Britain’s cheering gloom

THE rich West is a pessimistic place right now. Just 12% of the French, 21% of Americans and 28% of the British think the next generation will fare better than them, according to polling by the Boston Consulting Group. In China, by contrast, the optimists score 83%.

British voters are duly punishing their politicians, who seem impotent in the face of global economic storms. One leading pollster calls the net approval ratings of Britain's three big party leaders an “ugliness contest”, with the Conservative prime minister David Cameron on minus 18, Labour's Ed Miliband on minus 27 and—exploring such depths of public disdain that he will soon need his own bathysphere—the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg on minus 53.

Pessimism has slid into general disillusionment and anger directed at higher-ups and better-offs. The peculiarly British scandal of MPs' expenses (think claims for duck houses and bills for moat-cleaning) broke at a wretched time, just as voter anger exploded at the rewards grabbed by City of London whizz kids who seemed to have blown up the economy. A research project by Policy Exchange, the prime minister's favourite think-tank, found voters disagreeing that Britain is a meritocracy by 74% to 21%.

Gloom also stokes the unusually intense rage over immigration. The British are more likely to describe immigration as a top concern than any other European nation, and they are quicker than people in most rich countries to call immigration a problem rather than an opportunity. Conservative Party analysts prepare a weekly word cloud of the issues that voters would raise with the prime minister if they met him. Immigration is the largest word each time. Because the British are so down on their own country, explains a senior Tory, their best explanation for why foreigners head there is that Britain stupidly hands generous benefits to newcomers.

Anti-immigrant anger is, in part, a British manifestation of the unhappiness about global competition that suffuses rich-world politics. On June 22nd Mr Miliband apologised for what he called the Blair government's mistaken decision to open Britain's employment market to workers from ex-communist countries as they joined the European Union. We were “too dazzled” by globalisation, Mr Miliband sorrowed: mass migration from the east was great for homeowners wanting a Polish builder but less good for local craftsmen. That is an empty apology. When Poland and the rest joined the EU, their citizens quite properly gained the right of free movement round the union, so huge numbers would have come anyway. Barring their road to legal work (as Germany, France and others did) merely expanded local black markets. By offering legal work, Britain got the youngest, best educated east Europeans. Still, voters are convinced that migrants steal jobs.

British attitudes to Europe, never warm, have also been made frostier by the general sense of impotence. Lots of voters dismiss the idea that Britain can shape the EU and conclude that they should seek a much more distant relationship.

Finally, there is a near-consensus that Britain's current social contract unfairly hits hard-working ordinary folk, while showering undeserved rewards on those at the top (eg, bankers) and at the bottom (ie, welfare recipients and migrants). Seeking to build on a popular plan to cap all household benefits, Mr Cameron hinted this week that a future Tory government would slash handouts further, perhaps cutting payments to those young enough to live with their parents.

So far, so sullen. But Bagehot—who leaves Britain this week for a new posting in America—finds himself oddly encouraged by the nature of British pessimism. This columnist came to Britain after 12 years in the new world and Europe. From afar, the British seemed to have found a distinctive way of handling globalisation: a mid-Atlantic compact based on greater individualism and tolerance of competition than the French, say, balanced with a more generous welfare safety net than might be found in America. To simplify, Britain looked American at the top and European at the bottom, and it seemed to work.

They are angry because they aspire to a better country

Bagehot thinks that compact is intact, if fragile. In much of Europe, competition is seen as a necessary evil and the opposite of solidarity. In Britain, competition is still tolerated so long as the rules of the game are just. (This difference of view has deep roots: several southern European languages talk of “disloyal” competition when English uses the term “unfair”.)

In other debt-ridden Western countries, including much of the euro zone, vested interests and tribal voter blocks are hunkering down to resist reforms and defend dwindling privileges. Yet the British still yearn to live in a meritocracy: 87% told Policy Exchange that in a fair society incomes should depend on hard work and talent.

Though the British are immigration-obsessed, overt racism is all-but taboo. Consider how the United Kingdom Independence Party, a populist outfit that wants much tighter curbs on foreigners, has played down issues of ethnicity or religion as it rises in the polls, recently ditching calls to ban Muslim headscarves. Even those who would quit the EU are guilty of excess optimism along with excess gloom: Eurosceptics cling to the rash belief that Britain could secure free-rider access to EU markets by walking out.

If the British are obsessed with society's unfairness, that is because they want it fixed—a finer ambition than clinging, fatalistically and cynically, to a crumbling status quo. Bagehot bids farewell to an unhappy country. But it is an unhappiness that looks to the future and wants to improve it. Britain is lost in this crisis. With luck and grown-up leadership, it will find a way out.

^{Economist.com/blogs/bagehot}