I didn’t plan to write this. I’ve just come through an intensive weekend, much of it spent in hospital. And it’s from my bed, in the quiet hours between the beeping monitors and the routine checks, that I’ve had time to reflect not just on health, but on the health of this country. This is after I have witnessed two Filipino nurses spoken to and treated like something under a shoe. They did not deserve to be racially embarrassed in public, simply for stating they finished their shift three hours ago.
Racism in Britain isn’t always loud. It’s often quiet, strategic, systemic. It’s in the job you don’t get. The voice you’re asked to lower. The opportunities that somehow never arrive. I’ve seen it play out in boardrooms and back rooms, on doorsteps and in data. And I’ve watched how it’s brushed aside by a political class that either doesn’t care, or pretends not to see it.
We’re not a nation in crisis. We’re a nation slowly giving up on itself. Drifting. And it’s that slow drift that frightens me more than any single dramatic moment. Because it’s quiet, and it’s happening all around us.
For too long, both Labour and the Conservatives have spoken in slogans while watching the ground fall away beneath us. Labour walked away from the communities it was built to serve, cutting the ladders of opportunity it once fiercely defended. The Tories, for their part, promised freedom and prosperity while selling off the very fabric of the state to the highest bidder. Neither has offered real leadership, just rebrands.
And in the vacuum, people got angry. Post-Brexit, that anger had nowhere to go, so it was redirected. Blame the migrants. Blame the ‘woke mob.’ Blame the powerless. And up pops Nigel Farage again, this time with Reform, riding the wave of resentment like it’s a comeback tour.
But here’s the thing, this isn’t just about Farage, or even racism in the traditional sense. It’s about the everyday people I meet who feel abandoned, talked down to, manipulated. It’s about people who’ve endured fifteen years of austerity, instability and lies. And when they look around and see no one truly speaking for them, they reach for anyone who sounds angry enough to notice.
But anger isn’t a plan. And scapegoating isn’t a solution.
That’s why, despite everything, I see a quiet hope in the Liberal Democrats. I know they’re not the loudest voice in the room. But maybe that’s what we need right now. A party willing to talk about real change without spinning fairy tales. A party that understands that repairing Britain isn’t about winning headlines, it’s about rebuilding trust, piece by piece. Whether it’s pushing for electoral reform, defending human rights, or offering clear plans for education, healthcare and the economy, the Lib Dems are at least trying to do politics without hate. And in today’s climate, that feels revolutionary.
I know some people will scoff. Say it’s idealism. Say it’s too late. But I believe we still have choices. We can choose compassion over cruelty. Truth over spectacle. We can choose to see each other again.
Because Britain isn’t broken beyond repair. But it is tired. It’s weary of division, and desperate for honesty.
The question we need to ask now is this:
When politics stops pretending to listen, and populists start shouting over the silence, will we have the courage to build something better or will we settle for the fury that burns everything down?
* Roderick Lynch is Chair of the Liberal Democrat Campaign for Race Equality.
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10 Comments
The UK does appear broken in so many ways that it would not be a surprise if the Scots, Welsh and/or Northern Irish decided to leave the UK and take their chances either as an independent country or, in the case of Northern Ireland, reunited with the rest of the Irish republic. Given the potential of a Reform government after the next election, who could blame them?
Utopia is hard to achieve but there is no harm in aiming for it.
Roderick
I am very sorry to read about your hospital stay. I hope you make a full recovery.
I agree with you. Britain’s national morale is very poor at present, and both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party deserve blame for this, alongside the many incarnations of Nigel Farage’s political parties.
Our Party sends a much more positive message, and we need to preserve this positioning.
This strikes such a chord in me. During hospital stays I too have seen the beeping monitors and the routine checks. Talked to non-British staff who keep the whole place running.
There is hope, but it is hard in a week when the headlines feature the rising death rate for the under-50s. We have very nearly given up.
But not quite yet.
It will not be that lot in Downing Street that make the difference. It will be connecting with ordinary people.
My mother was admitted to hospital in a north west English town this winter.
A town with a long history of immigration from across the world, and may of those immigrants and their children have been welcomed and nurtured by mum.
She trained as a nurse in the 1950s.
As a youth, because my grandad was chair of the local Church (CofE) Missionary Society and perhaps seen as more likely to be more accepting of Africans, a Nigerian Nurse came every Sunday for tea at their home.
Mum had lifelong friendships with many from the Caribbean who came to our shores in the 1960s, and from South Asia in the 1970s.
On admission to the ward in an NHS Hospital – in the UK in 2025 – she was asked by NHS staff if she objected to being cared for by a black nurse.
Roderick – I think we may have nodded to each other as we passed at a by-election HQ, but never met.
Get well soon and keep fighting at your end, and I’ll keep fighting at mine.
It is heartbreaking to read of the abuse of Filipino nurses. What a powerful sentence “We’re not a nation in crisis. We’re a nation slowly giving up on itself.” I agree with all of this and I hope you are still on track for that marathon, Roderick.
“We’re not a nation in crisis. We’re a nation slowly giving up on itself.”
I agree with the first sentence. We are a wealthy country by world standards. Our GDP per person works out at £37k p.a. per person. This includes all children and OAPs. So what’s the problem? There wouldn’t be much of one if it were shared out even slightly more equitably.
@Peter: I think this is a case where you have to think about resources, not money. One of the UK’s biggest problems that causes so much hardship is that we simply don’t have enough homes for everyone to live in (in reasonable comfort). That is not a problem that you can solve by sharing out the money more equitably. You could go for complete financial equality and make sure every single person has exactly £37K pa, but as long as there are not enough homes, you’ll still find some people will be homeless/living in a substandard accommodation – with all the attendant problems of poverty and social hardship that will result from that.
@Simon R – actually we DO have enough homes for everyone right now.
The most recent estimate is that in England there are 326,000 people in temporary accommodation, 3,900 sleeping rough and 16,600 single people in hostels.
Meanwhile there are nearly 700,000 homes standing empty at any given time, with 265,000 of them long term empty. And it’s not that the empty homes are in the “wrong” place – there are over 38,000 long-term empty homes in London alone, a number which has doubled since 2016.
The bigger problem is the barriers and lack of incentives to bring those empty homes into use, coupled with a lack of regulation and enforcement of standards of decency for rental housing.
This is entirely fixable with sufficient political will, and a willingness to stand up to certain vested interests.
@Nick: I don’t think those figures are incompatible with what I said. You have to remember that, empty doesn’t necessarily mean the house is standing idle waiting for someone to live in it. Often, it will mean the house has ongoing building work or repairs making it temporarily uninhabitable (I know from personal experience that problems with building work can easily push repair time over the 6 months that would often cause a house to be categorised as long-term empty). It may also mean the house is in the process of being sold and it’s not legally/contractually practical for it to be rented out during that period. Also those figures don’t take account of how many houses are occupied despite not being really in a fit state for occupation, or how many houses are over-occupied (for example people sharing houses or even sharing rooms who really want to get their own place but can’t because of lack of supply of houses).
38K empty houses in London is nothing compared to the ~10 M population of London. I don’t have any figures for how many people in London are living in unduly cramped or unsuitable conditions or living far from their work due to lack of available housing, but just anecdotally based on the experiences of people I know, I’d expect it’s far, far, higher than 38K. So I do think empty housing being in the wrong places is likely to be an issue.