What Kind of Future Are We Leaving Behind?
What are we becoming—and does it really matter?
It’s a strange way to begin a blog, but it struck me the other day while thinking about my next-door neighbours.
They’re a young couple with a three-month-old son, Arthur.
And if they’re reading this, yes, I am referring to you.
It occurred to me that Arthur has a very real chance of still being alive in the year 2125.
If that doesn’t make you stop in your tracks, think about this: in 100 years of the 68 million people now living in the UK, almost none of us will remain.
We’ll all be gone.
We sometimes look at photographs of our great-great-grandparents and talk about them as distant ancestors, but in truth, we know very little of their lives, their struggles, or what they endured to bring us to this point.
So, what will Arthur—and his descendants—know of us?
And what kind of world will they inherit?
A Schism of Our Own Making
I was born in 1949, just four years after the Second World War ended.
Now, in my seventy-seventh year, I can see a dangerous schism growing in this country—not across the whole of the United Kingdom, but particularly in England.
It is a schism of xenophobia.
Instead of taking responsibility for the ills my own generation created—at home and abroad over the past seventy years —we are told that the problems of the nation lie at the feet of fewer than 150,000 people seeking asylum here.
Think about that.
A country of 68 million blaming its woes on a fraction of a percent of its population.
And if there is one nation on this planet with little moral right to complain about others arriving “uninvited” and making use of local resources, it is surely Britain.
Our history is one of imperialism, colonisation, of expansion, of taking what did not belong to us.
What Does It Mean to Be “English”?
This is where the debate often turns. “England for the English,” we are told by voices that call themselves “patriotic.”
But what does being English even mean?
For three centuries after 1066, the nobility of this country spoke French.
Our monarchy has German roots.
The people who call themselves indigenous Britons are themselves descendants of Vikings, Danes, and countless others.
English identity has always been fluid, always borrowed, always changing.
The idea of a pure Englishness is as much a myth as King Arthur of the Arthurian legend, (spoiler alert, there never was a King Arthur).
Silence Is Complicity
And yet, in my own community in South Devon, I see people drawn to the rhetoric of Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage—wrapped in patriotism but fuelled by division.
Let me be clear: not everyone who votes for such parties is racist or xenophobic.
But those who stay silent, those who shrug and say, “there’s no point voting,” create the space for those voices to grow stronger.
History teaches us where that path leads.
In the last century alone, we saw millions perish when “keep our country pure” became a rallying cry.
The victims were overwhelmingly the innocent: women, children, families destroyed by hatred.
A Thought for Arthur
And so I come back to Arthur, next door.
Perhaps one day he will grow up to be a leader of this country.
What kind of nation will we leave him?
One that turns its back on desperate people who cross continents for safety.
Or one that remembers compassion, tolerance, and the debt we owe to those who stood by us—even dying alongside us—in the world wars of the last century?
The truth is that the younger generations are already living in the world we created.
Our children, our grandchildren, are growing up inside the society shaped by our choices.
If we hand them a country built on fear and exclusion, we cannot blame anyone but ourselves.
So, sit at home if you wish.
Ignore politics if that’s your choice.
But spare a thought for 21st Century Arthur—and for all the children like him—who will live with the consequences of what we do, or fail to do, today.
Because let’s face it: the mess we are in has nothing to do with a few desperate people crossing the Channel in rubber boats.
It has everything to do with us.
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