The real reason the social contract is broken
Almost two-thirds of people think that Britain’s social contract is broken. A majority believe that diversity is eroding our national identity, while a third think that some sort of communist revolution is needed. My sense from reading history is that this didn’t turn out too well on previous occasions, but it’s hard to dispute that there are reasons for public discontent.
The case highlighted one of the central questions of our time – what makes someone British? If el-Fattah is British, then anyone is British, and no one is
The case highlighted one of the central questions of our time – what makes someone British? If el-Fattah is British, then anyone is British, and no one is
Most people will be aware of a popular meme that first appeared in 2020, called the Social Contract, which illustrated a system designed to make a young taxpayer support old people, welfare recipients and immigrants. Poor ‘Nicolas, 30’ pays for everything and gains nothing in return. The meme was in existence for a few years before becoming the subject of various comment pieces in 2024; it’s now gone into the annals of meme history, but it was popular for a long time because it succinctly expressed an obvious truth – that the social contract has broken three unwritten rules.
A social contract should distinguish between citizens and foreigners, it should reward hard work and punish freeloading, and it should serve as a compact between the generations. Instead, it has become a Ponzi scheme which allocates resources based on supposed need.
Many can recall various individual cases, but there was one at the very end of last year which perfectly epitomised the problem. It was like a right-wing fever dream, except real. Just after Christmas, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his team announced with great excitement the securing of ‘British’-Egyptian ‘democracy’ activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah from a Cairo jail. El-Fattah is not in fact British in any sense. He was born in Egypt, has lived in Egypt his whole life and showed no interest in our country until taking out British citizenship while in jail, through a tenuous link. His grandmother had given birth here, before soon returning home, and we never bothered to tighten the loophole.
The hypocrisy of Dawn........
