Is Britain a banana republic?

Well perhaps not a banana republic, since we export little if any of the fruit, but are we becoming more like a developing country.

Let me give you a number of indicators:

1) Our services are becoming poor. I think particularly of the road outside my house, where for years the road surface has crumbled, and where inadequate and temporary repairs of potholes and infilling after utility digging have contributed to a surface which in many places is dangerous. There does not seem to have been a full and thorough re-surfacing in living memory.

The reason? In short, - money. For years the roads in outlying districts have been neglected in order to finance the duties laid on local authorities by central government and keep rates down, whether by conviction or rate capping, and there has been a "make-do-and mend" attitude to road surfaces. Whatever the reason, road surfaces, and pavements, are a disgrace.

2) We have a health service which spends at European levels but delivers outcomes towards the bottom of the league table, and we have a national education service which spends at more than the European average and yet is sliding down the educational table.

3) We have an overstretched military in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is under-provided and poorly equipped. In the early years they had actually to buy bullets from soldiers in other participating NATO armies, and lives have been lost because of inadequate provision of body armour, helicopters, etc.

Add to this the taunt of the French President that we have no industry left, that the members of parliament seem to be "on the take" (or at least give the impression by the lax rules they have set themselves and their desire for secrecy), of patronage and "jobs for the boys" appointments in government service and quangos. We have prime ministers absenting themselves from parliament, and relying on whips to reinforce their "presidential" power. We have draconian laws seeking to monitor, control and punish people for thought crimes and minor offences. We have a vast army or illiterate and enumerate unskilled people on permanent benefit and living in poverty.

In terms of GNP, it would be difficult to describe us as a banana republic, but we seem to be showing many of the traits.