Brexit and individualism

Brexit seems to me to be a continuation of the individualist attitude in British society. After the war, British people, tired of being poor and shot-at and bombed accepted that we needed to try and make a society that worked. By making a nice world and starting to look after each other we could avoid this competition and resentment that leads to war and poverty.

So the British people voted to start the NHS to keep everyone healthy, and nationalised industries so that the money from them would also go into society, and formed unions so that workers would have some job security, and made the BBC so that everyone could be well-informed impartially about what was happening in the country and nationalised the railways so that people could move around easily.

However, since Thatcher, the trend has moved the other way. Moved toward taking away the things that make society work. The NHS is underfunded, there are no more national industries, no more national rail network, unions have been destroyed and the BBC is constantly attacked. No longer is the goal a society that works.

When you lose these things society no longer works and all that is left are individuals. Individuals are not interested in looking after each other, only themselves. As individuals we are not interested in paying taxes to makes society work, we are not interested in making sacrifices to help other people who need help. We are not interested in the bigger picture, we are not interested in unions nor the benefits of a European Union.

Brexit is the strongest indication yet of the decline into individualism that started with Thatcher.

Individualism does not make a healthy society that avoids war, quite the opposite.