LONDON – Great Britain looks like a nation where life is functioning normally. Below the surface, however, lies a growing sense that the United Kingdom is coming apart at the seams.
Kings College-London Professor of War Studies Dr. David Betz set off alarm bells this year when he warned Britain is headed toward civil war, and he advised people living in its large cities to move before the violence starts.
Betz told the Brussels Signal podcast, “Imagine Northern Ireland scale [of violence] or Northern Ireland in intensity, but on a completely national scale, [with] attacks on public figures, judges, potentially politicians…”
London Daily Telegraph Columnist Tim Stanley wrote that he agrees with Betz that “Britain is heading for open sectarian conflict, possibly war, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
Stanley said, “Britain displays many of the signs of being a failed state, such as economic decline, total loss of trust in the police, and a fractious and increasingly extreme politics.”
At the center of this unrest is a government multicultural experiment that has brought in large numbers of Muslims without requiring them to integrate. More continue to arrive daily.
Britain’s ‘southern border’ is the English Channel, and it’s as porous as the Rio Grande River. Two weeks ago, 1,200 illegal migrants arrived in a single day.
“When you have a country in decline and you add large numbers of new people into the mix, what you end up with is ethnic conflict over resources,” Stanley told CBN News. “And we’re seeing that more and more.”
Experts fear all that might be needed to trigger a civil war is another terror attack. White working-class anger exploded last summer when the son of Rwandan immigrants stabbed three white girls to death.
Social media posts initially misidentified the killer as an illegal migrant, sparking the worst riots in 10 years. Only much later did police reveal the killer possessed an al-Qaeda training manual.
Right-wing and working-class British are also angry over what they claim is a two-tier justice system that favors Muslims. Last week, Hamit Coskun was convicted for publicly burning a Quran in a political protest outside the Turkish embassy in London. A Muslim man with a knife who threatened to kill him faced no charges.
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old mother, is serving 31 months in prison for “stirring up racial hatred” for a tweet appearing to encourage violence against illegal migrants after the murders of those three girls in Southport.
Connolly got more jail time than some of the members of a Pakistani sex grooming gang received for child prostitution and having sex with a minor.
Add to this rising crime, Orwellian state censorship, and economic decline in many areas.
Academic and news commentator Dr. Matt Goodwin says, “Britain is a nation in decline economically, demographically, and culturally. We are not an economy that is growing in a significant way. There are areas that are just as poor as Eastern Europe or as parts of the developing world, in northern England, in some of our coastal towns.”
“And the perception is, among the white working class,” says Stanley, “that the state actively prefers ethnic minorities and is funneling resources their way. [White English ask] ‘Why is it [migrants] get hotel rooms? Why is it they get welfare when we are struggling?'”
Goodwin says, “The riots and the disturbances were symptoms of a much deeper disillusionment in this country with the way in which British people just no longer feel safe in their own communities and no longer feel safe in the country, where lawlessness is essentially being sanctioned by the state.”
Political strategist Dominic Cummings says elements within the British government are finally beginning to discuss “…Britain’s slide into chaos and the potential for serious violence.”
Oliver JJ Lane, Bureau Chief of Breitbart London, says of the Cummings’ revelations, “There are two sort of issues feeding into this, first of which is essentially civilizational collapse, which is causing a rise in crime and potentially civil unrest between ethnic groups. And then, on the other hand, you have government incompetence and policing incompetence, and that creates that downward spiral.”
Luke Tryl, Director of the polling organization More in Common, conducted focus groups in small English towns and said, “The disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard. In every group, it was anger, despondency, or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
One focus group member suggested Britain might need a “coup.”
Professor Betz says civil war is also at risk of breaking out in other Western nations, including the United States.
Stanley believes civil war in the UK could be avoided through the spiritual awakening already underway in Britain.
“There is something going on here. Church attendance is up. Young people are becoming more religious than ever. If there is a potential for change, it’s going to come from society and the grassroots and ordinary people. It’s not going to come from politicians.”
The famous British economist Adam Smith cautioned the prophets of doom when he said “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
In other words, it takes a lot to bring a nation down. But Britain today has so many problems, it just might test that theory.
