Barry wrote, “All empires fall, eventually. But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. 

Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.” 

Like the children of self-made millionaires, their spoilt sense of entitlement and consequent insufferable arrogance leads them to squander their inheritance. Modern Britain is built of the blood-soaked profits of Empire of that there is no doubt as all such Empires are built on great crimes. 

What’s less understood and hinted at by the Barry quote above, are the toxic legacies and consequences, for the privileged generations who are the direct modern-day beneficiaries of Empire. The dehumanising legacies of Britain’s colonial past, racism, English exceptionalism, violence, and greed, the primary psychological drivers of settler colonialism/imperialism, have in the 21st century metastasized with lethal psychological, political and economic effect. 

The very things that once made Britain ‘great’ have now wrought the nation low. Arrogance and the incompetence of unearned privilege, racism and greed have all now combined into a lethal mix in Boris Johnsons Government. 

His ambition to ape his hero Winston Churchill that most passionate of imperialists is also now mirroring, at quantum speed, his own rise and fall. Once hailed as the saviour Winston was almost universally despised after the end of the war. I believe in a sort of natural karma. 

The energy you put out will impact upon you whatever it’s immediate or long-term apparent benefits. It may in Britain’s case have taken 500 years however as the late great Dr Martin Luther King said: “The moral arch of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” 

In short, Karma keeps receipts. And today as we see the catastrophe that Britain faces when everything Boris does falls to ashes in his hands and the world looks at the UK like a Leper colony. 

 I cannot help but reflect that maybe, just maybe Karma has come to collect.