I look at a lot of articles from The Guardian and I'd say the UK seems to be in full on disaster mode, whether it is the government trying to criminalize dissent because everyone from labor unions to schoolchildren to right wing anti-immigrant folks are protesting. Inflation is really out of control, fresh veggies are missing from the supermarket, the "small boats" situation makes any concern people have about the border in the US seem like nothing.
Added to that, the country is literally shitting[1] itself. Its really weird living here at the moment, its like some kinda of cautionary fable about the monster that made everyone impose trade-sanctions on themselves, but none of the towns-people are allowed to to talk about it or discuss it.
The Guardian comes with a certain bias for disaster-mongering, especially (but not exclusively) at the expense of Tories; all of those things are real problems, but take it with a grain or two of salt.
Source: I live in the UK and still eat fresh veggies.
"The Guardian comes with a certain bias for disaster-mongering"
Perhaps so. But from my perspective of Australia the UK looks as if it's on the slide (I'm not smug when saying that as I reckon things here aren't much better, we've always been a mob of ostriches).
My family/cultural heritage is mostly UK so I have no pleasure in watching the decline. I've also relatives in the US and France and I've lived and worked in both Europe including the UK and the US so I view what's happening from a broad Western perspective and I'm very gloomy about what I see.
It's too complicated to give a quick summary of the problems but if forced to do so in a sentence then I'd say it's cultural. The West is being driven apart by widening ideological views, there's less cohesion, fewer common values and aspirations now than there once was.
On the other hand, the exact opposite is happening in Asia, people there know their time has come and that confidence and optimism drives cohesion and common values.
BTW, I've also worked in Asia for a short while so I've some feeling for what's happening there.
I read The Economist too which would like to like the Tories (say if they were still run by Thatcher) but they've got as little love for May, Johnson, or Liz Truss as they had for Disraeli back in the day.
The Economist avoids "shit news" as well as news about sports (What Six Nations?) and is not so negative as The Guardian but doesn't paint a picture too different about the general disorder or Brexit being a disaster.
I look at a lot of articles from The Guardian and I'd say the UK seems to be in full on disaster mode, whether it is the government trying to criminalize dissent because everyone from labor unions to schoolchildren to right wing anti-immigrant folks are protesting. Inflation is really out of control, fresh veggies are missing from the supermarket, the "small boats" situation makes any concern people have about the border in the US seem like nothing.